Inside Allegiant Stadium’s Attendance Numbers For 2021: Thousands Of Empty Seats, No-Shows At Raiders Games
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
If you thought you saw lots of empty seats at Las Vegas Raiders home games at the NFL team’s stadium in 2021, your eyes were not deceiving you.
There were literally thousands of empty seats at Raiders home games at the domed stadium that has seating installed for 62,000 and standing room space for another 3,000.
LVSportsBiz.com requested information from the Las Vegas Stadium Authority regarding attendance at Allegiant Stadium for 2021, including the fourth quarter of last year when six of the Raiders’ nine regular season home games took place. (A preseason game in August, two regular season games vs. Baltimore and Miami in September, and a regular season game vs. the Chargers in January were not part of the 2021 4Q attendance numbers.)
Below are the stadium attendance numbers for October, November and December of 2021. LVSportsBiz.com took out the Raiders home games for the last quarter of last year to present here. Remember, fixed seating capacity is 62,000, so these numbers show there were people who had tickets who didn’t show up since the Raiders said home games were sold out:
Chicago Bears, Oct. 10 — 53,287
Philadelphia Eagles, Oct. 24 — 52,270
Kansas City Chiefs, Nov. 14 — 54,928
Cincinnati Bengals, Nov. 21 — 50,004
Washington Commander, Dec. 5 — 51,104
Denver Broncos, Dec. 26 — 50,164
Let’s take a deeper dive into the stadium numbers.
How many ticketed events were there at Allegiant Stadium in 2021?
There were nine Raiders games and six UNLV football games. That’s 15 events. Then, add four concerts and you have 19. And then layer seven other ticketed events and the total number of Raiders/UNLV football games, concerts and other ticketed events hits 26.
The nine Raiders home games in 2021 drew 468,858–or 52,095 per game.
The Raiders games’ total of 468,858 was less than half of the total of 1,016,859 people in the stadium in 2021. That 1 million+ includes private events of 36,416 people and other events of 5,455 people.
UNLV’s six football games drew attendance of 93,652 — or 15,608 per game.
Some other events in the fourth quarter of 2021 and their attendance at Allegiant Stadium:
^ Las Vegas Bowl, Dec. 30 — 25,254
^ Pac-12 championship, Dec. 3 — 45,856
^ Rolling Stones concert, Nov. 6 — 38,835
In 2021 4Q, the stadium had lots of private events like corporate gatherings and parties. The number of people at these gatherings ranged from as small as four on Dec. 12 to as big as 2,700 on Oct. 19.
Southern Nevada has invested $750 million in public money to help build the stadium. To pay off the debt on that $750 million, Southern Nevada will raise more than $1 billion in hotel room tax revenues over a 30-year repayment period.
There could be several factors behind the empty seats and no-shows at Raiders games — the Raiders’ COVID-19 vaccination requirement to attend home games, fans receiving comps from hotels but not showing up for games, and fans with tickets who couldn’t attend and were unable to unload their tickets.
The Sports Business Journal’s Ben Fischer, who did an excellent story on the topic of Raiders game no-shows, reported that the Raiders’ no-show rate was 14.3 percent at home games — a high percentage for NFL games.
But don’t feel too sorry for the Raiders. The team generated nearly $550 million in personal seat license revenues at its swanky stadium in Las Vegas.
And the Raiders have the most expensive average game ticket in the NFL at $153.47, according to Team Marketing Report. The Raiders bank that ticket revenue, whether the buyer of that ticket shows up for the home game or not at Allegiant Stadium.
PSA
