Gies Memorial Stadium

Free Busey Bank FamILLy Movie Night Set for Saturday, Aug. 8

"This year's Busey Movie Night is scheduled for the evening of Saturday, Aug. 8 and will feature the public debut of college football's largest videoboard."

Fly Illini Fly! said:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2075658732797657394

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Any updates on the lights? Are the old light towers behind used again or are there new ones? The old light towers looked to be out of date. Is there a new design for them?

Fighter of the Nightman said:

I get that we need to focus on other things, I just wish they would articulate a vision. If Josh said the goal is the renovation floated in 2016 but we can’t make any progress with the SEZ until $X million dollars are secured … fine! But IF there isn’t some long term vision for the SEZ, then some of this $100 million should go toward relatively inexpensive fixes like filling in the stands so they go closer to the field.

In other words, the “do nothing to the Horseshoe until we can REALLY renovate it” only makes sense if there is some long term plan to renovate it. And when I hear the DIA talk about it, they seem 110% fine with the SEZ as is, which would be really disappointing if true.

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Have you been to Memorial Stadium in the past 2 years? There has been quite a bit of renovation.

With less than 60,000 of average attendance - spending over $100mm to upgrade seated (and one side of Memorial Stadium has been upgraded in the past 20 years) has a negative return on investment. You need to donors to have a plan and we don't have the donors. Not yet anyway.

Josh is doing EXACTLY what any intelligent CEO would do:

(1) Improving the product. 3 bowl games in 4 years. This year's schedule is challenge however.
(2) Improve the game attendance experience. Terrific job there.
(3) As the improvement to concessions, egress, bathrooms, wifi etc continue, use Memorial for more revenue generating events.
(4) Keep Memorial Stadium as full as possible to preserve premium pricing if we don't make it to a bowl game.

Digging up a field that was just installed and spending $100mm to lower the playing surface to improve sight - lines would be the next most obvious step. But that's not going to happen until we sell out season tickets for consecutive years. Season tickets for 2026 are still available.

Bucktown said:

I think we have the least expensive seats in the Big Ten.

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KBLEE said:

Yes - but everyone seem to want the cheapest of the least expensive seats.

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It think this is the disconnect between the DIA and fans. The DIA sees we have the cheapest seats and feels entitled to raise prices.

The problem is it’s hard to raise prices when you don’t have a demand constraint (sellouts).

The price a Purdue fan pays for a ticket has no influence over what an Illinois fan is willing to pay for a ticket. It just doesn’t work that way.

Fighter of the Nightman said:

Random, non-scoreboard related question. I have always been really interested in how steep or gradual the slope of a stadium is, and my preference is DEFINITELY for the former, as it helps create a much better gameday environment! With that said, would anyone who has traveled to many Big Ten stadiums have a comment on where GMS ranks among our peers as far as steep vs. gradual slopes?

On the obvious "bad" end of the spectrum is the Big House, which has such a gradual slope that it looks like it was done on purpose to be a joke, and this notoriously makes the crowd MUCH quieter than you would expect for 110,000 people...

On the other end of the spectrum, I have always heard Clemson's stands are super steep (especially the upper deck!), and this no doubt plays a role in its reputation as a really tough place to play.

Any ideas / opinions as to where Memorial Stadium and other Big Ten stadiums would fall on that spectrum? I know every area of the stadium might be a bit different (e.g., East Balcony seems the steepest, East Main seems more gradual, the Horseshoe seems even more gradual yet, etc.), but I was just looking for an overall assessment. I have only been to Kinnick and Camp Randall out of the other Big Ten stadiums. Kinnick seems a little steeper than GMS, but not by that much. Camp Randall felt really gradual, and my Badger friend has said it suffers from a diluted version of Michigan's problem, in that it never got as loud as you feel it should have because it sucks at trapping noise.

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After going to a Texas A&M game this past year, I can say that stadium feels like one of the steepest (and loudest) I can remember.

Saturdaze said:

It think this is the disconnect between the DIA and fans. The DIA sees we have the cheapest seats and feels entitled to raise prices.

The problem is it’s hard to raise prices when you don’t have a demand constraint (sellouts).

The price a Purdue fan pays for a ticket has no influence over what an Illinois fan is willing to pay for a ticket. It just doesn’t work that way.

