To see a database on sporting attendance, click here.Editor’s note: This story is the fifth in a five-part series involving attendance at LSU athletic events.
The sports conspiracy theorists may be on to something.Statistics show disparities in paid and actual attendance at LSU athletic events, and several experts on the subject have different ideas about the practice of reporting occasionally inflated paid attendance figures to the public.Paid attendance figures consist of the total number of tickets purchased and distributed for a particular sporting event, and actual attendance is determined by the number of tickets scanned at each gate, said Brian Broussard, LSU Ticket Office manager.The school reports paid attendance figures to the public in accordance with all other collegiate athletic programs, Broussard said.”It’s standard across the nation,” Broussard said. “It’s what everyone posts for recording figures. So we’re just trying to stay consistent with everyone across the board.”But the practice of reporting paid attendance to the public serves other purposes than just a protocol for consistency, said TheSportsEconomist.com contributor Victor Matheson.”There’s every reason for athletic programs to try to exaggerate their importance and popularity,” Matheson said.Matheson, an associate professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., also said financial implications factor into athletic programs’ decision to publish paid attendance figures.”It’s in the interest of the athletic programs to inflate their popularity to make sure they keep getting adequate funding for new facilities, scholarships and things of that nature,” Matheson said.He also said there are many “practical reasons” why reporting paid attendance is commonplace throughout the country.”It’s not all that easy to measure these numbers,” Matheson said. “So if you have a receipt for someone who bought a ticket, then sometimes that’s just easier data to come by than trying to collect a large amount of ticket stubs.”Broussard said LSU has no reason to conceal its actual attendance numbers for athletic events.”We have that information, and we’re not hiding it from anyone,” Broussard said.Actual attendance numbers for LSU sporting events are counted until halftime and during the fifth inning of baseball games, Broussard said. But he also said there have been occasions when attendance for football was recorded beyond intermission.”For football, we’ll scan later into the games, but usually the number is so insignificant that is has no factor or bearing on the actual attendance figures,” Broussard said.Broussard also said actual attendance “is helpful to us besides just knowing how many people are in the stadium.””It helps us in determining who is attending events, what their trends are, what time people come in and it helps in determining staffing,” Broussard said. “It also helps in tracking counterfeit tickets and any issues in that realm.”Matheson believes there is a simple explanation for the large discrepancy between paid and actual attendance for any particular sport.”If you have a sport that relies almost entirely on gameday sales, then your paid and actual attendance will match up pretty close,” Matheson said. “But if you have a sport that relies solely on season ticket sales, that’s where you really have a lot of opportunity for these figures to diverge.”Two LSU sports that rely heavily on season ticket sales exhibit the largest differences in paid and actual attendance, Broussard said.”Obviously, the largest numbers are in football,” Broussard said. “But percentage-wise it’s probably men’s basketball.”The Athletic Department is also trying to lower the differences between paid and actual attendance, Broussard said.”We make efforts with our marketing department to advertise the ticket marketplace where fans can resell their tickets,” he said. “We also have ways for fans to transfer their tickets to one another electronically.”Broussard also said the ticket office has looked into establishing a point system for public fans similar to the student priority-point system, which rewards student attendance with the first chance to acquire tickets for away games and postseason events.”There’s no concrete plan to put that in place, but we know that is available to us,” Broussard said.—–Contact Cory Boudreaux at [email protected]