Gameday Staffing Issues Cause Problems at Jones AT&T Stadium
Saturday's Texas Tech Football game at Jones AT&T Stadium was the largest crowd in two seasons for a Texas Tech home game.
Unfortunately, the large crowd of 55,271 came with some problems for the gameday experience at Jones AT&T Stadium.
About halfway through the fourth quarter, Texas Tech Athletics released at statement discussing the problems with long lines and wait times for fans:
LUBBOCK, Texas – Texas Tech Athletics experienced staffing issues with many of its gameday part-time staff tonight, causing unacceptable delays at several concession stands on the Jones AT&T Stadium concourse. As of Saturday morning, Texas Tech had confirmation that a full staff would be present for what was expected to be a capacity crowd.
"Unfortunately, more than 50 percent of our gameday part-time staff did not show tonight, which includes concession workers and non-profit organizations for those areas. Texas Tech is already engaging in conversations with our concessions partner, Spectra, to improve the staffing issue for the remaining five home games this season."
When I arrived to Jones AT&T Stadium on Saturday, I saw a group of about 50 people waiting to get in the northeast gate to the stadium, but didn't think anything of it.
I talked with one industry source who said the group of part-time workers who no-showed may have disagreed with the pay rate for Saturday's work. However, that doesn't explain why non-profit organizations didn't staff their assigned concession stands on Saturday.
The announced attendance for Saturday's game was 55,271, which is 91 percent of Jones AT&T Stadium's capacity.
Spectra, which is a subsidiary of Philadelphia-based Comcast Spectacor, handles the concessions and gameday staffing at Jones AT&T Stadium
If you attended Saturday's game and would like to share your story with KFYO News, you can either leave it in the comments or send us an e-mail to news@kfyo.com