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I think Illinois has the lowest population of any Big Ten school within an hour drive of campus. It is in the middle of the pack if you increase the drive to 3 hours. For Illinois to fill the stadium it needs to get the 3 hour drive people. The game day atmosphere is what will attract those longer distance drivers vs them just sitting at home and watching a game on TV. It is the social experience that drives someone to want to attend in person. Once you are driving 3 hours the price of the ticket is a smaller percentage of the total amount spent.

It is a difficult task, but the DIA is doing the right thing: continue to improve the game day experience, raise ticket prices, get more revenue.

For locals (not necessarily students) the games are literally the only game in town, so there isn't much competition for their entertainment dollar--especially when you think about it in relationship to say UCLA or Rutgers which are in the largest population centers and can't come close to what Illinois is doing.

Bucktown said:

I think Illinois has the lowest population of any Big Ten school within an hour drive of campus. It is in the middle of the pack if you increase the drive to 3 hours. For Illinois to fill the stadium it needs to get the 3 hour drive people. The game day atmosphere is what will attract those longer distance drivers vs them just sitting at home and watching a game on TV. It is the social experience that drives someone to want to attend in person. Once you are driving 3 hours the price of the ticket is a smaller percentage of the total amount spent.

It is a difficult task, but the DIA is doing the right thing: continue to improve the game day experience, raise ticket prices, get more revenue.

For locals (not necessarily students) the games are literally the only game in town, so there isn't much competition for their entertainment dollar--especially when you think about it in relationship to say UCLA or Rutgers which are in the largest population centers and can't come close to what Illinois is doing.

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Bowl games every year is the key. Make people plan their Xmas vacations around following the team to a game. That builds loyalty that spills over into attending home games.

Fly Illini Fly! said:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2075658732797657394

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It's a classic, gorgeous stadium, which we're blessed to call home.

Bucktown said:

I think Illinois has the lowest population of any Big Ten school within an hour drive of campus. It is in the middle of the pack if you increase the drive to 3 hours. For Illinois to fill the stadium it needs to get the 3 hour drive people. The game day atmosphere is what will attract those longer distance drivers vs them just sitting at home and watching a game on TV. It is the social experience that drives someone to want to attend in person. Once you are driving 3 hours the price of the ticket is a smaller percentage of the total amount spent.

It is a difficult task, but the DIA is doing the right thing: continue to improve the game day experience, raise ticket prices, get more revenue.

For locals (not necessarily students) the games are literally the only game in town, so there isn't much competition for their entertainment dollar--especially when you think about it in relationship to say UCLA or Rutgers which are in the largest population centers and can't come close to what Illinois is doing.

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Those are all good points, but despite the many reasons why, the point remains simple.

There are more tickets available than people willing to buy them when the season ticket price is $200+

When the price is less than $200 there are more people than tickets.

They won’t be able to meaningfully raise ticket prices until they consistently have sellouts.

Season ticket holders for even the best teams in the world don’t go to every game. They buy season tickets because they want to go to multiple games and generally feel comfortable selling the extra tickets on the resale market for profit or to break even.

Since, the Illini very rarely sell out the only people buying season tickets are those who plan to go to every game, or are comfortable eating the cost of the games they don’t want to go to.

Until they consistently sell out every game they are going to have these same challenges every year.

They’re struggling to capture the 3-hour drive crowd because the season tickets have no resale value. They won’t have resale value until they consistently sellout. They won’t consistently sellout until they lower prices.

It’s a shame they didn’t lower prices mid-season 2022 and figure out how to make the fans who paid a higher price for early purchased tickets.

Saturdaze said:

Those are all good points, but despite the many reasons why, the point remains simple.

There are more tickets available than people willing to buy them when the season ticket price is $200+

When the price is less than $200 there are more people than tickets.

They won’t be able to meaningfully raise ticket prices until they consistently have sellouts.

Season ticket holders for even the best teams in the world don’t go to every game. They buy season tickets because they want to go to multiple games and generally feel comfortable selling the extra tickets on the resale market for profit or to break even.

Since, the Illini very rarely sell out the only people buying season tickets are those who plan to go to every game, or are comfortable eating the cost of the games they don’t want to go to.

Until they consistently sell out every game they are going to have these same challenges every year.

They’re struggling to capture the 3-hour drive crowd because the season tickets have no resale value. They won’t have resale value until they consistently sellout. They won’t consistently sellout until they lower prices.

It’s a shame they didn’t lower prices mid-season 2022 and figure out how to make the fans who paid a higher price for early purchased tickets.

