Is Seahawks home-field advantage dead? Invading road-team fans turn Lumen Field friendly

Josh Allen was laughing. He was high-fiving with his Buffalo fans. The only thing missing from their party was a table to smash onto, Bills Mafia style.

In Seattle.

During the previous Seahawks game at Lumen Field, the lower bowl was a sea of San Francisco 49ers red. One of the thousands of Niners fans at the Seattle “home” game held a sign that said “DANG, WE LOOK PURDY” in red and gold.

Yes, honoring San Francisco quarterback Brock Purdy in Seattle.

Giants fans in red and blue stretched goal line to goal line this month. During this season’s opener in September, Broncos orange painted the lower rows of the 100 level.

Last New Year’s Eve at the Seahawks’ final home game of the 2023 season there were so many Terrible Towels, so much Steelers black and gold, throughout the stadium that SoDo looked like Pittsburgh instead of Seattle.

Visiting teams’ fans are taking over Lumen Field at Seahawks home games.

And the Seahawks are noticing.

“Hats off to Buffalo,” quarterback Geno Smith said Sunday after Allen and the Bills smoked Seattle 31-10 at Lumen Field. “They came in and beat us at home. Their fans travel well.

“It was really loud in there and kind of felt like we were on the road, at times.”

Again.

The reasons for all the visiting fans

So what’s going on inside the stadium where the Seahawks recently enjoyed one of the NFL’s fiercest home-field advantages?

There are many reasons visiting fans are invading. The technology of television game broadcasts iis enticing some fans to watch from home. Seattle is a popular destination for visitors. New high-tech jobs here have attracted tens of thousands of fans from other NFL cities to move to the Seattle-Tacoma metro area in recent decades. Some of the home season-ticket accounts have been passed down through generations; the younger inheritors aren’t as into pro sports and the Seahawks as their elders.

The biggest and overriding factor: The Seahawks aren’t winning like they used to.

In fact, they are winning at home only half as much.

The aura of Seattle being one of the league’s toughest places for visiting teams to play is gone. In their last 30 home games, the Seahawks are 15-15.

Through their division-title season of 2016 following Seattle’s back-to-back Super Bowl appearances in February 2014 and ‘15, the Seahawks were 85-35 at home. That was dating to 2002, the year the team moved to the NFC. During that span Seattle was one game behind Green Bay at Lambeau Field for the NFC’s best home record.

The Seahawks haven’t been past the division round of the playoffs since their last Super Bowl season of 2014. Yet despite their recently mediocre years, Lumen Field remains sold out. The game against the Bills last weekend was the 176th consecutive sellout for a Seahawks home game dating to 2003.

The team annually sells out its 61,000 season-ticket seats in the stadium, which has a capacity of 68,740 for NFL games.

There is a three-year waiting queue, the Blue Pride list, to buy season tickets. During their Super Bowl heyday 10 years ago, the season-ticket renewal rate was 99.5%. It was 96% for 2024. That was coming off the team’s consecutive 9-8 seasons in 2022 and ‘23 and the coaching change this past winter from Pete Carroll to rookie head man Mike Macdonald and his new staff.

But--as all the road-team color in the lower deck at games shows--just because Seahawks games and season tickets remain sold out doesn’t mean the ticket holders are attending the games.

This is where the team’s dip in winning intersects with the rise in Seahawks ticket costs.

Season tickets in the 100 level on the east sideline, behind the road team’s bench where all the visiting fans have been recently, are known as the Charter A, B and C seats. The prices to renew those for 2024 ranged from $2,140 per seat nearer the goal lines to $2,530 around midfield. That was for the 10 home games during this season, according to the pricing list the team provided its renewing season-ticket holders.

So, $214-$253 per seat per game, on average. (Like all NFL teams the Seahawks include their preseason home games as part of the regular-season ticket price.)

Thousands of season-ticket holders are recouping these costs by selling their better seats in the stadium on the lucrative secondary ticket market. It’s a marketplace flourishing online for sports and concerts.

Tickets for the Seahawks’ home game against the 49ers Oct. 10 were selling online for $300 and up. That was for the upper deck, just to get in the stadium. It was about twice that for some sideline seats.

For that one game, a featured, prime-time date between bitter division rivals separated by the shortest proximity Seattle has to an NFL opponent, some season-ticket holders got back about a third of what they pre-paid for 10 games this year.

Those sellers’ reasoning: Why sit in the rain for four hours to see the Seahawks lose (they’ve now lost six consecutive games to the 49ers)? I’ll sell my seats, park for free in my garage instead of for $50-$80 at the stadium, eat free food instead of $20 burgers, drink free beer instead of $20 cans, and watch from my warm, dry living room.

Plus, ticket selling, and buying, are easier than ever. Gone are the days when a season-ticket holder or someone they enlisted had to go to the stadium and stand on the street corner outside hawking their tickets and negotiating prices with strangers to get rid of them. Now they can do it on their phones, setting their price based on a market they can see online, and selling to anonymous customers they never see.

The seller doesn’t know, or care, if the buyer is from Buffalo or Burien. You will pay me $500 per seat, double what I originally paid, to stay home?

Bet.

What season-ticket holders are saying

The News Tribune brought up this issue on 93.3 KJR FM Tuesday. We introduced it by airing Smith’s comments following the Buffalo game about Bills fans making it feel like a Seahawks road game.

The TNT got no shortage of responses via KJR’s listener text line.

“I was tailgating right outside the stadium watching on tv and we would hear cheers and think it was a good thing for the hawks but turns out it was bills mafia lol,” a texter from the Tacoma area, 253 area code, wrote.

“Knowingly sold tickets for the Rams game (this weekend) to a Rams fan but I’m going to get a nice 12 pack, lunch, and make a profit to watch the L at home,” Marques from the Seattle 206 area code texted.

A season-ticket holder from the Eastside 425 wrote: “Recently, some of the reasons I sell my tickets is the pregame and in stadium experience. The price of parking is much cheaper in my garage than downtown Seattle. The food and beverages are a lot cheaper in my fridge.”

A respondent from the 206 addressed criticism that Seahawks fans aren’t re-selling their tickets to Seahawks fans: “As a season ticket holder who sells couple games a year you don’t know who is buying them (online). Also consider you get charged full price for the preseason games which you can’t even give away.”

One season-ticket holder from the 425 wrote about cost: “Two problems with season ticket holders: 1 they got old. 2 they can basically get season tickets paid for with one game. It’s been like that really since 2013.”

A respondent from the 360 area code, Olympia and beyond, put the economics of the NFL back on the team by texting: “Hey guys, it’s business. that’s what they tell us when the players want to move.

“it’s just business”

Macdonald is a no-nonsense, bottom-line coach. He sees this issue the same way he sees his football.

“We have to win. We’ve got to win, period,” he said Monday. “So, opposing fans won’t want to show up if we’re consistently kicking butt and doing what we’re supposed to do.

“Our fans I think are doing a great job and they’re sticking with us all the way through the end of the game. I know we’re fighting and they’re fighting with us.

“And we have to do a better job of putting a product out there that they want to root really hard for.”