It seems more than likely there will be fans at Gillette Stadium this season, but the question is how many?
It remains unclear at this point whether or not it will be at full capacity, but speaking in virtual panel discussions at this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Patriots president Jonathan Kraft made the case for it.
“Once vaccines have been available in a community for a long enough period of time where anyone who’s wanted one could’ve gotten it and reached two weeks past their second shot, just to take the outlying point, then I don’t know why you shouldn’t be at full capacity,” he said, via Michael Silverman of The Boston Globe. “It’s sort of intellectually dishonest to say we’re going to be at a quarter percent of capacity even though theoretically you have herd immunity in the local population. At some point you have to get back to living your lives.”
Right now, sporting venues in Massachusetts -- TD Garden, Fenway Park -- are at 12% capacity.
“As President Biden said, April 19, (the vaccine’s) available to everybody in America,” Kraft said. “Clearly, there’s a backlog so let’s say anybody who really wants it will have it by June 1 or June 15 -- we’re still months out from the start of the NFL season (in August).”
Week 1 of the NFL season will begin Sept. 9.