As sellouts become less common, K-State gets creative to boost football attendance

College football attendance has been on the decline all across the country in recent years, and the effects of that trend are beginning to materialize at Kansas State.

The Wildcats waved goodbye to a sellout streak that spanned 39 consecutive home games last year when attendance dipped below 50,000 at Bill Snyder Family Stadium for their season finale against Iowa State. Nine months later, they are still waiting to announce their first sellout of 2018.

K-State officials are optimistic Saturday’s game against South Dakota will sell out — only scattered singles and standing-room only tickets remained as of Thursday afternoon. But they aren’t sure how many games will reach capacity. A Week 2 matchup with No. 18 Mississippi State seemed like a hot ticket when it was scheduled, but not even that plum nonconference game has been deemed a sellout.

“We are struggling a little bit more than we have in the past,” K-State athletic director Gene Taylor said. “Season tickets are down a little bit. Single-game sales are picking up, but they haven’t been as brisk as they have in years past, especially early on in the summer. We are working a little harder to sell more tickets. We are hoping we sell out the first game and roll into the other ones.”

Declining attendance is a difficult thing for college football teams to combat. Announced attendance has dropped slightly in each of the past four seasons, declining by 7.6 percent over that time, according to national attendance records. But the on-field product hasn’t changed.

At K-State, Snyder has led the Wildcats to eight consecutive bowl games and compiled an overall record of 74-42 since coming out of retirement in 2009. With a new, younger coaching staff in place and a promising offense returning from a team that won eight games last year, preseason optimism has been easy to sell.

But tickets have not.

Why?

“I think there is a lot of stuff going on and people are choosing to do other things and watch the games from home,” Taylor said. “It’s that way all across the country. It’s not just here. It’s really a combination of stuff.

“Game times aren’t consistent. It’s not that we have over priced our tickets. I think people are just looking for other options. The secondary market is really coming in to play with a lot of ticket sales. The usual season-ticket buyers are taking to the secondary market, because they can’t make all the games. Then other people are looking at that secondary market. Is it worthy of buying a ticket or staying at home and watching on TV, which has never been better? We’re getting a lot of reasons. We haven’t been able to pin down what that one thing is.”

K-State will try to win over some on-the-fence fans with new features at home games this season.

For starters, fans can now visit a beer garden inside the stadium. Beer sales will begin two hours before kickoff and remain open through the third quarter. Students will also be able to enter football games with digital tickets on their phones. And fans of all ages will enjoy new concession items, including Chick-fil-A on the south concourse.

David Hamel, the local Chick-fil-A owner and a former K-State punter, said his staff will be on hand to produce as many as 4,000 chicken sandwiches to serve football fans on Saturday. If sales go well, he’s prepared to increase that number to 5,000 for the Mississippi State game.

“It’s a win-win for everybody,” Hamel said. “We are excited to become a part of the K-State family atmosphere at football games, and it seems like fans are excited to have us there. The response everyone has had to Chick-fil-A has been overwhelming.”

Time will tell if it’s enough to boost attendance over the 50,000 mark.

For now, though, it seems like long sellout streaks are becoming less common.

“It was a fun streak, an unusual streak probably for a lot of places,” Taylor said. “Our staff took a lot of pride in it. We would like to get back there, where if we aren’t selling out every game we are selling out a majority of them. But it’s hard. Fans are being a little more picky than they used to.”

This story was originally published August 30, 2018 at 2:44 PM.