And before you say “winning,” (obviously that’s the big part) consider that plenty of other terrible teams still are completely packed full of home fans every week no matter how bad the team is. I wonder if the powers that be make buying tickets too accessible for opposing fans? I don’t know. Any thoughts? And any ideas on how this could be remedied?
I don’t think I’d agree with “other terrible teams are still completely packed”. Also FedEx is a horrendously bad stadium. The fan experience has degraded significantly since it opened in 1997. Stadiums like Lambeau Field, have been open for far longer have managed to make meaningful renovations to keep the fan experience fresh and enjoyable. FedEx Field has had some renovations but they’ve mostly been stripping seats and bandaid fixes to big problems.
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The stadium experience at fedex sucks and everyone knows it. There is no way for this to be remedied until there’s a better product in both team and stadium
Winning.
Man who wants to spend money to watch your team get absolutely obliterated? I know I wouldn’t.
The DMV has been a transplant city for decades, yet the team sold out its games for 50 consecutive years (ended in 2018). As I see it, the problem is that the younger generation grew up with losing teams along with so many other ways to be entertained - video games, TikTok, social media, whatever. If you’re 25 years old, you remember what, a couple of mediocre seasons at best? And many of the grizzled vets who experienced the success of the 80’s and early 90’s have already thrown in the towel due to Snyder’s 20+ years of ineptitude.
I don’t envy the owners. Getting actual Washington fans to fill the stadium (that stadium of all dumps) is going to be an extremely difficult task.
It’s the result of several issues that have compounded on themselves over the years:
- team is ass. Even the other historically bad teams over the last 10-20 years (Bills, Lions, Browns, Jags, etc) are all having decent/good seasons.
- stadium sucks
- getting there sucks
- arguably the most transient area in the country
- because of reason #1, we just don’t have nearly as many fans as we used to. We’ve lost an entire generation of young fans.
- tons of season ticket holders sell their tickets.
Other teams maybe deal with one or two of those issues, but not all of them. Since 2017, we’ve maybe had 4 or 5 true home games, if that.
Obviously, consistently winning is the #1 antidote. But to grow a truly passionate fanbase again will take time. New stadium, franchise QB, and legit rebrand would help a lot.
Pretty sure lots of fans aged out of attending. Others quit on a bad franchise. The Ravens likely stole a lot of young fans. It’s been a 10 year process of losing.