Not only was the game ugly for the Washington Redskins home opener against the Indianapolis Colts. The stadium did not look too great either.
Although the Redskins have boasted that all of its home games have been sellouts for the past 50 years but for a while now it has been clear that not all of those people who have tickets are coming to the games. The announced attendance of the game on Sunday was 57,013, down by more than 21,000 when the Skins opened at home against the Eagles last season. That number is also by far the lowest home opener attendance since the team moved to FedExField in 1997.
The Redskins fans who did show up at FedExField did not miss much. Sunday's game against the Indianapolis Colts was a disaster. Washington failed to score a touchdown and were booed by fans before halftime in a 21-9 loss.
There's a thoery that Hurricane Florence, which had its track heading towards the DMV early last week, could have had something to do with the attendance numbers. But according to the Washington Post, the team's average attendance at home has dropped by 15% in the past decade. Between 2010 and 2015, sections of seats were actually removed from FedExField, lowering the capacity of the stadium from 92,000 to 82,000, to make the stadium seem fuller with less people. There is also a new "open air" section that was created via the removal of seats this season at one end zone.
Attendance figures and TV ratings have been an issue for the NFL as a whole over the past few season. But the Redskins have been perhaps one of the more glaring examples of that.
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