Attendance

[Singeril]

I saw bits of a few of the opening games over the last few nights. The attendance looked to be extremely disappointing in both Terre Haute and Des Moines. With the Shockers now being out of the conference (WSU seemed to cause many teams to have their best home crowds of the season whenever WSU visited---not to mention, they always sold out at home), this doesn't look good on broadcasts or in the eyes of the recruits. Anything being done in the various cities to boost attendance? With Creighton and WSU having left over the last 5 years, the Valley attendance is really taking a hit. I wonder how this will translate to Arch Madness as well. And yes, I realize that this is Christmas Break on Campus. But, that also allows more freedom for non-students to attend games as well.

[Jsnhbe1Birds]

ISUr attendance is a joke at best. The community and students are abysmal.

[Singeril]

I'm guessing that UNI is drawing the best crowds at home. I haven't seen their attendance figures although I saw part of their game vs. Xavier on TV. It didn't look sold out by any stretch of the imagination. Drawing the top tier programs to the Valley home floors is tough. Poor attendance figures aren't going to make that task any easier.

[BEARZ77]

Actually Bradley leads followed by ISUr and MSU. UNI is a distant 4th. UNI really hasn't drawn that well down thru the years for a program that achieves at the level it does. With their quality teams you'd think they would have been much higher in overall attendance.

[Bear4Life]

MO State drew 4,600 for the Loyola game. That used to be horrible for us, but now it's not bad. Especially considering it was raining really hard, really cold, and a late starting game with students out on break.

If we keep winning I would think there will be solid crowds as the season progresses, but probably not like it should be...

[BCPanther]

Outside of Xavier (~300 short of a sellout) and last night (~1200 short of a sellout), UNIs crowds have been brutal. Less than 4000 for every other game. Saving grace is in our building it still gets fairly loud due to design and size.

I'd imagine UNI will end up averaging between 4500 and 5000 for league games. The killer for us is lots of Sunday afternoons and only 1 Saturday night which are typically our biggest crowds, but we're all slaves to TV now...

[tribecalledquest]

Outside of Xavier (~300 short of a sellout) and last night (~1200 short of a sellout), UNIs crowds have been brutal. Less than 4000 for every other game. Saving grace is in our building it still gets fairly loud due to design and size.

I'd imagine UNI will end up averaging between 4500 and 5000 for league games. The killer for us is lots of Sunday afternoons and only 1 Saturday night which are typically our biggest crowds, but we're all slaves to TV now...

It's a different world today. Not good, bad or anything. Just different. Schools are going to have to adjust.

[BradleyFan71]

Actually Bradley leads followed by ISUr and MSU. UNI is a distant 4th. UNI really hasn't drawn that well down thru the years for a program that achieves at the level it does. With their quality teams you'd think they would have been much higher in overall attendance.

Bradley doesn't report attendance, only tickets sold.

[mvfcfan]

The biggest issue is that everyone in the MVC has struggled somewhat for quite a while now. Attendance was great when our teams were good, but now our attendance isn't so great because the product isn't as good. Improving the product on the floor is the key thing that is going to bring people in.

Let's also be completely honest with ourselves. Most (if not all) of our schools our not the primary school that fans in their respective city cheer for. I know there are far more IU, Purdue, and Notre Dame fans in Terre Haute than there are ISU fans. I'm guessing there are more Illini fans in Bloomington/Normal than ILST fans. I could go on and on. The people that are diehards will go no matter what, but the people that aren't won't typically go when the team is down.

Lowering ticket prices could also help. At the Hulman Center it is $25 to sit in the lower bowl and $8 to sit in the upper bowl. Well the Hulman Center has been 80% empty for all of our games this season. The team also isn't that good. No one that is not a serious ISU fan is going to pay $25 to watch us play. I think $15 might be more reasonable. Most people anymore seem to just buy the $8 tickets and sit down low anyways.

It also seems like at least at ISU (don't know about other MVC schools) we do a terrible job of advertising that we are D1. If you took a poll in Terre Haute I bet more than half of the people would say that we are D2. We also seem to do a terrible job of advertising when our games are.

Last but not least I think TV has hurt most of the MVC schools. Now that most of our games are televised it's pretty easy for people to just sit at home and watch it as opposed to buying a ticket, maybe paying to park, spending money on concessions, etc. Even if our games weren't televised there are so many other games that are televised that I'm not sure it would make a difference.

[COUTEAU]

The biggest issue is that everyone in the MVC has struggled somewhat for quite a while now. Attendance was great when our teams were good, but now our attendance isn't so great because the product isn't as good. Improving the product on the floor is the key thing that is going to bring people in.

Let's also be completely honest with ourselves. Most (if not all) of our schools our not the primary school that fans in their respective city cheer for. I know there are far more IU, Purdue, and Notre Dame fans in Terre Haute than there are ISU fans. I'm guessing there are more Illini fans in Bloomington/Normal than ILST fans. I could go on and on. The people that are diehards will go no matter what, but the people that aren't won't typically go when the team is down.

Lowering ticket prices could also help. At the Hulman Center it is $25 to sit in the lower bowl and $8 to sit in the upper bowl. Well the Hulman Center has been 80% empty for all of our games this season. The team also isn't that good. No one that is not a serious ISU fan is going to pay $25 to watch us play. I think $15 might be more reasonable. Most people anymore seem to just buy the $8 tickets and sit down low anyways.

It also seems like at least at ISU (don't know about other MVC schools) we do a terrible job of advertising that we are D1. If you took a poll in Terre Haute I bet more than half of the people would say that we are D2. We also seem to do a terrible job of advertising when our games are.

Last but not least I think TV has hurt most of the MVC schools. Now that most of our games are televised it's pretty easy for people to just sit at home and watch it as opposed to buying a ticket, maybe paying to park, spending money on concessions, etc. Even if our games weren't televised there are so many other games that are televised that I'm not sure it would make a difference.

You could basicaly substitute The Ford Center for Hulman
Nortre Dame with Kentucky
Evansville for Terre Haute
Then insert, UE for ISU and you pretty much hit The ACES attendance woes, directly on the the head, as well.