One way to avoid the problem of not being able to put butts in seats is to cover the seats with fabric.
And that’s one of the possible strategies for Sun Life Stadium, where the powers-that-be have realized the place is too big.
Specifically, Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald explains that the team has the largest upper deck in the NFL, with 35,000 seats. The Dolphins want to reduce that amount. The number could be lowered by removing seats, as the Redskins have done. Or tarps could be applied, which then would be removed for, say, a future Super Bowl.
Likewise, the team believes that the stadium doesn’t have enough seats in the lower bowl. “We have the furthest distance from the sidelines with our lower bowl in the NFL,” team president Mike Dee said. “We have the fewest number of seats in that lower seating level between the 20 yard lines, between the goal lines, in the NFL. Not just the facilities that compete for Super Bowls. We’ve got to fix that.”
And so a renovation could be coming. Once they figure out who would pay for it.
The bigger challenge is to get people to pay for seats, and the cheapest fix for that problem would be to cover up the ones that chronically don’t sell.
Then again, based on recent trends in Miami, they may need to cover up half the seats.
UPDATE 10:18 p.m. ET: In my haste to get a few items posted during the gap between the completion of my annual physical on Monday morning and the two-hour drive home, I didn’t realize that Armando’s story was originally posted in January. Since then, Dee has said that tarps won’t be used. We (or more accurately “I” since I screwed this one up) apologize for the error.