April 2, 2014
Over on Huffington Post we recently published an article about this year's Final Four at AT&T Stadium in Dallas and how attendance will likely break records with such a huge venue and plenty of Final Four tickets to go around. Here's a little portion of the article:
They say everything in Texas is bigger, and that's certainly the case this year for the final four, which will be played in AT&T Stadium. Opened in 2009, the stadium can hold 105,000 with standing room, and the Cowboys routinely pack in over 100,000 for their home games. Formerly knows as Cowboys Stadium, it's the world's largest domed structure and the world's largest column-free interior. It also has the fourth largest high-definition video screen on the planet. When it hosts the final four this weekend, AT&T stadium will add another superlative to it's stable: the largest crowd ever to attend a NCAA tournament game college basketball game. The previous record was the 75,421 people that saw the 2011 Final Four semifinal games at Houston's Reliant Stadium. Depending on how much standing room they decide to open up, this year's Final Four may also break the all-time college basketball attendance record of 78,129. While Jerry Jones is undoubtedly proud of the latest achievement for the stadium many call Jerry World, it's also good news for college basketball fans. As a result of the prodigious capacity, Final Four tickets are cheapest than any other year in recent history....
It's estimated that visitors to the 2014 Final Four in Dallas will spend $275 million. That figure is slightly more than the 2010 NBA All-Star Game that was also hosted at the same venue, but only half of what fans spent for the SuperBowl the following year. In a 1998 article in the San Antonio Business Journal it was estimated that the NCAA Final Four that year would generate $31 million in direct economic impact on the city. Astoundingly, that's only 11 percent of the dollar figure projected for this year, even though attendance in 1998 was 52 percent of what's expected this year.
For more on this year's Final Four and the projected attendance, check out the full article on Huffington Post. Also, below is a breakdown of NCAA Final Four attendance over the years:
