After the novelty wears off, what impact will the reduced number of seats at California Memorial Stadium have on attendance? For popular games like USC, UCLA, Oregon, and The Ohio State University the attendance will be down. I suspect that fewer seats available will make it a harder ticket to come by and attendance will rise.

Any other thoughts?

Possibly higher ticket prices could hurt the attendance, but I like to think that if the performance on the field is at a top pac-12 level, then we will sell memorial out.

Regardless, it will look a lot nicer without more empty seats and the 65k or whatever should not be too difficult to fill. Those who don't attend the Nevada game will probably grab the cheaper tickets for the Southern Utah game.

oskiwanabe;841903023 said:

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After the novelty wears off, what impact will the reduced number of seats at California Memorial Stadium have on attendance? For popular games like USC, UCLA, Oregon, and The Ohio State University the attendance will be down. I suspect that fewer seats available will make it a harder ticket to come by and attendance will rise.

Any other thoughts?

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One could make several arguments about the effects of reduced capacity on possible attendance, dependent on how one views the likely success of the football program.

As long as the program is seen as a winning program, reduced capacity (62,717, officially) will probably mean that average attendance will hover between 55K-60K.

Winning a Pac-12 Championship will boost average attendance above 60K, and probably ensures that Cal Memorial will come close to selling out on a season ticket basis.

Earning a BCS bowl berth probably ensures a similar outcome to winning a conference championship.

Winning a Rose Bowl will probably ensure that the program sells out on a season ticket basis for 2-3 years following and possibly longer provided there are at least 8 wins per year.

Slide into mediocrity or worse, and attendance will drop off below 50K, and possibly 40K.

oskiwanabe;841903023 said:

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After the novelty wears off, what impact will the reduced number of seats at California Memorial Stadium have on attendance? For popular games like USC, UCLA, Oregon, and The Ohio State University the attendance will be down. I suspect that fewer seats available will make it a harder ticket to come by and attendance will rise.

Any other thoughts?

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Cal has had a long run of decent attendance records during JT's tenure.
IMO the reduced number of seats will adversely affect those records.
Cal was able to sell out (or almost sell out at 72,000) Memorial at the BG, the LA game, and the other important games (Oregon, Tenn, Nebraska) this partially made up for the other games which were not so well attended (Portland, Presby, Utah).

Now with the max coming down to 65,000(?) it will definitely hurt the average attendance. Which is why I have repeatedly called for seats to be added on the East Rim of Memorial.

You can say all you want about "scarcity" and its effect. But we are talking Cal football with Cal fans, not 49er football fans. IMO the average Cal fans will not be motivated by "scarcity" to pay more to see Cal play FB (at least until Cal gets into a BCS bowl, and maybe not even then). If prices get totally out of hand, I will then join the Tightwad Hill Crowd.

Is there plans to expand the seating at CMS one day?

Bear_Territory;841903091 said:

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Is there plans to expand the seating at CMS one day?

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I have asked the "new Gold Standard Team".
They have said "No".
They said that there is the possibility of adding a few VIP seats on the East Rim.
When I asked if the powers that be would ever consider expanding those few VIP seats to 3,000 to 8,000 [which BTW is clearly do-able since Cal occasionally added 10,000 bleacher seats there in the 1940's and 1950's] they said "No".

68great;841903118 said:

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I have asked the "new Gold Standard Team".
They have said "No".
They said that there is the possibility of adding a few VIP seats on the East Rim.
When I asked if the powers that be would ever consider expanding those few VIP seats to 3,000 to 8,000 [which BTW is clearly do-able since Cal occasionally added 10,000 bleacher seats there in the 1940's and 1950's] they said "No".

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That's only because there is no money to be had for that kind of project.

I guarantee you that if there was money available for such a project and CMS was selling out regularly, the idea would be looked at.

If Phase III ever gets built, the stadium will lose even more seats. I estimate the losses will be somewhere around 2400 seats based upon Figure 3-16 in the CMS West Subsequent EIR (January 2011; page 41). That will reduce CMS's capacity to a little over 60K.

Under those circumstances, it would be nice to add back some capacity on the East Rim.

In other words, never say never.