The expansion of the College Football Playoff is a 'huge concern' for the UIL as it works to increase attendance at the Texas High School Football State Championships in 2025 and beyond.

SAN ANTONIO - - The 2024 Texas High School State Championships at AT&T Stadium drew a combined 159,560 attendees, which was the lowest turnout since 2015 when the games were held at NRG Stadium in Houston.

The turnout grabbed the attention of UIL Executive Director Dr. Jamey Harrison.

“We’ve already started discussions trying to identify what we can do differently, what we can do better,” Harrison said. “But also, we want to see if that’s an anomaly. It happened once, let’s see if that’s a trend or if that’s something that we rebound from this year.”

The 2024 attendance was an anomaly, down over 90,000 spectators from the record set in 2014. But declining attendance has been a trend since the 2020 COVID championships, decreasing every season since.

In January, Dave Campbell’s Matt Stepp wrote about a few factors which led to a lack of attendance, such as the games being held closer to Christmas and newer varsity programs like Richmond Randle and Austin Vandegrift having smaller fan bases. But Harrison calls the introduction of the expanded College Football Playoff, which held Saturday games that directly competed with the state championships, “a huge concern.” The Texas Longhorns and SMU Mustangs playing at the same time as high schools in their backyard like Austin Westlake and Highland Park convinced some families to stay home where they could watch both at the same time.

“We have to be more intentional in the way that we approach the marketing of this contest,” UIL Director of Athletics Ray Zepeda said. “(We’re) trying to convince people to actually get to the stadium, that they can experience something that they can’t experience at home with the streaming.”

THSCA Executive Director Joe Martin had a different theory on the declining attendance. Martin pointed out that the state of Florida, with open enrollment and Name, Image and Likeness earnings in the high school ranks, had eight state championships with 28,000 total spectators. He saw similar trends in Texas state championships from Class 5A DII and above. 

“I think some of our communities within the larger divisions don’t really know who those kids are, because some of those kids are moving quite a bit and they don’t grow up in those places,” Martin said. “The attendance in Class 4A DI and down was really good. Those games were celebrated. The ones above it were not as much, and it’s because of, we think, the movement in the state of Texas from school to school.”

The UIL made clear their main concern with the declining attendance is not a lack of revenue, but a lacking experience for high school communities.

“When we have these discussions, it’s not about ticket sales, ever,” Harrison said. “It’s about the experience that those communities and kids have when they’re in those games. We want that experience to be world class. We want that to be something they remember for the rest of their lives. And more people in the stands really enhances that experience.”