Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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54 SEPT. 25, 2021 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED N otre Dame fans are mad, and perhaps right- fully so. But they shouldn't target their frustration at university president Rev. John I. Jenkins and director of athlet- ics Jack Swarbrick. It wasn't their fault only 62,009 people f i l e d t h ro u g h t h e gates of Notre Dame S t a d i u m f o r t h e Fighting Irish's home opener against To- ledo Sept. 11. Being that it was the first chance to pack the venue to its full ca- pacity of 77,622 since 2019, sure, it was a bit of a letdown to only see the historic stadium roughly four-fifths full. But was it really the president and ath- letics director's fault, as Notre Dame class of 1987 graduate Stephen O'Neil sug- gested in his open letter to Jenkins and Swarbrick published in Notre Dame's stu- dent newspaper, The Observer, Sept. 13? No, it wasn't. O'Neil opened his letter with, "What has happened to Notre Dame?" and im- plied Jenkins and Swarbrick have alien- ated the Notre Dame fan base in a way a politician might by pulling all the wrong political strings. To that I respond with a question of my own; "What has hap- pened to college football?" Let's cut the questions right there and answer with this: supply and demand. The natural rebounding and inflation of a market that was not bountiful in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic but has reentered the spotlight in 2021 with the return of full-capacity crowds. O'Neil argued tickets on the secondary market are too expensive for an entire family to gobble up and comfortably en- joy a weekend in South Bend. He might very well be right, but again, Jenkins and Swarbrick can't drive the going rate for tickets down to satisfy the wishes of their fan base. It doesn't work like that. According to a TicketIQ.com study conducted in August, the price of an av- erage Notre Dame football ticket on the secondary market increased 63.7 per- cent from 2019 to 2021. Notre Dame has the fourth-highest secondary ticket cost in the country at $452. No doubt about it, that isn't very appealing to the mod- est man who is just trying to get by as the pandemic and its monetary conse- quences continue to affect the country. But consider this; that jump of 63.7 percent was smaller than that of 11 schools that rank among the top 25 in av- erage 2021 secondary market ticket costs. Nebraska, Oklahoma, Florida State, Mi- ami, Louisville and Boston College all saw year-over-year increases of more than 100 percent. Are their administrators to blame, too? Nope. Not in the slightest. The inflated rate of a Notre Dame foot- ball ticket is on par with what the rest of the country has experienced. The aver- age secondary market cost for a ticket to a Power Five game was $135 in 2019. In 2021, that price increased to $195. From 2011 to 2019, the highest year-over-year percent increase was 15.5 percent from 2015 to 2016. The percent change from 2019 to 2021 — 2020 excluded because of the abnormalities tied to the pandemic — was a whopping 44.4 percent. Do Jenkins and Swarbrick control the natural ebbs and flows of ticket mar- kets? No, absolutely not. Especially on the secondary market. They have noth- ing to do with it. As of Sept. 16, only one game at Notre Dame Stadium this season was marked as a sellout: Oct. 2 when the Irish host Cincinnati. The cheapest ticket on the secondary market for that game accord- ing to TicketIQ.com was $205 at the end of August. And yet, a capacity crowd is ex- pected to be on hand. I get it. It was a tough look for the l o w e s t a t t e n d e d game at Notre Dame Stadium since it ex- panded from 59,075 to 80,000-plus in 1997 (but has since dropped to its cur- r e n t c a p a c i t y o f 77,622 in 2017) to be the first game back from a global pandemic. But as stated earlier, that pandemic is still ongo- ing and still affecting the pocketbooks for plenty of people, including Notre Dame fans. It's not a coincidence a game against a MAC opponent barely drew 60,000 while a top-10 opponent three weeks later is expected to be a sellout. Jenkins and Swarbrick do not determine which games Notre Dame fans are going to shell out money to go see in person. Swarbrick had a huge hand in making the Toledo game only viewable on NBC's streaming platform, Peacock. But that's another discussion and something that probably won't be an issue at all in five years. If anything, Swarbrick is ahead of the curve with that. More and more games will only be viewable on stream- ing platforms as the media landscape continues to evolve. Wouldn't that have swayed more fans to attend the home opener in person anyway? I suppose some might have been turned off entirely and staged a personal boycott of the game both in person and over the internet. But at that point, maybe the problem isn't Jenkins and Swarbrick keeping up with the ever-changing times but rather the fans who just don't want to do so with them. ✦ GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA Notre Dame Stadium saw 62,009 people come through its gates for the 2021 home opener against Toledo, far fewer than the venue's official capacity of 77,622. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER Irish Ticket Prices: Too Much And Never Enough Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com