Attendance Drop...Bigly

[gwhuskyfan]

Yikes...not good.

UConn Men’s Basketball: Many Factors Point To Poor Attendance All Season

 

[sdhusky]

UConn On the Run (10-0) With Thompson

''We struggled,'' said Perno. ''We went through a terrible first half, shooting 12 for 30. The strength of this team has been that there has always been someone else to pick up the slack for us. But we have not played well the last two games. Things really exploded for us after we beat Syracuse. Suddenly, everyone began to take notice of us. It's unbelievable what is happening. More than 12,000 seats have already been sold for our game against St.John's on Jan. 17 at the Hartford Civic Center.''​

 

[djct1999]

Its simple.....attendance, no matter how good we are, will always suffer while our opponents are East Carolina, Tulane, and South Florida.

 

[gampelcrazies]

To be honest I don't think it has to do with the conference. I think he has everything to do with how we are playing. If we were top 25 all year and playing well people would have showed up. Also the weird start times didn't help

 

[John]

Its simple.....attendance, no matter how good we are, will always suffer while our opponents are East Carolina, Tulane, and South Florida.

deadly witch's cocktail of poor dates, poor start times, poor opponents, poor results.

 

[August_West]

BullScalito

We are talking about a team who has given us 4 titles in 18 years. They deserved a pass and our support no matter what league we are playing in and how poorly the season was going.

We have multiple years down like this one and I start to buy the conference/performance metric.


Our fan base is made up of pathetic front runners.

This program deserved better from us, if for nothing else, then as thanks for what they have given us previously.

 

[John]

BullScalito

We are talking about a team who has given us 4 titles in 18 years. They deserved a pass and our support no matter what league we are playing in and how poorly the season was going.

We have multiple years down like this one and I start to buy the conference/performance metric.


Our fan base is made up of pathetic front runners.

This program deserved better from us, if for nothing else, then as thanks for what they have given us previously.

Garbage Fans ®

 

[UConnTrumbull]

I think it's a common trend among college sports in general, today. That being said, our fans are pretty fair-weather. Not enough fans that are truly invested in the program. I go to every football game despite living an hour away because there are only 6-7 per year and tailgating is fun as hell. Basketball is obviously a different beast when you have many more games, usually on weekdays or late Sunday versus NFL playoffs

 

[Fishy]

Bad conference, bizarre start times and a bad team mean poor attendance.

That's the reality of it. Too many other things competing for people's time, money and attention these days - if your product drops off, you suffer.

 

[rip7774]

Bad conference, bizarre start times and a bad team mean poor attendance.

That's the reality of it. Too many other things competing for people's time, money and attention these days - if your product drops off, you suffer.

Absolutely. In my 22 years of watching UConn, saw some of the ugliest offensive performances ever. Houston and that Auburn game on national TV cemented Diallo elsewhere possibly. I think much like football, it helps to present an exciting brand of ball and we certainly weren't that for much of the season. By the end, it had turned but while they were good kids but it was fragile and the team could go in the tank pretty quick if the ball didn't bounce their way. #NeedMoreVitalMindedKids

 

[HuskyHawk]

Bad conference, bizarre start times and a bad team mean poor attendance.

That's the reality of it. Too many other things competing for people's time, money and attention these days - if your product drops off, you suffer.

Yep. Attendance for almost all sporting events is down. Aside from other things competing for attention, HDTV on a big screen is a pretty compelling alternative to attending the game compared to the past (no TV in many cases, and lousy TV when available).

 

[jibsey]

Team has to be good and competitive. People are not getting in their cars to come out and watch Tulane and Central Florida, though I will say this if we were nationally ranked along with several others in our conference like Cincy, SMU, Temple, or Houston we would get the big crowds back.

 

[UConnfan8]

BullScalito

We are talking about a team who has given us 4 titles in 18 years. They deserved a pass and our support no matter what league we are playing in and how poorly the season was going.

We have multiple years down like this one and I start to buy the conference/performance metric.


Our fan base is made up of pathetic front runners.

This program deserved better from us, if for nothing else, then as thanks for what they have given us previously.

