Season Tickets: Another Year, Another Record
August 20, 2011 | Football
Aug. 20, 2011
GREENVILLE, N.C. - Continuing the trend of strong fan support, East Carolina's 2011 football season ticket sales will officially be classified as a record-breaker for the fourth time in the last six years.
As of Saturday afternoon, a total of 23,500 tickets had been sold to eclipse the previous standard of 23,436 set last year. The ECU Athletics Department has now surpassed the 20,000 threshold for the fifth consecutive year and will continue to push its turnstile count toward unmatched levels during the second season inside 50,000-seat Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.
Student Pirate Club membership has soared over 8,000 to also set a record by surpassing last season's enrollment of 7,831. With a season ticket included as a benefit of membership, East Carolina's overall number of sold seats reaches past 31,000 for the first time in program history.
ECU has established program attendance standards during each of the last four seasons. The Pirates drew a total of 249,219 fans in 2007 before setting back-to-back regular season average records with league-best 42,016 and 43,191 clips in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The 2010 season was the strongest yet as the closed-in endzone featuring The Boneyard student section expanded the capacity of Dowdy-Ficklen to 50,000 seats, welcoming a record 297,987 fans and an average of 49,665 per home game.
The attendance increases have been a reflection of season ticket success at the box office the last five years, starting with a then-record of 16,258 in 2006 and following with a 22,000 clip in 2007, a 21,160 total in 2008, a 21,293 mark in 2009 and the aforementioned 23,436 last year.
For the 2010 football season, East Carolina stood second in the nation for average attendance among current Bowl Championship Series non-automatic qualifying teams, trailing only BYU (61,381). Among all FBS programs, ECU stood 44th in average attendance and 24th in percent of capacity (99.33). The Pirates also topped Conference USA in average attendance by more than 10,000 fans per contest.
Individual game and season ticket packages for 2011 remain on sale and may be purchased online at www.ECUPirates.com or by calling the ECU Athletics Ticket Office at (252) 737-4500.