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Good points, but the bolded portion isn’t quite so black and white, to me anyway. When I buy season tickets, I don’t plan to “break even” on any I resell and I’ve never had to “eat the cost”. They can be readily sold for an amount below the single game price, or at worst slightly below my prorated cost. Resale value, whether the game is sold out or not, is somewhere between the underlined extremes, so it’s a bad deal really.

Fighter of the Nightman said:

Thanks for posting, Dan, it looks awesome! And on the note of my "anything is better than nothing" attitude when it comes to the Horseshoe, look at this screenshot from that video:

View attachment 50839

The new scoreboard is literally twice or even three times as tall as the Horseshoe stands when standing at field level, and this other photo below makes the difference seem even more extreme:

If there is no appetite for an actual SEZ renovation, let's just find S-O-M-E-T-H-I-N-G to put on either side of the new scoreboard to provide similar height on either side! It will help to trap noise and make that end of the stadium look a lot less incomplete. This goes back to my totally over-emphasized point that something is better than nothing, but if there is no plan for the SEZ any time in the foreseeable future, why would we not take this...

Last Year (i.e., Before the new scoreboard)

... and turn it into this?

New Version (i.e., New scoreboard and banners on either side to add height)
View attachment 50842

While acknowledging we would definitely be too cheap to make the wall brick (that was just Chat GPT's preference!), this would be SO easy, would cost almost nothing, would go a LONG way toward trapping more crowd noise / improving our homefield advantage and would give the stadium a finished look it's been begging for on the south end for a century now.

This would cement the current SEZ "skeleton" as permanent, which saves the DIA a lot of money down the line. Then you roughly do these "mini" renovations in order as the (now WAY lower amount of) money becomes available, with each step being both less of an immediate priority, more expensive and more reliant on future demand.

1) Touch up the existing seats as necessary and, in the process, reconfigure the seats to come down to field level and remove the ugly gap in front of the first row.
2) Renovate the concourse area to at least get up to Twenty-First Century standards, lol.
3) Renovate the exterior to be less of an eyesore.
4) If the appetite develops, build some sort of impressive concourse into the exterior (e.g., an "Illini Hall of Fame").
5) If and when the demand is there, take down the inexpensive walls / banners and build some luxury, revenue-generating suites.
6) Finally, if we are bursting at the seems as far as capacity, build a second deck on top of the luxury suites to finally tie together the SEZ look with the west and east sides, creating a true "Horseshoe" ala Ohio State.

EDIT: I noticed that Chat GPT changed the color of the photo I uploaded, but I just noticed that it also changed the clouds ... lol, it is so weird sometimes.

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@Fighter of the Nightman, I also support the idea of having banners on the side of the new scoreboard. While the scoreboard was still in the NEZ, it had historical images and sponsorship logos; I suspect that the SEZ banners might be similar.

Ranking the Big 10 stadiums

Chief96 said:

Ranking the Big 10 stadiums

GFed on Instagram: "Ive Been To Every B1G Stadium. This Is My Rank 18-1"

4,949 likes, 64 comments - gfedgocrazy on July 11, 2026: "Ive Been To Every B1G Stadium. This Is My Rank 18-1".

www.instagram.com

GFed on Instagram: "Ive Been To Every B1G Stadium. These Are The Top 10"

5,621 likes, 162 comments - gfedgocrazy on July 11, 2026: "Ive Been To Every B1G Stadium. These Are The Top 10".

www.instagram.com

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Chief96 said:

Ranking the Big 10 stadiums

GFed on Instagram: "Ive Been To Every B1G Stadium. This Is My Rank 18-1"

4,949 likes, 64 comments - gfedgocrazy on July 11, 2026: "Ive Been To Every B1G Stadium. This Is My Rank 18-1".

www.instagram.com

GFed on Instagram: "Ive Been To Every B1G Stadium. These Are The Top 10"

5,621 likes, 162 comments - gfedgocrazy on July 11, 2026: "Ive Been To Every B1G Stadium. These Are The Top 10".

www.instagram.com

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Thanks for that. Last weekend @kmunt09 posted a YouTube video from this guy ranking all 18 stadiums:


I'm really into stadium history. IMO he's too harsh on Rutgers. The stadium was originally a horseshoe built into a hillside:





It's a great place to see a game today, a small stadium that's mostly a bowl having great sightlines (the upper decks are fairly small), although the modernization over the decades has rendered it kinda generic apart from that cool red-roofed arcade in the NEZ. Also, I've always liked Ross-Ade, which he ranks near the bottom, even when it was a nearly-open horseshoe. Also a great place to see a game.

