Big Red Business: We discuss possible ticketing plans for Memorial Stadium

Memorial Stadium has been known to turn into a scarlet and cream madhouse during football season.

With fans packed into high-density seating seemingly on top of the turf and straight up in four directions, it’s an intimidating setting and one of college football’s premium home-field atmospheres.

It’s still not clear whether the college football season will start on time, played with an abbreviated schedule or be played at all. And if games are played, how will Memorial Stadium look with pockets of fans scattered -- and ugh, cheering a few decibels lower behind a mask -- in potentially a less-than-capacity environment.

Garrett Klassy, senior deputy athletic director, is among a group of key officials with the unenviable task of trying to keep Memorial Stadium rocking while fans might be six feet away from each other.

“We could probably come up with a hundred different seating scenarios,” Klassy said in an interview Wednesday.

But, he added, planners are focusing on three main game-staging plans on how to accommodate ticket holders and adhere to stadium safety protocols if seating is capped at “33 percent , 50 percent, or (in the unlikely event left unchanged) at 100 percent of capacity.”

In the athletic department’s first extensive comments on how they are trying to prepare Memorial Stadium for a football season, Klassy discussed some of the potential plans being reviewed by a committee of athletics officials who have been meeting recently once a week and sometimes daily.

The group has also sought help from outside experts, including various makers of crowd-monitoring software and Kansas City-based Populous, the stadium architectural design firm. The athletic department is also surveying and collecting data from season ticket holders, asking among other things, if they would feel comfortable and safe to return to Memorial Stadium.

“We’re doing everything we can to have safeguards and follow the best practices,” Klassy said, to make sure fans, athletes and staff are safe and comfortable inside and outside the stadium.

That means reviewing seating to mitigate viral transmission of the coronavirus. Officials are also rethinking everything from parking, tailgating, designated entrances, ticketing, concessions, restrooms, and even how to accommodate the traditional red balloon release.

Throughout the interview, Klassy stressed that the situation is fluid and that at the end of the day, nothing will be green-lighted until university leadership, health officials from all levels, the Big Ten Conference and the NCAA sign off.

With the college football set to kick off in three months, when will a final plan be put in place? “At a minimum,” Klassy said, “we’re a month away.”

By far the biggest concern, from a season ticket holders’ perspective, is how will they be accommodated this season.

With a capacity of about 86,000, Memorial Stadium is one of the nation’s largest college football venues. Games have been sold out since 1962, although the actual number of people who enter the stadium could vary from several thousand to ten thousand or more.

Klassy said season-ticket renewals this year were “north of 90 percent,” with only a “very small number” requesting refunds because of the pandemic.

Delving into capacity, general public season ticket holders account for about 76 percent of the seats at Memorial Stadium, or about 66,220 of the approximate total of 86,000, according to the athletic department. Faculty and staff hold 8.23 percent of the tickets, or 7,052. Students have 8.12 percent of the seats, or 6,983.

Suite ticket holders account for 2.94 percent of capacity, or 2,528; the band has a 0.62 percent slice of seating, or 516 seats; and finally, the visiting team gets an allotment of 3.51 percent of the tickets, or about 3,000 seats with unsold tickets returned to Nebraska’s ticket office to be sold.

The athletic department won’t be able to accommodate all those ticket holders with social distancing guidelines in place. That means the department will have to sort out who gets to attend games, how much the seat list will vary from game to game, who gets priority among all the ticket groups, and how refunds will be handled.

Under one seating scenario, there could be clusters of four to six fans spread out six feet away, with a row in front and in back left free of fans as a safety barrier, Klassy said. “Then you would just seat the next cluster, and the next and next,” he said.

Another idea: Some schools are considering turning sections of 20 or more bench seats into temporary suites, where a group of 10 friends or family members can be socially distant from other groups -- potentially selling them for a higher price.

Given the make-up of the ticket base, even a half-full stadium would leave many ticket holders on the outside looking in.

The difficulties of staging home games at Memorial Stadium are not limited to seating. Among the items on the checklist:

*Mobile-only ticketing. Following the model of professional sports, Nebraska is considering moving to a mobile-only ticketing model. Fans would access their ticket online. There would be options for fans without smartphones.

Klassy said the department also wants to address concerns from fans who save and collect their paper ticket stubs. Perhaps some sort of ticket memento could be offered.

*Tailgating and parking. “We can’t condone large gatherings of people outside the stadium at the same time we’re practicing social distancing” on the campus and in the city, Klassy said.

*Entering and exiting. Fans by the tens of thousand tend to stream in close to game time, and then head for the exits in mass. That creates a bottleneck in which thousands of fans could be in close proximity to one another for an extended period of time.

*Concessions and restrooms. How do you monitor and limit crowds at the concessions stands, and lines forming to enter restrooms? And, how do you keep facilities sanitized? Will there be enough staff to handle the tasks?

Klassy said the athletic department is literally looking at software demo products every day that are designed to monitor crowds throughout a sports complex.

For example, a company called WaitTime has software applications tied to security cameras that allow fans and stadium operators to know how busy certain areas might be and to detect unsafe crowding.

Fans required to wear masks at Memorial Stadium to watch about four hours of football? It’s being considered, said Klassy.

But with people screaming and potentially sneezing and coughing, “aerosolized transmission” of germs through the air is also more probable than in other surroundings, Colleen Kraft, an infectious disease doctor at Emory University in Atlanta told The Wall Street Journal.

