By Lizette Salto
@redlineproject
The Chicago Bears regular-season home attendance at Soldier Field has dropped 11.9% compared to last season, despite an 11–6 record and winning the NFC North Division. This decrease ranks the Bears last in the NFL for regular-season home attendance with 465,014 fans in eight home games.
The Bears played nine home games in 2024 — including one in England. The league switched to a 17-game schedule in 2021.
The drop comes at a time when the Bears are considering their stadium options. In an effort to expand home attendance, the organization has been publicly seeking a stadium with more space, and are currently exploring sites near northwest Indiana. This, however, has been brought to the attention of many Illinois lawmakers, motivating them to propose alternatives and consider the possibility of constructing a new stadium in Arlington Heights, where the Bears own the land from the former Arlington Race Course.
The Dallas Cowboys currently lead the NFL regular season home attendance with 743,934 fans. But the Cowboys have a resource that the Bears lack: a stadium with a large capacity. The Bears’ 101-year-old stadium, Soldier Field, has a capacity of 63,500 seats while Dallas has a capacity of 105,000 seats at the AT&T Stadium. With the lack of capacity at hand, the Bears are desperate to seek a bigger and better stadium.
Aside from stadium space contributing to the low attendance in home games, there is another issue that vastly impacts Bears fans — cost of tickets. According to a report from Gaming Today, the Bears’ ticket price averaged $370.73 per game, which wasn’t far off from the Cowboys, who lead the league in ticket prices. Dallas averaged around $400 per ticket in the 2025 season and still managed to get the most fans to attend.
Although Bears attendance dropped compared to previous years, it does not mean that they did not have a successful season. Under first-year head coach Ben Johnson, the Bears had their best season since 2018, including a playoff win against their historic rival, the Green Bay Packers.