The past Saturday local football fans at least three choices to watch a football team with local interest/ties. The first was the Grambling-Langston game at Independence Stadium. The other was the LSU-Clemson televised game. And there was the Louisiana Tech home game with SE Louisiana.
The Grambling Langston game was underwritten by three local entities. Caddo Parish donated $100,000 for game sponsorship. The Sports Commission, which is a branch of the Shreveport Bossier Tourist Bureau, added $50,000. The City of Shreveport agreed to provide the free use of the stadium/Skybox, staffing and reimbursement of enumerated game expenses up to $100,000.
Saturday's weather was good and for late August the temperature was "good." The Grambling game was preceded by many pregame activities and tail gating.
Getting a hard count on the attendance is not an easy feat. One can ask for actual spectators going through the gates, all ticket sales pre-game and game time, or announced attendance.
The Associated Press and ESPN reported the attendance to be 18,435. A HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) sports thread listed the same number.
But how many actually attended the game?
The seating capacity of the Independence Bowl is listed at 65,000. Presumably this number includes the seats in the Skybox suites. Factoring in 435 for Skybox spectators, then there should have been one fan for every 3.5 (or maybe 3.6) seats if 18,400 people attended the game.
See the picture below taken from the Skybox after the game had started. To the naked eye, there is nowhere close to one spectator 's butt in every 3.5/3.6 seats.
For simplicity, let's just say more than three seats were vacant in the stadium for every fan.
Judging the total economic impact of this game is no easy science. Additional hotel rentals, restaurant/bar game patron expenses and other fan expenditures by fans are always factors in impact guesstimates. One can expect the tourist bureaus folks on Spring Street will report a massive economic boom second only to the annual state fair, the Revel and Humor & Harmony all rolled together.
Moneys for the City and the Parish are from tax dollars. The Sports Commission $50 grand is from the hotel/motel tax. If nothing more the Parish, City and Sports Commission can report that they have sponsored a HBCU game just as they sponsor the Independence Bowl. And in today's world where government actions are almost always judged by a black/white standard, then these sponsorships were a good thing.
