Ravens will limit attendance to less than 14,000 people at home games

It’s looking more and more like NFL stadiums will have limited fan attendance in 2020, if any at all.

The latest signal comes from the Baltimore Ravens, who just announced that attendance at M&T Stadium will be drastically reduced this year.

The team just sent an email to season ticket holders that they are limiting attendance to less than 14,000 people this year due to safety protocols put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The stadium has a capacity of about 71,000 fans, so that’s more than half of the total capacity being cut down for the 2020 season.

“To offer a proper level of safety for fans who want to attend games, a reduction in capacity is necessary,” said Ravens president Dick Cass in a press release. “We are disappointed that this will be a disruption for many ticket buyers, but we have an obligation to our fans and our community to keep M&T Bank Stadium as safe as possible.”

This is easily the biggest signal thus far of how much fan attendance will be affected at football games in 2020. We’ve seen various football teams/programs signal that they would have reduced capacity this year, but announcing more than half of the allotted stadium capacity won’t be used by an NFL team is easily the biggest one.

Don’t be surprised if the Bengals come up with a similar plan that sees fan attendance at Paul Brown Stadium drastically reduced for the upcoming season.