There's no practice in the sports business that's more pointless, more misguided, than the way leagues, teams and colleges distort their attendance figures for games.
And I swear, it's not the week of Pitt's football opener that brought this to mind.
Well ... maybe a little.
OK, OK, it was the whole thing. Still, this is anything but some Pitt-isolated issue, even with all the civic fuss each fall over all those exposed yellow seats at Heinz Field. It covers pretty much everyone everywhere, actually, outside the Steelers and the NFL's Giants, the only franchises in professional sports who still do it right.
Here's how it works for the Steelers and Giants:
1. A person enters the stadium.
2. A person gets counted.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2.
What a concept. This is now referred to within the sports business industry as 'turnstile count,' presumably because, you known, the stile gets turned.
Here's how it works most everywhere else:
1. Add up all 'paid tickets in distribution,' including comps, freebies and even unused tickets within secondary sales markets such as StubHub.
2. Disregard the number of people actually in attendance.
3. Call it 'attendance.'
I call it lying. Because that's all it is. And honestly, there isn't even a visible, tangible gain from it. At least not for the leagues, teams and colleges doing it.
Public relations?
Nope. In my extensive experience of dealing with sports business people, the only people who've ever been sensitive to how attendance is portrayed are those tasked with selling the tickets, and those are never the people highest up the ladder and, thus, shouldn't be calling shots like this.
Besides, to swing back to Pitt, is it really positive PR for the university or Pat Narduzzi's football program when the school announces attendance of, oh, 40,000-plus, when a schoolchild could glance around Heinz Field and see there aren't more than 15,000 or 18,000 on hand?
Is it really positive PR for the university or Narduzzi's football program to have the subject then come up nonstop on social media, talk radio and the like?
Want to see how it's done right?
Earlier this week, local media fixture John Steigerwald, a frequent colleague on WPXI-TV, expressed doubt on Twitter that there were "not 40,000 people there" for the Steelers-Titans preseason game Saturday at Heinz Field. And the topic was, predictably, gaining some steam.
At least until Burt Lauten, the Steelers' longtime media relations man, disarmed it all in a hurry:
Actually, 48,039 tickets were scanned at the gates for entry into Heinz Field on Saturday for our game vs. the Titans. https://t.co/JgTaW1wf4z
— Burt Lauten (@SteelersPRBurt) August 27, 2018
And when Steigerwald came back with more skepticism, Lauten replied thusly:
We have no reason to hide our numbers. I have direct contact with how many fans came through the turnstiles. I’m sorry you don’t want to believe that but the numbers are factual. We have always announced accurate numbers and will continue to do so. Have a good night.
— Burt Lauten (@SteelersPRBurt) August 28, 2018
Thanks for coming. Drive home safely, everyone.
Lauten knows that the Steelers and Giants, forever owned by the Rooney and Mara families, respectively, have more than earned the collective faith of their fans. He also knows the Steelers aren't in a position to concoct such a number, since it comes from -- and is shared with -- Heinz Field security personnel all through the facility, before, during and after a game. That's done at all major sports facilities so that all concerned can adjust accordingly for crowd size.
The same applies locally to PNC Park, PPG Paints Arena, the Petersen Events Center, you name it. Everyone working at these places knows the real number of humans inside their facilities.
But again, only the Steelers and the NFL share those. Only the NFL does it right.
And here's where that's valuable, in addition to simply being honest: By giving out the real number, a team and league lets their fans know that, hey, there are seats available down here and, gee, it sure would be nice to have you come on down and join us! Even if the fan might already know tickets are available for a given game, the knowledge can heighten the sense of urgency toward season tickets or group sales in the future.
In the industry, to drop another term, they call this 'ticket tension.' They want the user to know that tickets are available even while selling as many as they can.
The Penguins had quietly run into some challenges on this front in recent years, at least before the two Stanley Cup championships. Because of their decade-long sellout streak, the perception had become overwhelming that no tickets are ever available for any games. And because of that, they had to find ways to push out promotions with language such as 'Tickets Always Available!' while also downplaying the sellout streak.
Ever notice it's been a couple years now since they've announced the streak to the crowd the way they did for years?
This is why.
Well, one simple solution would be for the Penguins and NHL to take the NFL route. Tell everyone the game is still a sellout -- which it absolutely is if all tickets are sold -- but also tell everyone that the crowd was, oh, 17,750 rather than the capacity 18,500. Inform them that not everyone showed. The streak stays intact, but the message goes out in an honest way.
Also, it would end once and for all the nauseating memes pumped out during each game when people spot empty seats in the lower bowl at PPG Paints Arena, since the real reason those seats are going unused is that those patrons also get access to super-ritzy clubs which can make for a better viewing experience. If a turnstile count is announced, that's a non-thing, as it should be.
Baseball, of course, is a separate beast because of the 81 home games, the weather, the rainouts and countless other factors that conspire against sellouts. And yet, all of the above still applies.
In the Pirates' case, specifically, the honesty alone might be worth it. This is a franchise that's burned every bridge of trust with its fan base, and this would be a small step toward reparation. This past spring, there were crowds that barely touched 2,000 in terms of actual humans, and I'm not guessing at that since I'd just ask one of the security people, and they'd know the exact figure. But the announcement would come up of 12,000 or 14,000, and the laughter could be heard all over.
Who gains from that?
The one or two people in charge of selling tickets?
If so, who cares?
At Three Rivers Stadium, the Pirates used to announce both figures: Tickets sold and turnstile count. No one complained and, really, no one much discussed which way attendance went as a result. But if you show people a scab, they'll want to pick at it to see what's underneath.
As for Pitt ... wow, where to start?
There will be about 25,000 or so in the seats, I'm guessing, for Pitt vs. Albany. And really, that sounds about right for Pitt vs. Albany, even if it's the opener. It'll be a glorified practice in advance of a demanding out-of-conference schedule, then ACC play, and it probably won't be any more entertaining than that.
But the crowd will be announced as more than 40,000, maybe more than 50,000. That's because, as athletic director Heather Lyke told reporters recently, more than 50,000 season tickets have been sold, primarily because that's what was required to get a ticket to the Penn State game. Pitt fans will badly outnumber Penn State fans, as they did two years ago at Heinz Field, but the fact remains it'll have taken that extraordinary event to sell all those season tickets.
So why not just announce both figures?
Tell the world that Pitt was proud to sell more season tickets than two years ago -- which they have, and it's commendable -- and tell them at the same time that the Albany game didn't fill half the place.
Here's why on the latter, and I'm not concerned with whose feelings get hurt here: Pitt football fans, more than any fans of any sport in this town, have become complacent about watching games on TV rather than supporting their team in person. That's not a shot. That's a fact. Ask almost anyone who bites back about Pitt attendance criticism -- and that's one curiously vocal group, considering what they're defending -- if they've gone to the most recent game, and their answer is always some long-winded excuse for why they didn't.
Change the narrative: Ask them why they didn't go.
If Lyke and Narduzzi really want to boost the culture around Pitt, they'll have to address that. And not by tiptoeing around it. They'll need to be honest with their fans that they need their support in person, that Pitt football needs their presence to burnish recruiting and not the other way around.
But if they're allowed to sit back on the sofa and convince themselves there were still 40,000 there without them -- or worse, that building a slightly smaller stadium even closer than 4 miles from campus will somehow solve everything ...
... well, then nothing changes.
A harsh dose of honesty will only help.