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What UW can do to fix the game day experience at Husky Stadium
Purple_Pills
Member, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 1,828
If anyone from the UW Athletic Department lurks these boreds, here is some free advice to improve the game day experience:
Things UW/AD can fix on their own
- Schedule better teams. There should be at least one home game annually with a big name program. And no more scheduling FCS teams.
- Lower season ticket prices. The game day experience gets worse, ticket demand is down, yet season ticket prices aren’t dropping. UW needs to reward their best customers and encourage more season ticket holders by reducing prices. A 20% reduction would be a good start, especially with next year’s home schedule.
- Add way more entry/reentry staff at Husky Stadium, plus better crowd control leading up to them on the outside
- Bring back re-entry
- If you are selling beer in stadium, add beer men selling in the stands. Way too many people are getting up during game play to buy beer and it’s annoying. Plus people are holding/drinking beers rather than clap and cheer. A beverage cup holder at each seat may be a way to encourage people to set down their drinks more often.
- Calm down on the advertisements. Stop flashing ads on that LED “ad stripe” which horseshoes the field during actual game play. Use it instead to display school colors, etc.
- Too much noise and distractions on Jumbotron. The silly Jumbotron games and DJ Supper Slam are just too much. I’d rather hear the band play “Neck.”
Things UW/AD can fix with assistance from others
- Go back to as many 12:30 pm kickoffs as possible. It’s better for fans, better for traffic.
- Play no more than one night game at home each season
- No more Friday home games, except maybe the Apple Cup on Black Friday.
- TV timeouts are too frequent and too long in college football. Work with conference and TV partners and fix. NFL games are a better experience due to this.
- PAC-12 refs suck, and the conference needs to fix that. The replay reviews are too long, but I attribute that to the P12 doing a shit job of managing, cultivating, and properly equipping conference officials.
- More frequent light rail trains during games. Bring back bus shuttles to Federal Way that bypass the Rainier Valley snail rail portion of ST light rail.
Things UW/AD have no control over
- Horrible I-5 traffic in Seattle and on the way to Seattle. For example the perpetual Tacoma traffic shitshow has had a major negative impact on fans from the South Sound and Southwest Washington. Earlier kickoff times is one way to improve this.
- Outdoor mask & vax mandates are stupid, but it’s the fascist local health Nazis, not UW, who have control over these.
Please add to this list!
Things UW/AD can fix on their own
- Schedule better teams. There should be at least one home game annually with a big name program. And no more scheduling FCS teams.
- Lower season ticket prices. The game day experience gets worse, ticket demand is down, yet season ticket prices aren’t dropping. UW needs to reward their best customers and encourage more season ticket holders by reducing prices. A 20% reduction would be a good start, especially with next year’s home schedule.
- Add way more entry/reentry staff at Husky Stadium, plus better crowd control leading up to them on the outside
- Bring back re-entry
- If you are selling beer in stadium, add beer men selling in the stands. Way too many people are getting up during game play to buy beer and it’s annoying. Plus people are holding/drinking beers rather than clap and cheer. A beverage cup holder at each seat may be a way to encourage people to set down their drinks more often.
- Calm down on the advertisements. Stop flashing ads on that LED “ad stripe” which horseshoes the field during actual game play. Use it instead to display school colors, etc.
- Too much noise and distractions on Jumbotron. The silly Jumbotron games and DJ Supper Slam are just too much. I’d rather hear the band play “Neck.”
Things UW/AD can fix with assistance from others
- Go back to as many 12:30 pm kickoffs as possible. It’s better for fans, better for traffic.
- Play no more than one night game at home each season
- No more Friday home games, except maybe the Apple Cup on Black Friday.
- TV timeouts are too frequent and too long in college football. Work with conference and TV partners and fix. NFL games are a better experience due to this.
- PAC-12 refs suck, and the conference needs to fix that. The replay reviews are too long, but I attribute that to the P12 doing a shit job of managing, cultivating, and properly equipping conference officials.
- More frequent light rail trains during games. Bring back bus shuttles to Federal Way that bypass the Rainier Valley snail rail portion of ST light rail.
Things UW/AD have no control over
- Horrible I-5 traffic in Seattle and on the way to Seattle. For example the perpetual Tacoma traffic shitshow has had a major negative impact on fans from the South Sound and Southwest Washington. Earlier kickoff times is one way to improve this.
- Outdoor mask & vax mandates are stupid, but it’s the fascist local health Nazis, not UW, who have control over these.
Please add to this list!
Comments
Give the band room to breathe and play music. The corny "blue thunder" thing at Seahawks game gets more of a chance to play than the UW band does.
Cut the PA commenting down by 90%.
I would also move the students back to midfield.
That’s it.
Also, make the shuttles free or $5 cash. Don’t make 73 year olds figure out how to buy shuttle tickets in advance and use their smart phone for shit. Including entry and concessions.
That solves over 2/3 of the problems
There are many other things that could improve... but that is the only one that truly matters.
If they do sellout, they should be willing to take a haircut to demand set kickoff times and game times that best accommodate home fans. If every P12 team only does one 7pm kickoff, that is still 12 weeks of 7pm games the conference can offer. Plus some P12 teams, such as the Arizona schools may want to voluntarily play more night games.
With Seattle traffic and weather, it is time to pull the plug on most night games at Husky Stadium.
Fucking win.
Your list of demands is a bit comical at this point...
No disrespect intended, but it is a bit funny. Without wins none of the other 'fan experience' extras matter.
The stadium does not have a college gameday feel. Too sterile and corporate. Turn off the shitty top-40 music between possessions and let the band play and that solves half of it, IMO.
Must drop cost of season tickets. You can go onto 2ndary market and get same better tickets for a quarter of the cost.
They did get traction with 50% off concessions up to hour b4 kick. Make it up to 30 minutes and add merchandise into equation.
They need to streamline the process for getting into the stadium ... the vax situation makes the situation ugly ... but ultimately they don't have enough entrances or enough ticket scanners to get people through. Add to it the number of technologically unsavvy people and it's a bottleneck. I can get into Kraken games in less than 2 minutes ... it took me well over 10 minutes last night.
Light rail and everything is great except it's ugly getting out of the full trains with everybody cattled in he same direction (another huge bottleneck) ... simply put the infrastructure doesn't really support the volume. Then you add to it the crush of people getting on after a game and it's just a disaster ... and that doesn't factor in the light rail breaking down after the game
Besides the in-game presentation, there needs to be a return to embracing tailgating ... the beauty of college football is that you get to spend the entire day with your friends and family. Make tailgating easier ... not more difficult or more expensive.
Yes, football is the golden goose ... but that doesn't mean we have to bleed every single dollar out of every single fan. Have some give and take.