Memphis football season-ticket sales on pace with 2022 but lag behind peak years
Memphis has sold about 11,000 football season tickets with about two weeks left before the start of the season, deputy athletic director Jeff Crane said Wednesday.
"We are on pace to reach the numbers we had last year," Crane said. "We're a little over 11,000 season tickets, so we'd like to be in that 12,500-13,000 range. We've seen typically over the last couple weeks before the season is when we sell a lot more then we do in other parts of the summer. People just start thinking college football, and so they start buying."
That number represents a drop from just a few years ago, when the Tigers sold more than 20,000 season tickets. The department had sold close to that amount for a few years, including when it sold more than 22,500 in 2017. Sales rose from 9,000 in 2014 as the team improved, but numbers have gone down since the 2019 season, when the Tigers won the AAC championship and went to the Cotton Bowl Classic. Updated year-by-year numbers were not immediately available.
Crane said Wednesday the department has seen an increase in single-game ticket sales and already had sold a few thousand for the opener on Sept. 2 against Bethune-Cookman at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. The Tigers will also play home games against Navy, Boise State, Tulane, South Florida and SMU in 2023.
"Some of it is just making sure football stays top of mind for people," Crane said. "All summer long we've been pushing out messages on social media, emails and billboards, all those things, but it's not until you get within a couple weeks of the season that people really start to perk up."
More: Memphis announces record football season-ticket sales
Memphis is coming off a 7-6 season under Ryan Silverfield, who's entering his fourth season as coach. The Tigers were among the top Group of Five teams in the nation when season ticket sales were peaking, including three straight trips to the AAC championship game from 2017-19.
The Tigers went 30-11 during that stretch and won the AAC in 2019 to qualify for the Cotton Bowl Classic as the nation's top G5 team. Memphis is 21-15 since that season, all under Silverfield.
Attendance has also not rebounded to the levels from before COVID-19. Last season's average attendance was 26,196, a decline of just under 16.3% from the previous season's average of 31,295.
Reach sports writer Jonah Dylan at jonah.dylan@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @thejonahdylan.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis season-ticket sales under Ryan Silverfield trail peak years
