Was Pitt Right in Reducing Acrisure Stadium's Capacity?

PITTSBURGH — Athletic Director Allen Greene made a big announcement on Jan. 28 concerning the Acrisure Stadium seating arrangement for the Pitt Panthers' 2026 football season.

The stadium will no longer be seating fans in the upper East and West sides of the venue during Pitt home football games, but the upper North end zone section will remain open. The decision reduces Acrisure Stadium's capacity by nearly 17,000 seats.

"Our priority is to create the best student-athlete and fan experience for Pitt and that's exactly what we're doing. This approach will deliver a more intimate, electric game day experience for our fans and an incredible atmosphere for our student-athletes to compete in," Greene said in a statement.

The capacity change also moves Acrisure Stadium from the second-largest venue in the ACC to the 10th-largest. It's even smaller than the old Pitt Stadium, which had 56,500 seats.

This is a significant change to the game day atmosphere, but was it the right decision?

Analysing Pitt's Attendance Numbers

As Greene said in his statement, closing the upper East and West seating levels will push fans from those sections into the lower bowl, making it feel more crowded and louder at field level.

Downsizing a stadium's capacity isn't a foreign concept in college athletics either. Vanderbilt recently reduced its stadium's capacity by over 5,000 seats after renovations. Northwestern's new stadium will have 12,500 fewer seats than its previous one, and in 2019, USC renovated the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and reduced the capacity by over 16,000 seats.

Having 70,000-plus-seat stadiums will likely be filled when the venue is hosting NFL games or other professional/Olympic events, but that's tough to do consistently at the college level. In 2024, just 19 of 135 FBS college football programs averaged over 70,000 fans per home game. Of those 19, just one was from the ACC (Clemson), while the rest were either from the SEC, Big Ten or were Notre Dame.

This is important to note because when it comes to game day experiences, it's all about optics, and when a massive 68,400-seat stadium consistently has a quarter of its seats open, it can make the stadium feel emptier than it really is.

Home Oponents (2025)	Attendance	Capacity % (2025)	Adj. Capacity % (2026)
Duquesne	53,006	77.5%	>100%
Central Michigan	48,424	70.2%	94.2%
Louisville	45,301	66.2%	88.1%
Boston College	51,101	75.3%	99.4%
NC State	46,840	68.5%	91.1%
No. 9 Notre Dame	68,400	100%	>100%
No. 12 Miami	49,845	72.8%	96.9%

Now with the change, a Week 1 game against Duquesne all of a sudden is standing room only, or Mason Heintschel's first-career start against Boston College is practically sold out. Same with the final game of the season in the bitter cold against Miami.

And if Pitt hosted a potential sellout game, like it did last season against Notre Dame, or even a College Football Playoff game, there's flexibility to simply reopen the closed-off seating areas. They're not physically going anywhere. They'll still be used for Steelers games.

A Pittsburgh Panthers fan cheers amidst a crowd of flag-waving fans following a touchdown in the first quarter of a college football game between the Cincinnati Bearcats at the Pittsburgh Panthers, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023, at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pa. | Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK

Greene was even asked about this scenario in relation to the number of tickets needed to be sold in a certain amount of time to reopen the seats for a particular matchup, and he said, "We don't have a number in mind right now, but we'll know it when we see it."

This change has also been overdue. When taking the median home attendance total for each of the last five seasons, the average capacity of those games never broke 80%. But when adjusted for the new stadium capacity, the median game in a given season would have the stadium at least 90% filled in all but one year.

Season	Median Attendance	Avg. Capacity %	Avg. Adj. Capacity % (2026)
2025	49,845	72.9%	96.9%
2024	49,773	72.8%	96.8%
2023	47,420	69.3%	92.2%
2022	54,677	79.9%	106.3%
2021	41,687	60.9%	81.1%

When Greene spoke to the media on Jan. 28, he mentioned a time when Pat Narduzzi told him that he wanted to feel energy from the fans when running out of the tunnel every home game. Sell out the lower bowl every game, and that shouldn't be a problem.

This is not a weak or regressive move by Pitt at all. I believe that this move is intended to truly improve the fans' game-day experience, and I think it could work well.

The only drawback is that many fans have lost their season ticket seats. However, Greene seemed adamant that there would be affordable options in the lower bowl and that those ticket holders would have priority when selecting their new seats.

It's All About Money

Almost every decision made in college athletics nowadays is driven by the dollar, and this one is no different.

As shown in the graphs above, just because Pitt is eliminating nearly 17,000 seats does not mean it is losing nearly 17,000 ticket sales each game. Only two games last season would have sold out in the 51,416-seat stadium. In fact, only 11 home games in the past five seasons would have been sold out in the new capacity structure, or an average of a little over two games per year.

If anything, this could increase demand with a lower supply of seats available. Especially if Pitt has a strong season. But the tickets still need to be priced fairly for people to actually attend the games. Without the fans, Greene's entire plan is null.

The extra in-stadium space could also be used to generate money. Nothing is confirmed yet, but those empty seats could be covered with a tarp, like the ones many sports teams used during the 2020 COVID-19 season.

Sep 27, 2020; Washington, D.C., USA; A general view of the stadium with fan cutouts in seats below an Adidas branded tarp before the game between the D.C. United and the New England Revolution at Audi Field. Fans were not permitted to attend the game due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Mandatory Credit: Scott Taetsch-Imagn Images | Scott Taetsch-Imagn Images

At that time, some teams used these tarps as in-stadium advertising space, which is something Pitt could look into.

In the end, the potential positives of this change outweigh the potential negatives. Losing beloved season tickets is unfortunate, but if Pitt really wants an electric game day environment, condensing the crowd and moving everyone closer to the field is an obvious solution. And with the right plan, this move could wind up generating more cash than before.

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