Well, this was a matter of some debate last year, even among the reporters who cover State. The numbers given out by State and the bowls at the time didn't jive with the financial reports at the end of the fiscal year, probably due to parties the school paid for (like the band, staff and families, etc) being included differently.
Going by the available info we sold:
9,600 tickets to the 2013 Gator Bowl (
http://www.forwhomthecowbelltolls.c...nears-9000-northwestern-up-47-ticketcity-bowl)
Then from here (
http://blogs.clarionledger.com/msu/...es-and-the-economic-impact-in-jacksonville/):
2011 Music City Bowl
Tickets committed: 13,315
Tickets sold: 11,414
Tickets absorbed*: 1,881 ($120,860)
2011 Gator Bowl
Tickets committed: 16,514
Tickets sold: 12,748
Tickets absorbed*: 3,766 ($236,540)
2007 Liberty Bowl
Tickets committed: 32,654
Tickets sold: 32,382
Tickets absorbed: 272 ($13,600)
I wouldn't pay much attention to the absorbed stuff. According to this (
http://jacksonville.com/sports/2010-12-05/story/michigan-mississippi-state-picked-gator-bowl) we sold more than 15,000 Gator Bowl tickets and requested another 2,000. We wouldn't have requested the extra 2k if we were already eating tickets.
The Clarion Ledger article above mentions about 40,000 State fans in Nashville, 30,000 fans in Jacksonville on the first go-around, and it's pretty easy to say we took close to 50,000 fans to Memphis in '07. I'd say we only had about 15,000 fans in Jacksonville last year, though.
