Southwestern University

Southwestern University (SWU), a large state college in Stephenville, Texas, enrolls close

to 20,000 students. The school is a dominant force in the small city, with more students

during fall and spring than permanent residents.

Always a football powerhouse, SWU is usually in the top 20 in college football

rankings. Since the legendary Bo Pitterno was hired as its head coach in 2003 (in hopes of

reaching the elusive number 1 ranking), attendance at the five Saturday home games each

year increased. Prior to Pitterno’s arrival, attendance generally averaged 25,000 to 29,000 per

game. Season ticket sales bumped up by 10,000 just with the announcement of the new

coach’s arrival. Stephenville and SWU were ready to move to the big time!

The immediate issue facing SWU, however, was not NCAA ranking. It was capacity.

The existing SWU stadium, built in 1953, has seating for 54,000 fans. The following table

indicates attendance at each game for the past six years.

One of Pitterno’s demands upon joining SWU had been a stadium expansion, or

possibly even a new stadium. With attendance increasing, SWU administrators began to face

the issue head-on. Pitterno had wanted dormitories solely for his athletes in the stadium as an

additional feature of any expansion.

SWU’s president, Dr. Joel Wisner, decided it was time for his vice president of

development to forecast when the existing stadium would “max out”. The expansion was, in

his mind, a given. But Wisner needed to know how long he could wait. He also sought a

revenue projection, assuming an average ticket price of $50 in 2010 and a 5% increase each

year in future prices.

1. Develop a forecasting model, justifying its selection over other techniques, and

project attendance through 2011.

There are different techniques to forecast the attendance for the years 2010 and 2011.

The naïve-approach is to assume that demand in the next year/period will be equal to

demand in the most recent period. This will...