Louisville football has not sold out 12,000 tickets for College GameDay

The Louisville football program has not yet sold out of its tickets for the team’s home matchup against Miami with College GameDay in town.

With just two days until the Hurricanes head to Louisville to take on the Cardinals, there are currently 111 tickets available on Ticketmaster out of a max capacity of 12,000.

The tickets are currently listed at $85 apiece.

Originally, the school asked Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear for a max capacity of 30%, good for 18,000 fans at Cardinal Stadium. Instead, Beshear approved a plan allowing a max capacity of 20%, good for 12,000 fans spread out throughout the 61,000 seat stadium.

“It’s a 20% capacity with everybody spread out and only sitting next to family units,” Beshear said at the time of the announcement two weeks ago. “The university worked pretty well with us. They started out in a different place, but at the end of the day, the president (Dr. Neeli) Bendapudi called and said, ‘We want to do this as safe as we can’ and they showed that commitment.”

Beshear approved a similar capacity of 20% at Kroger Field, good for roughly 12,200 fans allowed each week.

While 11,890 fans securing tickets out of a possible 12,000 is not a huge deal for Louisville – the available tickets are in the nosebleeds – it does make you wonder if we’ll see this problem at Kentucky and throughout the nation as the college football season continues (or begins, for that matter).

If Louisville can’t sell out its stadium at 20% capacity in a high-profile conference matchup with College GameDay coming to town, what does that mean for schools such as Tennessee and Texas A&M, who are both planning for over 25,000 fans at their games? What about lesser conference matchups such as, say, Kentucky vs. Vanderbilt or Florida vs. Arkansas, both scheduled for Nov. 14?

Will the pandemic and the safety protocols in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus – mandatory mask wearing, no tailgating, etc. – keep fans home?