He's dead right about Maryland, though: rock bottom. The monster north upper deck they grafted onto the stadium in the '90s is disproportionate and hideous, and fans rarely fill even the lower horseshoe these days.

Bucktown said:

I think Illinois has the lowest population of any Big Ten school within an hour drive of campus. It is in the middle of the pack if you increase the drive to 3 hours. For Illinois to fill the stadium it needs to get the 3 hour drive people...

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This conversation got me really curious ... I am not AT ALL commenting on ticket prices here, merely looking at this from the perspective of how many fans a Big Ten program could theoretically get to attend games based on its "population footprint." I won't torture folks with my thoughts upfront, and I will cut straight to the chase and give the lists that Chat GPT came up with (so take it for what it is worth!). All the population numbers are in thousands.

Estimated Population Within a 1-Hour Drive of Campus
1. Rutgers: 26,500
2. USC: 16,000
2. UCLA: 16,000
4. Maryland: 13,000
5. Northwestern: 10,500
6. Michigan: 7,000
7. Indiana: 6,000
8. Washington: 5,200
9. Purdue: 5,000
10. Minnesota: 4,700
11. Michigan State: 4,500
12. Ohio State: 4,200
13. Illinois: 3,000
14. Wisconsin: 2,700
15. Penn State: 2,500
16. Iowa: 2,100
17. Nebraska: 1,200
18. Oregon: 1,100

Estimated Population Within a 3-Hour Drive of Campus
1. Rutgers: 47,500
2. Maryland: 34,000
3. Northwestern: 20,500
4. USC: 19,000
4. UCLA: 19,000
6. Michigan: 16,000
7. Purdue: 15,000
8. Indiana: 14,000
9. Ohio State: 13,000
10. Penn State: 12,000
11. Illinois: 11,000
12. Washington: 6,500
12. Michigan State: 6,500
14. Wisconsin: 6,000
14. Minnesota: 6,000
16. Iowa: 5,500
17. Oregon: 3,500
18. Nebraska: 2,500

So the TL;DR is that you are definitely on to something, as Illinois had the fifth biggest increase from the 1-hour list to the 3-hour list (8 million), and we had the second biggest percent increase (nearly 267%, behind only Penn State at 380%). So, to fill the stadium, we either need "exceptional" local loyalty like Nebraska and Iowa or we need our 3-hour drive fans to show up. However, I would point out the following with these lists.

1. While I think the 1-hour radius is really useful, I would question the cutoffs for fans beyond that. Personally, I am not sure a 2-hour vs. 3-hour drive makes a difference to me, and I would definitely question whether a 3-hour vs. 4-hour drive is a deal breaker. I will admit that we definitely would always stay overnight so we can enjoy however many drinks we want, not have to worry about a drive, etc., but my point is that maybe some school on that list would have a huge increase if you extended it to a 4-hour drive, and all of a sudden it's apparent that they have a huge population to draw from.

2. Population only says so much. Who cares that Northwestern has 10.5 million folks within a 1-hour drive? Not only would a significant chunk of those fans be in either Wisconsin or Indiana (with zero reason to adopt NU as a home team if they weren't alumni), but poll after poll indicates that NU's proximity to Chicago MSA people means INCREDIBLY little in regard to the ability to draw fans, as there are for more people here whose favorite teams are Illinois, Notre Dame and other Big Ten schools like Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, etc. They would need legions of people who don't currently care about college football to not only start caring all of a sudden but to also select an elite private university as their adopted home team rather than Illinois or Notre Dame.

3. On that note, it's super important to consider how close a school's radius is to overlapping with a radius where a different team dominates. What percent of Maryland's radius includes Northern Virginians technically within an hour of College Park? Minneapolis is under an hour from the Wisconsin border, and every stat I have seen indicates the Badgers protect their borders VERY well when it comes to fan support. How far can Purdue realistically extend within its radius before it encounters Illini opposition in the west, Notre Dame opposition in the north, Indiana opposition to its south, etc.?

