Hundreds of fans flocked to Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte on Sunday as the Carolina Panthers hosted the Atlanta Falcons. Tickets were absurdly cheap. It didn’t matter.
Not only is Carolina absolutely terrible this year, the weather made an already miserable experience (watching the product on the field) even worse. Temperatures hovered around 45º at kickoff, with a constant rainstorm and 10+ mile per hour wind gusts making it feel more like 40º. Yuck.
Nobody was in the stands— except for these two, who arrived early enough to see the specialists warm up during pregame. That’s next level!
As kickoff rolled around, the get-in ticket price hovered anywhere from $5 to $0.45. To put that number in perspective, the average NFL ticket price in 1975 was $8.60. It cost about $12 to see Super Bowl I.
The Panthers could not have paid their fans to show up for ‘Friends & Family Day’ on Sunday. None of the three levels were anywhere close to being full. Everybody at the game could have piled into the lower bowl and it still would not have been at capacity.
Now, to be fair, there were some late arrivals. The stragglers showed up as the first quarter got underway, presumably, to get a few more libations in their system before subjecting themselves to torture.
Their attendance did not matter. It was still a ghost town.
The Carolina Panthers are on a fast-track to the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming NFL Draft. Unfortunately, the team traded its first rounder for 2024 to the Chicago Bears for Bryce Young.
Not only is the fanbase completely checked out, they can’t even celebrate the joy of tanking for the first pick. The pick is not theirs. They are losing with nothing to gain from doing so. It’s a disaster.