Not seeing where we can get several thousand more seats in. Maybe if the NEZ is rebuilt, but I doubt we'll net thousands of new seats from that.
Check out Nebraska or Penn State. Both of those probably have 50k in just the endzones, if not more. Seats are easy, you can always add more seats. Adding seats that provide a good view of the game and in a way that doesn't make the stadium look ridiculous is the tough part. But both Penn State and Nebraska fail by that measure and no one seems to care.
I'm just not convinced we are that far off from regular sell outs. Like I get that it hasn't happened in awhile but we also have been too relevant for quite a while. If we win on a regular basis, achieve the level of success the new administration is pushing for we won't have any problems drawing 60k on a regular basis.
It's not a question of how many tickets we can possibly get into people's hands.
You add more seats when the scarcity of tickets is turning away potential new fans who have money to spend from the opportunity to interact with your product at all.
The question isn't "could we potentially put another butt in a seat for our best home games with aggressive marketing?" The question is "can someone who wants to see an Illinois football game get a ticket without paying a ridiculous markup on the secondary market?"
The answer to that real question is yes and will be yes for the forseeable future, whether we're at 60k, 59k, 70k, 54k, regardless. And that's a good thing! We are the people who benefit from that! Illinois Football is an affordable good time!
And if it ever comes to the point where demand is so high that prices skyrocket and price people out, more seats will pay for themselves and as I said they are pretty easy to add.
In the meantime, getting bent out of shape about Iowa or Wisconsin or whoever having higher seating capacities and whatnot, who the heck cares? No one judges a home field advantage based on the number of seats in the place. Michigan has damn near double the seats that Virginia Tech does. It's no contest as to which is the more intimidating, exciting venue.