Forecasting Football Game Attendance at Southwestern University Southwestern University (SWU), a large state college in Ste- phenville, Texas, 30 miles southwest of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, enrolls close to 20,000 students. In a typical town- gown relationship, the school is a dominant force in the small city, with more students during fall and spring than permanent residents. A longtime football powerhouse, SWU is a member of the Big Eleven conference and is usually in the top 20 in college football rankings. To bolster its chances of reaching the elusive and long-desired number-one ranking, in 2006 SWU hired the legendary Bo Pitterno as its head coach. Although the number-one ranking remained out of reach, attendance at the five Saturday home games each year in- creased. Prior to Pitterno's arrival, attendance generally averaged 25,000 to 29,000 per game. Season ticket sales bumped up by 10,000 just with the announcement of the new coach's arrival. Stephenville and SWU were ready to move to the big time! The immediate issue facing SWU, however, was not NCAA ranking; it was capacity. The existing SWU stadium, built in 1953, has seating for 54,000 fans. The table on the next page indicates attendance at each game for the past six years: 2006 2007 2008 GAME ATTENDEES OPPONENT ATTENDEES 1 34,200 Baylor 36,100 OPPONENT Oklahoma ATTENDEES OPPONENT 35,900 TCU 2 39,800 Texas 40,200 Nebraska 46,500 Texas Tech 3 38,200 LSU 39,100 UCLA 43,100 Alaska 4** 26,900 Arkansas 25,300 Nevada 27,900 Arizona 5 35,100 USC 36,200 Ohio State 39,200 Rice 2009 2010 2011 GAME ATTENDEES OPPONENT ATTENDEES OPPONENT ATTENDEES OPPONENT 1 41,900 Arkansas 42,500 Indiana 46,900 LSU 2 46,100 Missouri 48,200 North Texas 50,100 Texas 3 43,900 Florida 44,200 Texas A&M 45,900 Prairie View A&M 4** 5 30,100 Miami 33,900 Southern 36,300 Montana 40,500 Duke 47,800 Oklahoma 49,900 Arizona State * Homecoming games. *During the fourth week of each season, Stephenville hosted a hugely popular Southwestern crafts festival. This event brought tens of thousands of tourists to the town, especially on weekends, and had an obvious negative impact on game attendance. Source: J. Heizer and B. Render. Operations Management, 10th ed., 2011. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. One of Pitterno's demands upon joining SWU had been a stadium expansion, or possibly even a new stadium. With atten- dance increasing, SWU administrators began to face the issue head-on. Pitterno had wanted dormitories in the stadium, solely for his athletes, as an additional feature of any expansion. SWU's president, Dr. Marty Starr, decided it was time for his vice president of development to forecast when the existing stadium would "max out." He also sought a revenue projection, assuming an average ticket price of $20 in 2012 and a 5% in- crease each year in future prices.