Kraft, who helped provide guidelines to the NCAA for shutting down spring athletics, said these small “aerosol particles” tend to stay in the air longer, potentially increasing the chance a healthy person will breathe them in.

“That’s what’s concerning,” she told The Journal. “So that is, in a way, amplified in a stadium” because prolonged contact over many hours with people who have mild or no symptoms.”

There is precedent for masking fans inside stadiums.

Go back to 1918 and the outbreak of the Spanish Flu, which would kill nearly 700,000 in the United States.

Despite the threat of the flu, President Woodrow Wilson urged colleges to play football games. A photo from an undetermined Georgia Tech home football game shows the vast majority of the spectators in the picture wearing masks in what reportedly was the peak of the flu in October and November that year. (Check out the photo by searching the internet for Georgia Tech 1918 football game)

Georgia Tech, which had won the national championship the year before, did not start its season until Oct. 5.

The pandemic could alter plans for several special gatherings planned this fall --chiefly the 50th-anniversary celebration of Nebraska’s 1970 national championship team.

Former players, coaches and others associated with the team are scheduled to gather in Lincoln to celebrate the undefeated season, which culminated in the school’s first football national title and the first of two straight under coach Bob Devaney.

In addition, the Nebraska Athletics Hall of Fame induction ceremony is set for this fall, honoring five male and female athletes and former volleyball coach Terry Pettit.

Although dates are still pending, “none of those events have been canceled,” Klassy said.

Klassy said the athletic department is even discussing how to handle the balloon release, a game-day tradition that follows Nebraska’s first score. Is the stadium environment safe for the workers and fans? Is another location needed to inflate and sell the red balloons?

“We’re addressing all those things,” Klassy said.

One thing that has dropped down the priority list: Plans to create a more energized pre-game environment outside of Memorial Stadium for fans, including live music, more tailgating, and autograph tables with former greats, and plenty of activities for youngsters.

Promoting an environment like this would run counter to measures aimed at controlling crowds and practicing safe distance socializing, Klassy said.

“It’s not off the table,” he said, “but it’s not a priority at this point.”

But in an effort to be innovative for the large number of fans unable to attend in person, Nebraska could offer something along the lines of the highly successful virtual Red vs. White football spring game. More than 20,000 viewers tuned in across various platforms to play a simulated game on EA Sports’ NCAA Football.

The teams featured star-laden rosters from Cornhuskers’ teams past and present.

Most schools have not publicly revealed their plans for getting stadiums ready for fall football, although a handful have come out early with their models.

Notre Dame has warned of fewer fans and limits to tailgating. Ohio State, Iowa, and Iowa State have also revealed some --but not all -- details of their work-arounds.

*Iowa State, for example, is looking at selling only enough tickets to fill up half of Jack Trice Stadium, or about 30,000 fans per game, because of strict social distancing guidelines. The Cyclones said about 22,000 season tickets have been renewed for this season, leaving another 8,000 to be sold.

“Because we expect to reach the 50 percent capacity limitation through season ticket sales, we do not anticipate selling single-game tickets unless the capacity limits are raised,” athletic director Jamie Pollard told fans in a message on the school’s website.

Pollard also said fans who determine it unsafe to attend games after already renewing their season tickets may request a refund or defer their season ticket to next season

*Ohio State has said capacity this fall could be anywhere from 20,000 fans to as high as 50,000 if social distancing guidelines are relaxed. Ohio Stadium has a usual capacity of nearly 105,000.

The school said seating for the upcoming season will be based on models that account for “appropriate physical distancing within Ohio Stadium. The seat selection will be for only one year, and the time-lime for seat selection will be adjusted to allow time for conference, state, and local officials to clarify physical distancing guidelines to provide the safest environment possible.

Ohio State is also switching to mobile-only ticketing.

Season-ticket holders will also have the option to receive a refund for any canceled game tickets, receive a credit toward a future ticket purchase, or donate their season or game ticket payment to support scholarships.

*Iowa athletic director Gary Barta said the Hawkeyes are planning to have unlimited crowds at Kinnick Stadium, which last fall average 65,557 for games. The school is also developing contingency plans for reduced capacity.

If Iowa reduces capacity, Barta said season-ticket holders, priority points holders and students will be admitted first.

On the professional ranks, Nebraska and other schools have made note of what the Miami Dolphins are doing to create a safe environment. The Dolphins are considering using every other turnstile, calling fans into the stadium in sections, letting them out row by row like a church service and using technology to minimize person-to-person contact.

Because every school’s ticket situation is different, Klassy said it is hard to compare what some of Nebraska’s peers are planning on doing. The University of Kansas, for example, might draw 30,000 football fans on a good Saturday in a 46,000-seat stadium -- in effect, the Jayhawks are already experienced at practicing social distancing.

How will the pandemic potentially change plans for the Nebraska men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball seasons this fall?

Again, that’s an open question that will be addressed down the road.

For now, Klassy said, the athletic department will follow the same health protocols for those two sports as it is doing for football. The scenarios for fans are the same too.

Will there be a full schedule of games, a partial schedule? How many fans, if any, will be allowed into Pinnacle Bank Arena and the Devaney Center? Will masks be required? Will there be spaced out lines for concessions, restrooms, and for tickets?

“As soon as we know the season schedule, we’ll alert fans,” Klassy said.

Steve Rosen covers the business of sports for HuskerOnline. Questions, comments, story ideas? Reach Steve at sbrosen1030@gmail.com.