Clever.
Gies Memorial Stadium
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Speaking of Oregon and given that this is the GMS thread, they are one of only six Big Ten teams that would travel to Champaign and see a bigger stadium than their own ... pretty irrelevant stat and obviously it is the setup / atmosphere that matters more than capacity (and Oregon has a fantastic score for both!), but I still found it interesting. Current GMS is in orange, and some previous, pre-renovation GMS capacities are in blue with the last year at that capacity in parentheses.
Michigan - 107,600
Penn State - 106,304
Ohio State - 102,780
UCLA - 89,702
Nebraska - 85,458
USC - 77,500
Wisconsin - 76,030
Michigan State - 74,866
Washington - 72,132
Illinois (2001) - 70,904
Iowa - 69,250
Illinois (2006) - 69,249
Illinois (2010) - 62,870
Purdue - 61,441
Illinois - 60,670
Oregon - 60,129
Indiana - 53,524
Rutgers - 52,454
Minnesota - 50,805
Maryland - 46,185
Northwestern - 35,000
I know it's a ways down the road, but it would be fantastic to get back up to 65K or so, as getting to that number almost certainly means we have closed in the necessary spaces to (A) complete the stadium architecturally and (B) drastically improve our home field advantage.
People seem rather indoctrinated that we cannot justify a higher attendance, but I want to float two ideas:
1) It is not that horribly awful thing for games vs. Eastern Illinois on Thursday night to be 70% full because we added seats. We don't need to sell out EVERY single game to justify a bigger stadium. If we can draw 65k for Big Ten games and 58k for the cupcake and week night ones, that is a perfectly acceptable setup!
2) Consider the following (admittedly somewhat cherry-picked) stats. The following stats are for Saturday home games only to try to gauge our "normal" attendance patterns in recent years. Each is an average capacity for that category:
Since 2024 - 58,284
Since 2025 - 59,315
Since 2025 Excluding NU* - 59,981
2026 So Far - 60,183
* This might seem like excessive cherry-picking, but we all know this game ALWAYS has a significantly lower attendance than our average in any given season ... it is sort of doomed to artificially drag down our attendance stats, so excluding it legitimately does make sense for this conversation.
We are literally averaging 60k+ fans per game this year, and we have not played a single ranked team or a traditional "Blue Blood" like Michigan, OSU or USC! If you exclude the aforementioned Northwestern game, we have SOLD OUT 7 of our last 9 Saturday home games, and we have drawn 55k or more 9 games in a row.
If a renovation (most likely to the SEZ, given the setup of the stadium) would achieve all of the obvious goals like financial payoff (probably due to revenue-generating suites), improving the home field advantage, complementing the stadium's historic architecture, etc., then increasing capacity past the point where we are literally bursting at the seams is NOT a problem! I will never understand that as a hiccup.
Don't be shocked if this questionnaire>rehab of north end zone goes through, capacity is smaller. I don't think they'll do work on the NEZ and move the attend half a game students to the east main and keep it at the same capacity. They'll lose seating in the process, if it ever comes to fruition. Ready for the 2031 reseating timetable?
Maybe they'll bribe the students to stay chipping away at the upgrade profits?? Give away free tuition in the 4th Q?
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I'll play my role and hazard an even hotter take than that:
The era of seating capacity expansion in college football is over.
Curbelo Fanboy
BERTBALL IS LIFE
I like it. I low key love the BERT nickname as depicted in my avatar. In fact when we get the ball in a late game clock kill situation I refer to that as BERTBALL. Grind it out real slow, eat the clock & finish off the win.
agree
it’s all about revenue. if they can make more money from less people via special suites or areas , they will
it’s why new NFL stadiums are all smaller than 10-12 years ago
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
And the War and Peace worth of text I've spilled on this subject can basically be summed up as:
More revenue brought in by having more human beings at the game is real growth that will be durable across time and produce positive knock-on effects, whereas more revenue brought in by digging deeper into the pockets of your captive existing audience is fake growth, parasitic, deeply vulnerable to market changes and produces negative second-order effects.
The American sports industry in 2026 is EXCLUSIVELY, and increasingly rabidly and shamelessly, focused on the latter.
The students don't deserve the East Main. It's that simple. They will make that side look bad when they head out after halftime. Time to step up and show they can stick it out. It was embarrassing against USC and OSU last year with how many left after halftime.
Streaming is the competition. Look at theaters closing to see the effect.