All in all, I think Illinois sits in a far less advantageous position than we would think, with our only two "systemic" roadblocks to big crowds being a history of futility (which is being remedied!) and reliance on fans 2-3+ hours away to truly ever have constant sellouts of a bigger stadium (and that will follow as we continue to be good!). When you consider the 3 million people we DO have within a 1-hour radius, they thankfully all lie within what would be very solid Illini territory when it comes to college sports. I see no reason other than learned fan behavior (which comes with winning) that we couldn't outdraw Iowa every single Saturday if current trends continue. We have a bigger student body, a bigger local MSA population, a bigger population within a 1-hour radius, a bigger population within a 3-hour radius, etc. The ONLY thing holding us back is generations of Illini fans (and potential Illini fans) grew up learning that "we suck" and determining it wasn't worth having your entire fall and precious free time revolve around Illini football, whereas Iowa fans have been learning the opposite lesson for years and years. That takes time to fix, but just look at the progress in a few short years! We were literally lucky to sell 40k tickets Bret's first year, and now we are averaging like 56k per game and selling out multiple games per season.

Fighter of the Nightman said:

This conversation got me really curious ... I am not AT ALL commenting on ticket prices here, merely looking at this from the perspective of how many fans a Big Ten program could theoretically get to attend games based on its "population footprint." I won't torture folks with my thoughts upfront, and I will cut straight to the chase and give the lists that Chat GPT came up with (so take it for what it is worth!). All the population numbers are in thousands.

Estimated Population Within a 1-Hour Drive of Campus
1. Rutgers: 26,500
2. USC: 16,000
2. UCLA: 16,000
4. Maryland: 13,000
5. Northwestern: 10,500
6. Michigan: 7,000
7. Indiana: 6,000
8. Washington: 5,200
9. Purdue: 5,000
10. Minnesota: 4,700
11. Michigan State: 4,500
12. Ohio State: 4,200
13. Illinois: 3,000
14. Wisconsin: 2,700
15. Penn State: 2,500
16. Iowa: 2,100
17. Nebraska: 1,200
18. Oregon: 1,100

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Something is off. Dane County, WI has more people than Champaign, Vermillion and McLean combined.

And where are 3 million people within 1 hr? Corn plants, absolutely. People?

fuddrules said:

Something is off. Dane County, WI has more people than Champaign, Vermillion and McLean combined.

And where are 3 million people within 1 hr? Corn plants, absolutely. People?

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Yeah, those numbers don't seem accurate. This population calculator puts the population within a one hour drive of Champaign at 850,000:


Madison, Wisconsin at 2 million:

Lol, I guess that’s what I get for trusting AI without verifying! I’ll use that tool and do a follow-up.

Bucktown said:

I think Illinois has the lowest population of any Big Ten school within an hour drive of campus. It is in the middle of the pack if you increase the drive to 3 hours. For Illinois to fill the stadium it needs to get the 3 hour drive people. The game day atmosphere is what will attract those longer distance drivers vs them just sitting at home and watching a game on TV. It is the social experience that drives someone to want to attend in person. Once you are driving 3 hours the price of the ticket is a smaller percentage of the total amount spent.

It is a difficult task, but the DIA is doing the right thing: continue to improve the game day experience, raise ticket prices, get more revenue.

For locals (not necessarily students) the games are literally the only game in town, so there isn't much competition for their entertainment dollar--especially when you think about it in relationship to say UCLA or Rutgers which are in the largest population centers and can't come close to what Illinois is doing.

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We rank 14th and Nebraska and Penn State rank below us. UCLA ranks #2 and USC #3 So there is no correlation between Alumni distance from football venue and attendance.

Saturdaze said:

Those are all good points, but despite the many reasons why, the point remains simple.

There are more tickets available than people willing to buy them when the season ticket price is $200+

When the price is less than $200 there are more people than tickets.

They won’t be able to meaningfully raise ticket prices until they consistently have sellouts.

Season ticket holders for even the best teams in the world don’t go to every game. They buy season tickets because they want to go to multiple games and generally feel comfortable selling the extra tickets on the resale market for profit or to break even.

Since, the Illini very rarely sell out the only people buying season tickets are those who plan to go to every game, or are comfortable eating the cost of the games they don’t want to go to.

Until they consistently sell out every game they are going to have these same challenges every year.

They’re struggling to capture the 3-hour drive crowd because the season tickets have no resale value. They won’t have resale value until they consistently sellout. They won’t consistently sellout until they lower prices.

It’s a shame they didn’t lower prices mid-season 2022 and figure out how to make the fans who paid a higher price for early purchased tickets.

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They sold out season tickets last year. For the last 2 years the few extra tickets I sometimes have for games have sold above face value for all Big Ten games. Historically you are correct and I just used the extra room instead of selling an extra ticket for nothing.

I also think the vast majority of the season ticket holders plan on going to most games. At least I do and so do the other season ticket holders I know, other than a few who no longer live in Illinois.