Donovan McNabb and the State of Football
As Week 1 of the 2022 NFL season approaches, a leading online ticket reseller reports that fans are traveling to away games in greater numbers to begin the campaign.
In 2021, 25% of fans in Week 1 were rooting for the visiting team, per data from Vivid Seats’ Fan Forecast.
The number is part of a trend in recent years: In 2017, the company found that Week 1 games contained only 13% away fans.
Fan Forecast is Vivid Seats’ data-centric approach to analyzing its proprietary data through an algorithm in order to predict how fan bases will turn out.
For example, in the Bills-Rams season opener in Los Angeles, it predicts 45% of attendees will support Buffalo and 55% will support L.A.
The Rams will celebrate their Super Bowl title, but Fan Forecast sees the notoriously faithful Bills Mafia coming out in force to support their team, which is the current favorite (+550) to win this year’s championship.
But it’s Raider Nation that will likely take home the Week 1 crown: The company predicts Raiders fans (75%) to out-attend the Chargers supporters (25%) on the road.
