As the NFL plods forward with their plans to hold a 2020 regular season in the middle of a global pandemic, the focus- rightfully so- has been on keeping players and team personnel safe. But for the most popular sport in the country, uncertainty about fans’ participation has been lurking in the background ever since the phrase “social distancing” entered the national lexicon.
As football fans wonder how forty thousand to ninety thousand bodies will safely occupy the league’s 30 stadiums on any given Sunday this fall, the Baltimore Ravens have an answer no one wanted to hear: they won’t.
The team has announced that fewer than 14,000 fans will be allowed into Ravens home games under Maryland state and local laws. M & T Bank Stadium seats over 71,000.
That’s approximately 19% capacity.
No other teams have released expected figures or attendance plans for their stadiums, though the Packers and Chiefs have confirmed that they will seat just a fraction of fans for 2020 home games. The Packers have also announced that face coverings will be mandatory for all fans in attendance at Lambeau Field. The league has already declared that the lowermost rows of seats at every stadium would be tarped off to keep fans and players adequately separated.
At AT&T Stadium in Arlington, 80,000 fans can be seated for Cowboys home games. Attendance figures for games often surpass that number, though, thanks to multiple standing areas located inside the gates.
The league is allowing each team to set its own attendance policy, theoretically following appropriate state, county, and city guidelines. Last month, Texas governor Greg Abbott allowed his state’s sports venues to operate at 50% capacity, up from 25% previously.
But using Baltimore’s 19% as a purely hypothetical guide, it would make any Cowboys home games played in 2020 some highly-sought-after tickets.
According to ESPN figures, the Cowboys averaged 90,929 fans per game in 2019. Nineteen percent of that equates to just 17,276 fans. If all of AT&T Stadium’s standing areas are closed off entirely, a “full-capacity” crowd is just 15,200, a downright intimate gathering for a Cowboys game at JerryWorld.
The Ravens’ decision will kickstart a lengthy and possibly complicated refund process for current ticketholders. PSL owners will have first priority at securing 2020 home seats. Fans who already own season tickets will see their seats saved and rolled over to 2021. Single-game ticket sales have been put on hold; those who already have single-game tickets will be refunded.
Of course, if there’s another round of widespread pandemic shutdowns, it’s not even guaranteed that any fans at all will be allowed in any stadiums by the time Week 1 arrives. But then again, it’s not a lock that there will be a 2020 NFL season, so the news out of Baltimore could well become a moot point.
But it is a disheartening announcement for fans clinging to the hope that football will look anything like it’s supposed to at any point in the near future.
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