The South Bend years: the attendance that never came

1995 – 2012

The projection was the bid's foundation, and the record carries it in two figures: the Foundation's and the Associated Press's accounts put the expected draw at more than 150,000 visitors a year; the Tribune's retrospectives put the projection at 200,000 a year. Against either figure, the Hall underperformed from the start. It drew about 115,000 people in its first year, and about 60,000 annually after that — the series the Associated Press and the Foundation's own accounts carry. A weaker line of secondary compilations gives about 80,000 annually for the later years; it is printed here as a variant, and the 60,000 figure, resting on the wire and the Foundation, governs. By the late 1990s the Hall was already being criticized in print as a failure — the lack of corporate sponsorship and the poor turnout even during special events were the counts against it — and the criticism never entirely lifted, because the gap between the projection and the door never closed.

The late figures are the starkest. The Sports Business Journal's reading of the Foundation's Form 990 for 2011 — the Hall's last full year in South Bend — put the Hall of Fame's revenue at $1.313 million, of which only $177,314 came from admissions. A museum projected to draw 150,000 to 200,000 people a year was, at the end, taking in less than $180,000 at its own ticket windows. The building's second purpose kept it busier than the gate suggests: the Foundation's own 2008 account of the South Bend Hall notes that it hosted more than 200 events a year, rentals and civic functions stacked on top of the museum's calendar. The staff line across the era is short: Rick Walls directed the Hall before moving to head the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame; Lisa Malin, who had been with the Hall since it opened in South Bend in 1995, was named executive director in January 2008 after five months as interim director; and Kent Stephens, historian and curator, served the whole seventeen years, from the first night to the last afternoon. The economics told from the press and official record amount to this: the gate never met the promise, the promise had been the reason for the bonds, and the bonds remained. What the gate figures do not carry is the Hall's school and civic life, which ran on a different ledger and is told in the next entry.

Sources:

1. Associated Press and National Football Foundation accounts — the projection of more than 150,000 visitors a year, the 115,000 of the first year and the 60,000 annually thereafter.
2. South Bend Tribune, December 2013 retrospective — the 200,000-a-year projection figure.
3. Sports Business Journal, November 2012 — the Foundation's Form 990 for 2011: $1.313 million in revenue, $177,314 of it from admissions.
4. National Football Foundation release, January 22, 2008 — Lisa Malin's appointment as executive director, her service at the Hall since its 1995 South Bend opening, Rick Walls's tenure before her, and the Hall's more than 200 events a year.
5. College Football Hall of Fame, institutional history — the late-1990s criticism of the South Bend Hall as a failure, for lack of corporate sponsorship and poor turnout at special events.