Just recently, the Cincinnati Bengals announced the team had sold out of season tickets and for the first time in a long time, needed to create a waiting list.
No wonder — Joe Burrow’s one of the most prolific quarterbacks in the NFL already and the Bengals appear to be annual contenders after a successful, lengthy rebuild.
And as it turns out, the proof is right there in the numbers, too. Greg Auman of the Tampa Bay Times looked at the data from 2019 to 2011 and found out the Bengals had one of the three biggest boosts in average home attendance over that span:
Biggest gains in average home attendance for NFL teams (playing in same stadium) from 2019 to 2021:
Bucs +13,474
Bengals +13,146
Titans +4,059Raiders +8,636 in move to Las Vegas
Chargers +38,490 in move to SoFi— Greg Auman (@gregauman) July 10, 2022
Two of the top three, of course, had quite a bit of ground to make up after struggling for so many years.
But onlookers will note that the arrivals of Tom Brady and Burrow happened to encourage those gains. Over the span of just a few years, those Bengals are now a must-have ticket.