During the month of October, a lot of people (9,786 in 2010) read my blog because of my blog post about possible Halloween costumes. Throughout the rest of the year, my brother is pretty much the only reader. So Dave, this one’s for you. Towards the end of my High School career (not sure exactly when), I did what everyone else in the state of Wisconsin does – I added Dave and I to the Green Bay Packers Season Ticket Waitlist. Ironically, in the days before stubhub and ebay, our Dad had a chance at some Packers tickets while he and our Mom lived in California for a few years. If he found a way to pick them up, today I’d probably be sitting in section 120, row 10. Roughly 30 years later, Dave and I got in on the ground floor of a 70,000 story building (in 2010 more like 83,881, 2011 more like 88,595, and 2012 more like 96,000).
Every year, the Packers send Waitlist members a postcard to let you know where you stand on the list. I haven’t always tracked my progress but in wading through facebook posts and old e-mails to Dave about our status, I was able to dig up the following data.
| Year | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 |
| Season Ticket Waitlist Number | 65,959 | Data unavailable |
64,276 | Data unavailable |
62,556 | 62,139 | 61,656 | 61,206 |
In fitting a linear trendline to this data, I yielded the following: y = -685.85x + 66395. This means two things:
- We’re moving up an average of 685.85 spots each year (less in recent years so unfortunately winning doesn’t help our cause). Since this rate is decreasing over time (it was 732.13 last year), I realize an exponential trendline may provide a better fit but it’s just too depressing. I’m hoping that fluctuations in the Packers’ performance will smooth this out over time, making the linear trendline a better estimate.
- Finding the x-intercept shows that our name will come up in ≈89.24 years. However, assuming the average decrease of 685.85 continues, the 2013 expansion of 6,600 seats could bump this estimate down another 2.4 years (assuming everyone takes the maximum four ticket once their name comes up). We’ll see how this plays out next year.
I’ll be sure to update this graph each year for the rest of my life…then pass it on to my grandchildren.
And for the record, I’m one spot ahead of Dave on the list.
