Frustrated Giants fans made their voices heard by doing less cheering at MetLife Stadium.
Attendance for the Giants’ eight home games was down 3 percent in 2019, according to a Sports Business Daily report released Friday. Overall NFL attendance slipped to 66,648 per game, which is the lowest since 2004.
With the largest seating capacity in the NFL (82,500), the Giants averaged 74,665 per game, down from 76,941 in 2018. The Giants have missed the playoffs in seven of the last eight seasons and have the fewest wins (12) in the NFL over the last three seasons combined.
The Chiefs, Dolphins, Raiders, Bengals, Chargers and Jaguars were the only teams with a greater than 3 percent attendance drop-off, per SBJ. The Raiders played their final season in Oakland before moving to Las Vegas, and the other teams (besides the outlier Chiefs) joined the Giants in the bottom-seven teams in the NFL record-wise.
Jets attendance improved by 0.7 percent, from 77,982 to 78,523. Only the Cowboys, in their massive stadium with standing room-only space, drew a larger average crowd than the Jets.
These Giants fans were disgruntled during the team’s loss to the Eagles in the season finale, but many Big Blue fans just didn’t bother to go to the games this season.Charles WenzelbergThe Giants raised ticket prices in 2017 — a first on most tickets since the stadium opened in 2010 — but not since.
“It’s been too many years since we’ve had a winning team on the field,” Giants co-owner John Mara said this week, after firing coach Pat Shurmur. “Nobody feels that more than Steve [Tisch] and myself.
“It’s not easy to sit in your stadium and watch fans from the other team, and that’s happened too often this year. We feel it as much if not more so than the fans do, and we’re committed to try and get this thing right.”
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