University of Akron is the talking point in many American media as their football team was ranked at the very bottom of NCAA Division I in terms of crowds. They actually buy their own tickets to artificially increase attendance.

American football isn’t a sport we cover regularly and college football was never among our main concerns. But we respectfully acknowledge this is where bulk of the world’s largest stadiums operate.

Yet today, instead of mentioning some of the 100,000+ stadia, we’ll focus on a recent controversy in the US: NCAA Division One’s least attractive stadium in terms of average turnout. Statistics for 2014 show that University of Akron drew the fewest fans across over 120 teams in Division I.

Exact number don’t seem too bad with 9,169 people every game, but 55,019 throughout the season is really poor considering the university quite recently opened a new 30,000-capacity stadium. InfoCision Stadium had cost some $62 million and requires annual payment of $4.3 million annually to cover the price tag.

Not only the building doesn’t generate matchday revenue, it even forces Akron University to buy their own tickets! While it may sound insane if you live in Europe and have no idea about NCAA athletics, the NCAA actually demands for Division I teams to have average crowds of 15,000+ in order to stay in the division. So in 2013, for example, the University of Akron bought 56,710 tickets for their team’s games ($10 each) just to boost statistics.

In a recent interview president of the university Scott Scarborough admitted he wouldn’t have built that stadium if it was up to him. Scarborough took over when the building was already in use, but he suggested a more proportional venue would have been the right spending, this one is just too big.