After another strong season, UTSA’s football attendance receives more scrutiny
Fans celebrate during a timeout during the NCAA Conference USA football game against North Texas Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022, at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.UTSA athletics director Lisa Campos said the goal for weekly attendance in the Alamodome is to sit atop Conference USA. With an average of 26,835 fans for the Roadrunners’ six home games in 2022, UTSA comfortably hit that target for a second straight season.
As UTSA was hosting 22,328 fans for a rematch of the 2021 Conference USA championship game against Western Kentucky on Oct. 8, a Texas State team on the way to a 4-8 season drew 25,613 for an eventual upset of Appalachian State.Out of 29 instances of UTSA and Texas State playing home games on the same day, that was only the third in which the Bobcats drew a better crowd. But Roadrunners supporters, and even some of the players, took notice.
Campos thought back to UTSA’s 2018 opener, when the program gave away 20,000 tickets to the military to help draw a crowd of 42,071 for a matchup against Baylor. The financial data schools report to the NCAA for marketing and promotions spans the entire athletic department and also includes fundraising expenses, so finding a basis for comparison is difficult. But, through the same period, Texas State spent just more than $125,000 on advertising, marketing and promotional efforts for football, per the university’s response to a public information request.
UTSA’s primary focus in driving attendance is to build the season ticket base, Campos said. The Roadrunners peaked at 14,817 season tickets sold during the program’s infancy in 2013, then steadily declined before plummeting to 3,594 amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. That figure began to rebound to 5,604 in 2021 and 8,178 in 2022, and Campos said UTSA exceeded its goal of reaching a renewal rate in the “high 80 percent” range this year.
Filling the lower bowl of the Alamodome is a weekly priority, Campos said, and the decision on whether to open the upper deck for $10 tickets is based on monitoring how many lower-level seats are available. “I think there’s a misconception that we have priced people out, where people aren’t seeing all of the different price entry points into our game, and how much effort has been made into targeting a ton of individual groups to get them there,” Campos said.
Campos said fans will pay less in fees if they purchase tickets in advance and work through the campus ticket office rather than Ticketmaster’s online interface.