LSU Football: Capacity changes loom for Tiger Stadium in 2020

How many LSU football fans will be allowed in Tiger Stadium in 2020?

Tiger Stadium’s seating capacity is a little over 102,000, but there’s almost zero chance we see that many LSU football fans flood Death Valley this fall.

Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Tiger Stadium will undoubtedly have a reduced seating capacity.

But how many fewer fans will be allowed into games? Or will fans be allowed at all?

For now, those questions remain unanswered, though LSU has already started working on inevitable changes for the 2020 season.

LSU announced this week that season ticketholders and student tickets would be prioritized, but no seating capacity changes have been announced yet.

“In order to decide how we are going to distribute tickets and to whom, we need to know our capacity first. Once we know that and our final schedule, we can finalize our plans. We’ll keep our ticketholders up to date along the way,” said LSU in a statement (via The Advocate’s Brooks Kubena).

There’s no doubt the Tigers would like as many fans in the stadium that’s safely possible, but there are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to how that would work. We haven’t seen many events with fans, so it’s unclear what the possible effects of allowing fans into a football game would be.

A new schedule throws a wrench into plans for LSU football

On top of the capacity issue, LSU is also having to deal with a new schedule. The SEC announced this week that the program will play a 10 game conference only schedule. The season will start on September 26.

The Tigers’ two additional SEC opponents haven’t been announced yet. Dates could change as well.

I doubt this will factor too much into capacity plans, but it appears that LSU would like their schedule to be finalized before they move on to stadium capacity plans.

This season is going to be weird. And there are going to be hiccups. But it appears we’re at least going to see football played — even though it won’t be played the way we’re accustomed to seeing it played.