Valley Attendance

[rlh04d]

Not making excuses. But it should be noted Illinois State reports "butts in the seats" not paid attendance.

I believe SIU does the same.

This is true and given the quality of the product, I think 54% capacity is decent. I could care less if it was 10% though tracking attendance seems silly to me.

Yeah, why would attendance be relevant?

Because Wichita State is paying Gregg Marshall $1.75 million, and SIU is paying Hinson $250k.

We're in the same conference. We get the same (lack of) money from television deals. We get the same NCAA tournament payouts. The difference is attendance, cost of tickets, and booster (fan) donations. Attendance is very relevant to the long-term success of a program.

[mvcfan]

Attendance is one of the true indicators of program health or lack of health. There are some really unhealthy programs in the MVC. Wait until the nationally relevant programs want to give athletes a stipend. Healthy programs won't bat an eye. Unhealthy programs will .............

[PantherSigEp]

Well that's pretty interesting. I do recall seeing an article somewhere this year that NCAA attendance is down across the board this year (for mens basketball).

Impossible. Didn't you hear about all these new changes the NCAA put in place to make the games more high scoring and "exciting"?

And we all know about the infallibility of the NCAA

[Drakey]

Attendance in the Valley is bad this year because nobody is very good. I think Drake has the potential to have much better attendance, but after five years of Phelpsball, it will take time. I'm a little surprised MSU isn't getting better attendance.

Why would anybody count actual attendance when other schools are counting paid attendance? You might as well ge the most favorable number out there that you can.

[MSUDuo]

Attendance in the Valley is bad this year because nobody is very good. I think Drake has the potential to have much better attendance, but after five years of Phelpsball, it will take time. I'm a little surprised MSU isn't getting better attendance.

Why would anybody count actual attendance when other schools are counting paid attendance? You might as well ge the most favorable number out there that you can.

When you add coming off a bad year to not playing anybody at home, you'll get our attendance every time in Springfield. My hope is that we can have a nice little win streak headed into the WSU game. If we drop either at Bradley or Loyola, I think we won't see a very highly attended game all year.

[BradleyBrave]

A traditional attendance power, Bradley's attendance has been in a downward spiral pretty much for the last 5 years. It's no secret that attendance is tied to performance, and the product has been below average during that time span. Add the socioeconomic factors that are at play in 2013, and it's even worse.

I will say though that the BU number is skewed because of the 2 regular season games at the on-campus women's arena that BU continues to try and spin off as a Carver Arena alternative. Paid attendance for both of those games was in the 3,000's, which is 3/4 full for that 4,200 seat morgue. The author of the article I am sure didn't know that, since he only mentioned the 11,000 seat downtown arena. If you take away those 2 games, BU is averaging over 6K downtown at Carver, which is good for 2nd in the league, but a far, far cry from what attendance used to be. The only cure is winning, and unfortunately 2 slip-ups against Division 1 bottom-feeders isn't going to inspire anyone to come downtown to see the Braves. Attendance always spikes during league play, so hopefully BU can right the ship and actually be a factor this year and get some folks interested again.

[Ricardo del Rio]

I know Loyola's attendance has been a source of consternation for MVC fans, but I would not expect it to improve very dramatically right away. There hasn't been a marquee opponent in the non-con this year, and ticket prices are considerably higher than they were just a few years ago (approximately 25-30% higher). However, I expect that the conference season will have a couple of near sellouts and the intensity of MVC play will draw many more fans and students each year.

Last year, home attendance for conference games averaged 2348 (52% of capacity), but that was the first year after the departure of our biggest rival, Butler. We used to routinely draw 4000-4400 for Butler games just three or four years ago. The only conference game with more than 3000 last year was against crosstown conference rival UIC.

In the MVC I expect the intensity, better quality of opposition (especially WSU), and high numbers of Chicago area alums of other schools (principally SIU, ISUr, and Bradley) to bump up the conference attendance in the first year to around 2800 or so. As the students and alumni get into the spirit of MVC competition and the venue becomes more familiar, I'd expect Loyola to routinely average over 3200 for conference games in ensuing years. Being in the MVC should also help with scheduling better non-con competition (most of this year's schedule was set long before we joined), and if Loyola ever challenges for the top half of the league it could bump up close to capacity.

4,500 is a pretty small gym

I wonder, if Mr. Elgin really gave adequate thought to the expansion process. Just wondering.

[agrinut]

Attendance in the Valley is bad this year because nobody is very good. I think Drake has the potential to have much better attendance, but after five years of Phelpsball, it will take time. I'm a little surprised MSU isn't getting better attendance.

Why would anybody count actual attendance when other schools are counting paid attendance? You might as well ge the most favorable number out there that you can.

When you have the technology to give the more accurate number why wouldn't you do that. MSU is currently averaging less than the have season tickets sold. I wish we had the problem Wichita had but we simply do not.

[ptownbraves]

A traditional attendance power, Bradley's attendance has been in a downward spiral pretty much for the last 5 years. It's no secret that attendance is tied to performance, and the product has been below average during that time span. Add the socioeconomic factors that are at play in 2013, and it's even worse.

I will say though that the BU number is skewed because of the 2 regular season games at the on-campus women's arena that BU continues to try and spin off as a Carver Arena alternative. Paid attendance for both of those games was in the 3,000's, which is 3/4 full for that 4,200 seat morgue. The author of the article I am sure didn't know that, since he only mentioned the 11,000 seat downtown arena. If you take away those 2 games, BU is averaging over 6K downtown at Carver, which is good for 2nd in the league, but a far, far cry from what attendance used to be. The only cure is winning, and unfortunately 2 slip-ups against Division 1 bottom-feeders isn't going to inspire anyone to come downtown to see the Braves. Attendance always spikes during league play, so hopefully BU can right the ship and actually be a factor this year and get some folks interested again.

There are many season ticket holders who aren't pleased with the venue change since they get cut out of a couple games, unless you are a high-roller season ticket holder. BU administration is between a rock and a hard place though. They are trying to balance pleasing their long-term fan-base with attracting new fans by bringing it on-campus to the students. I can understand that the administration is trying to bring basketball to the students on-campus rather than having them make the 2 mile trek to the Civic Center, but it's anyone's guess whether this strategy will actually create more fans or just alienate the current fan-base.

[glm38]

Interesting article in the News Leader today about the Bears attendance woes this year. Very surprising to me that we have the highest ticket prices in the Valley.

http://www.news-leader.com/article/2013 ... ts-prather