07-20-2021, 11:20 AM
(07-19-2021, 12:34 PM)Whatever Wrote: PBS has an official seating capacity of 65,500, so an average attendance of 60k is still a lot of empty seats. Also keep in mind that the club was buying large amounts of tickets during the Green-Dalton era to keep games on from being blacked out, so those attendance figures are heavily padded. For the sake of comparison, the Bengals were bottom 5 in attendance 3 times during the '11-15' and never higher than 24th in that span.
When you can't fill your stadium with a playoff team, you obviously have issues beyond just the product on the field. I can't fault them for trying to fix the fan engagement/experience issues while trying to fix the issues on the field.
NFL eased blackout rules in 2012 and then totally eliminated/suspended them after the 2014 season. The Bengals have had a lot of support when they are winning. Unfortunately, the bad taste from the 90s still hasn't been washed away by the exciting teams of the mid 2000s-2015.