A friend of mine and I were talking about Favre and he mentioned that the people in Green Bay are so fanatical about their team that they’ve sold out their home games for like 20 years. Is that true?
That got me thinking, what is the home sellout record for all 4 major sports? Obviously while the records will be in # of games, the discrepancy between the number of games played in each sports season factors in. Even still, I’d like to see those numbers, if possible
And speaking of home games, I’m sure this has happened before: An NFL team just happens to reach the Super Bowl when their city was picked to host it. What is the home team’s win-loss record for such games?
The closest was when the L.A. Rams played the Steelers in the 1980 Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The Rams didn’t play their home games there but it was in the same metro area.
Redskins use a big loophole. Club seats can go unsold and still count as a sellout for TV purposes and they do not sell all their club seats. You can see the empties on TV for some games.
For college FB Nebraska had a very long streak but it’s over now.
Even the most loyal Packers fans got disillusioned at the end of the Forrest Gregg and Lindy Infante eras. The Packers website used to have a searchable history of game results with attendence figures I was going to check out and link too but it seems to have disappeared or was unlinked from their current site.
Only 20,000 people showed up for the “Snow Bowl” with Tampa Bay in 1985. I’m sure the game was sold out officially, but not many people could get to the stadium.
Last month the Boston Red Sox had their 600th consecutive sellout, a record in MLB. I don’t know if it’s been broken since, though. Maybe someone from Red Sox Nation will show up with the answer.
The Minnesota Wild have officially sold out every home game they’ve ever played, including postseason and preseason, giving a streak of 409 games. The NHL record was set by the Avalanche at 487, which doesn’t include preseason. (Omitting preseason puts the Wild at 382).
According to wild.nhl.com, the longest streaks ever were (through March, so not adding on to the Red Sox streak):
814 – Portland Trailblazers (NBA) 1977-95
662 – Boston Celtics (NBA) 1980-95
610 – Chicago Bulls (NBA) 1987-00
550 – Boston Red Sox (MLB) 2003-current
487 – Colorado Avalanche (NHL) 1995-06
348 – Washington Redskins (NFL) 1966-current
Up until Lambeau Field was renovated a few years ago, the stadium was 100% season tickets, and has been since it was built in the 1950s (it was originally called City Stadium). The season tickets have been sold out since 1960, and the waiting list is at something like 80,000 people (allegedly, it’s about a 30-year wait at the moment).
As every season ticket is sold, of course every home Packer game is officially sold out (even though not every ticket may wind up “showing up” at a particular game).
The only reason that the Redskins have a longer “consecutive sell-out” streak than the Packers is that, up until 1995, the Packers split their home games between Green Bay and Milwaukee. Packer seating at County Stadium in Milwaukee was not 100% season tickets, and, so, some games didn’t sell out (particularly in the 1970s, when the Packers were a crummy team).
During the 2003 renovation of Lambeau, they added several thousand tickets which are sold on a single-game basis, but only to residents of Brown County (it was a concession to the fact that the renovation was partially funded by a sales tax increase in Brown County, where Green Bay is located). However, that’s a fairly small number of tickets…and, given that the demand for those tickets is very high, the “sold-out streak” is still alive, and likely will be for the foreseeable future.
ETA: I was at the Snow Bowl game in 1985. The only reason my father and I made it to the game is that we lived about 4 miles from Lambeau…if you lived much further away than that, you didn’t make it through the snow. It was freaky, seeing Lambeau so empty for a game.
As others have noted, no team has yet played a home game in the Super Bowl.
There have only been a few seasons in which that was a realistic possibility. THIS coming season MAY be one of them. The Dallas Cowboys certainly have the talent to be a Super Bowl contender, and the next Super Bowl will be held at their new stadium.
A few other times it COULD have happened:
The 2001 Super Bowl was held at the Tampa Bay Bucs’ stadium. The Bucs were 10-6 that year and made the playoffs as a wild card team.
The 1999 Super Bowl was in Miami. The Dolphins were 10-6 and earned a wild card spot in the playoffs.
The 1995 Super Bowl was also in Miami. The Dolphins won the AFC East that year.
The 1979 Super Bowl was also in Miami. The Dolphins were 11-5 that year, and won a wild card playoff spot.
The 1976 Super Bowl was in Miami- the Dolphins were 10-4, just missing the playoffs (the tiebreakers went to the Baltimore Colts, who had the same record).
If the Redskins falter, the Steelers will be there to pick it up, as their home sellout streak is still current as well, and goes back to the 1972 season.
In the NFL, the Packers and Steelers streaks are the impressive ones, IMO, particularly the Packers. The Redskins selling out should be a given, much like it is for the Giants. The New Giants Stadium and the PSLs that go with it have pretty much killed the waiting list, but in the old Giants Stadium they sold out every year for decades with a waiting list many years long.
So if the home games are pretty much locked in for years and they sell out every game…does that mean that the crowd in every Packers, Redskins, etc. game in the last few years are pretty much the same people?
Not necessarily. Speaking from some of my friends’ perspectives, you can buy the seat licenses from season ticket holders. In one case, the uncle of a friend of ours was just getting too old to use his Steeler tickets. So he sold the two seat licenses to a friend of ours (for cost!) and transferred them to my friend’s name. This was about 5 years ago. Since that time, they’ve had a baby and don’t go to all the games so they sell the tickets to those games to our circle of friends.
Oh, and two years ago his name finally came up on the waiting list for season tickets…a list he entered in 1993.
Not in every case, of course, but largely yes. If you somehow bought season tickets to the Packers, Steelers, Giants, Redskins, etc… and go to every home game that year, you’d recognize a large percentage of the people in your section by the end of the year.
Maybe the diehards who want to be there for every game.
A lot of season ticket holders can’t really afford to (or even want to) see every home game. Plenty of them buy the tickets and sell them over face value as a way to make money each year. If you’re a Packers season ticket holder and never want to see another home game again it’s still in your best interests to buy and sell them for profit.
I understand the math but I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. You seem to be saying “the only reason the Packers don’t have the longest sellout streak is because of all those games that didn’t sell out.”
