
The Atlanta Falcons‘ three-year regime, led by head coach Arthur Smith and general manager Terry Fontenot, is critically ill for this reason: Verify the home attendance bottom line.
Which home attendance? That is, however, speaking relatively.
Among the 31 other teams, the Atlanta Falcons had the seventh-highest percentage of empty seats at home games at the end of the inaugural season of that regime (2021), according to ESPN.com. The Falcons’ position in 2019, the final NFL season complete before the pandemic, was seven spots lower.
Subsequently, the Falcons experienced a decline to the third-highest percentage in the same category the previous year. It is worth noting that the team concluded the 2021 and 2022 seasons with a record of 7-9 and missed the playoffs.
The Falcons started NFL action on Sunday at 4-6 and quickly became the team with the highest percentage of empty seats at home. After those first six games, the average attendance in a stadium that can hold 75,000 football fans was 69,685. This suggests that another 7-9 finish—or worse—is in the cards for the Falcons.
Not good for Smith and Fontenot specifically, nor for the Falcons as a whole, given that twelve other NFL teams were playing at full strength or better during that stretch of the season.
Even worse for the Falcons, in 2017 they paid approximately $2 billion to the government to complete the construction of Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
In order to fill seats, the Falcons have therefore become creative.
The Falcons weren’t taking any chances, even though the Saints were in town on Sunday for the Atlanta leg of this annual two-game rivalry between southern NFL teams, which will continue in New Orleans on January 7. Keeping in mind that this is hip hop’s 50th anniversary, they reached out to almost all Atlanta-based artists in the genre to have appearances both before and during the Saints game.
T.I., Jeezy, Quavo, Big Boi, CeeLo, Jermaine Dupri, and Ludacris. The Falcons estimated that they had honored 60 rappers as guests, and judging by the number of people who showed up at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday, the promotion was successful.