Florida State’s fortunes on the field have been in a steady but prominent decline since the Seminoles’ 2013 national championship run, and the program’s season ticket sales have slumped alongside the product on the field.
According to a report from Warchant, season ticket sales for the upcoming 2019 season are well down from the pace of the 2018 season, which was well down from 2017.
After selling out all 45,000 available seats ahead of the 2014 season, when FSU football was still in its post-championship glow, Florida State dropped to 38,600 lower-bowl season tickets in 2015 (the lower-bowl capacity was dropped to 40,000 after FSU expanded premium seating inside Doak Campbell Stadium), then to 36,400 season tickets in 2016, 34,600 in 2017, 32,030 in 2018 and, as of May 8 of this year, 23,758 for the 2019 campaign.
Past figures indicate most of the season ticket packages that will eventually be sold are done so before May 1 of that year. Warchant‘s figures showed that, from 2015-18, Florida State moved only another 1-2,000 season tickets over the summer. If that trend holds, this means Florida State will enter this upcoming season with around 15,000 of its 40,000 available season tickets unsold. That’s 37.5 percent.
Florida State had sold 2,752 Champions Club tickets for the 2018 season as of May 8. The school moved 3,404 such tickets for 2018.
After running to the 2013 title, Florida State put together another undefeated regular season in 2014--and then began their steady fall. The Seminoles went 10-2 in the 2015 regular season before losing to Houston in the Peach Bowl, then 9-3 in the ’16 campaign before beating Michigan in the Orange Bowl. Then, in 2017, Florida State was 5-6 before beating Louisiana-Monroe in a hurricane makeup game solely keep the program’s record bowl streak alive.
The streak ended in 2018, Willie Taggart‘s first as FSU’s head coach, as the Seminoles slumped to a 5-7 season.
Compounding matters is the lackluster home schedule Florida State offers its fans this season. Fate has aligned in such a way that FSU hosts Clemson and Florida in even-numbered years, meaning odd-numbered years see both of the Seminoles’ marquee annual games happen away from Tallahassee. Miami does visit Doak Campbell Stadium in odd-numbered years, but the Hurricanes are in a similar way as Florida State right now.
Florida State opens with Boise State in Jacksonville; in addition to Miami, the Seminoles will see Louisiana-Monroe, Louisville, NC State, Syracuse and Alabama State come to Tallahassee.
“We’ve got to continue to work at selling tickets and attracting boosters back into the organization,” Florida State AD David Coburn told Warchant. “We need to convince our supporters that we need them now more than ever. Even if they’re not going to buy tickets, they still need to stay with the boosters and help us.”