What Do You Think Are The Biggest Factors For Attendance?

[milksteak]

1. Winning: Draws attendance from the "casuals"
2. Community: Team has to be established in the community. Butler is still struggling in this area remarkably.
3. Gameday experience: Parking, amenities, food vending, etc.
4. Date/Time
5. Quality of Opponents: Less important than date/time from my experience. Butler has sold out a lot of terrible Big East games that were in good time slots. They've also managed to not sell out good games in bad time slots.

[SJHooper]

Surprised Butler hasn't been a big part of the local community. If SJ had the exact recent history as Butler, being consistently ranked and even making back to back championship games, the Garden would be sold out all the time. Diehards like us will go to games anyway just to support them, but as others have said, the "casual" fan will only want to come to see a ranked team with good possibility of a deep tourney run. Most casual fans don't even really care until February when things start to heat up for March Madness. I feel like SJ v. G'Town games at the Garden always have surprisingly good crowds regardless of the type of season each team is having. I guess it's the local alumni bases having a central location to go to and some of the mystique of the old Ewing v. Mullin era games seems to still be there. Going to the Garden is an experience. As I said, going on the train, grabbing a few beers or a coffee, sitting back and relaxing for an hour seeing more SJ fans picked up at each stop, then walking up to the Garden and getting a few more beers before going back to comfy seats in a great arena. They have great food, great beer, and a great atmosphere. The place is a shrine. Then if the Johnnies win a big game, Stout is always popping afterward. I went after we beat Cuse last year and I had to wait on a 30 min line then couldn't move when I got in. A few years back when we beat G'Town to seemingly be on our way to the tourney (never happened) the place was also a mob scene. The fans are in the NYC area. Like ants in the ground just waiting for the season to change, SJ fans are mostly in hibernation mode due to all the losing and mediocrity year after year. Once we show legitimate signs of life, the fans will come out. Going to Carnesecca is not an experience at all...it's like going to a HS gym. Mix constant losing with a terrible on campus arena and you get a ghost town. Still shocked we are in NYC with lots of big shot alumni and no one has donated to re-do Carnesecca. The money is oozing out of our city and we still can't get funding for it.

I honestly think I'd do a better job marketing SJ than they do now. The Mets (when they were bad before our great pitchers came) used to offer vouchers for a ticket plus a slice of pizza and a drink all for $25 or something like that. It was a great deal. If SJ made a deal with the Garden to do something similar, say a ticket, a beer, and something to eat for $25 I guarantee you there would be better attendance. The beers alone at the Garden are like $12-15 and to get a decent ticket you are looking at $80-100 minimum. Then you factor in a round trip ticket on the LIRR which is easily $20+, by the end of the day you can easily spend $150 just for one person. Maybe they can work a deal with the LIRR to have a combined round trip ticket to Penn along with a SJ ticket for $30? We already advertise on many LIRR platforms on billboards which is cool to see on the way into the city. Like I said, we need creativity. The MVP points thing isn't working. Just greatly lower the cost and make packages to get more casual fans in on the weekend or give quality giveaways.

[milksteak]

Surprised Butler hasn't been a big part of the local community.

It'll be a battle for Butler for at least another decade. Unless you live here, it's hard to comprehend just how big IU Basketball is in Indianapolis.

[BigEast1]

Just win baby. Put a consistent winning product on the floor and everything else will take care itself.

[TBC Alum]

- Increasingly, cost. When Rutgers wants $40 a head to see a game, it's getting a little out of reach for a casual fan. This is starting to be a real problem.

I agree with this. If you look at the Corn, their attendance last year was top 10-ish (don't know the exact figure.) A mediocre-at-best team can pack the house with tickets starting at $10 and maxing at $30 for B1G single games and $7-20 for the remaining non-conf.

[jfan]

For Creighton, winning helps sustain our attendance, but the change in venue also had a large impact. The last 4 years at the Civic, (which has been previously described) we averaged around 7100 in a 9500 capacity venue. All 4 years were NCAA tournament years. The first year in the Quest, (now Clink) 2004, attendance jumped to 12000, an almost 5000 jump in average attendance. Clearly the new venue made a big difference. We jumped to 15900 when the building added about 2000 seats and we now stay around the 17000-17500 mark (except NIT years). Part of the increase was the brand new building, part was that we kept winning and part is the atmosphere in the building is fun.(drinking helps) I suspect W&B 77 is correct in that winning is a necessary ingredient to sustained attendance, but the new venue had a tremendous initial impact on the attendance.

[Wizard of Westroads]

Just an opinion, but I think Seton Hall is blowing it by not opening up their arena. Charge $5 or so for the seats up top and try to fill it. Give away beer. Do anything, but get some people out to see this team. They have one more year with Delgado & Co., need to take advantage of it.

[Edrick]

Butler is not only in a city with NFL and NBA playing during college basketball season, they are within an hour of two Big Ten schools that also happen to be in the Top 20.

That said, they'll average near a sell-out. You can't fit more people that the 9k(ish) max.

[sciencejay]

I don't necessarily disagree with anyone's previous posts, but I think the answer is probably unique to each school. As was mentioned, CU couldn't fill the old Civic, even when Kyle Korver was carrying us to MVC championships and the NCAA tourney. The main reason was that Omahans hated the Civic--bad/unsafe parking options (we are not a public transportation kind of town). In addition, Nebrasketball was solid in the 90's, so I think that dampened Jays support at the Civic as well. Then the Qwest/CLink opened with an enormous amount of well-lit parking surrounding the new arena with great drinking/eating options, the Husker program tanked and voila--the numbers went way up!

Omaha is definitely a college sports town (as has been described), so while the Jays have been successful (and NU not), people have made it a custom to come hang out for a couple of hours 16-18 times a year, have a few drinks with friends and maybe watch a little basketball. The key here is in Omaha is that the basketball is secondary for most people. It's just a social event. When the Huskers play in Omaha, at least half of the people in my section come in Husker attire. But then next week they are back in Jays attire. I suppose things might be different if NU were good, or if the series were more competitive (Jays won 6 straight and something like 16 of last 18 games). So for many games against inferior opponents, even though there is over 15K in the building, most aren't paying attention to the game or maybe just passively. If something cool happens, they all rush to watch the replay on the screens. However, those people are also there for the big opponents and are then part of a much better atmosphere.

I realize that other schools can't replicate what CU has. There is pro competition, more diverse metropolitan areas with many more competing social events, etc, affecting your attendance. Winning certainly helps and may be the biggest factor, but I suspect what one poster mentioned as a problem for Providence is what helps CU too--we have a ton of well-paid alumni (docs, lawyers, pharmacists, dentists, etc.) that tend to remain in the area. There aren't many reasonably sized cities close to Omaha--Des Moines is 150 miles, KC is 180 and Denver, St. Louis, Chicago and Minneapolis are 400-600 miles away--so people stay here.

[cujaysfan]

i think CU probably has a higher distribution of corporate tix which results in some of the phenomena described above by science jay