While I agree that the team deserves support from fans, 100%....the team has already had multiple down years....regular season at least. We haven't finished better than 5th in our conference in 3 years...and its a bad conference. Just saying....while its on the fans to realize that we have been a powerhouse for over 20 years now, and that (hopefully) we will improve and just to stick it out, its not like our product for years now has been very good...certainly has turned many many people away.

 

[superjohn]

When you have your worst team in 30 years, a bad slate of games and some weird start times your attendance is going to suffer, this isn't rocket science.

 

[kobe]

You know how the MAC plays football games on like Tuesday's and Wednesday's? That's basically what's happened to the American. We played a freaking Sunday 8pm game this season. I'd almost rather go back to just being on local television and get 7pm weekday games, 12/2/4 pm Saturday games and maybe one or two Sunday games a year.

 

[Ts5034]

Its been said countless times. The casual fans just dont care about the teams in the AAC like Tulane and ECU. The ECU game is the example where it was up against the conference championship games Sunday night at 6 pm. I think the attendance was a little over 5,000.

 

[Robertelamin]

The season was already lost by the time they got back from Maui so I'm not surprised at all. The scheduling does need to be fixed somehow. How do you let your "premier" OOC game be at 2pm on a weekday two days before Christmas? I don't think you can blame that on the conference.

 

[boog204]

Been summarized above already... But, re: our fan base. We tend to be fickle and self-conscious. If something in the interwebs someone says something the least bit negative, we flock to defend ourselves and cry that we have been wronged. We need validation for our school and ourself. The creator of the negative info then becomes persona non grata and a hack. Now, if that same writer soon thereafter praises us, we fawn over them as a true analyst. This has happened in recent years with Gottlieb, Bilas, Doyel, and others who have received their own threads both positively and negatively. For example, Gottlieb was the worst until he talked about JC upon his retirement. He was then the most "honest" bball expert out there and we wished that all could be similar.

This carries over to our fan base who tend to participate when the grass is as green as can be. Now that things are a little dicey, they bail. Couple that with a lame conference, bad start times, eh facilities and attendance dwindles. Now if were Pre-Kentucky Calipari Memphis, going 32-2 every year, we would still have crowds en masse. People could be bludgeoned by falling ceiling tiles and no one would care as long as were winning.

 

[LoveMeSomeUC]

Been summarized above already... But, re: our fan base. We tend to be fickle and self-conscious. If something in the interwebs someone says something the least bit negative, we flock to defend ourselves and cry that we have been wronged. We need validation for our school and ourself. The creator of the negative info then becomes persona non grata and a hack. Now, if that same writer soon thereafter praises us, we fawn over them as a true analyst. This has happened in recent years with Gottlieb, Bilas, Doyel, and others who have received their own threads both positively and negatively. For example, Gottlieb was the worst until he talked about JC upon his retirement. He was then the most "honest" bball expert out there and we wished that all could be similar.

This carries over to our fan base who tend to participate when the grass is as green as can be. Now that things are a little dicey, they bail. Couple that with a lame conference, bad start times, eh facilities and attendance dwindles. Now if were Pre-Kentucky Calipari Memphis, going 32-2 every year, we would still have crowds en masse. People could be bludgeoned by falling ceiling tiles and no one would care as long as were winning.

Couldn't agree more! Yes our conference is awful and yes we stink in it, but if we were the Gonzaga of the AAC or Memphis in the coach cal area of the c-usa we would be okay with it...dominating and getting 1-2 seeds in the tourney things would be just fine in Huskyland!

 

[Dogdeacon]

The fair weather fan base label is unfair. Take anything and switch it from good to lesser quality and numbers will drop. Meaning going from Syracuse, GTown, StJ, Prov, NDame, WVU etc.. to current slate of games regardless of UConn's record and team is a decrease in quality of product and smart consumers buy less. Unfair to characterize that behavior as fair weather whereas in any other context it'd be educated consumers making smart choices.

 

[Hoophound]

I don't think fans will be flooding in for an undefeated team in this conference. People don't even know what the AAC is. Casual fans of P5 conference teams have never heard of it. It is pathetic.

I feel so physically ill from watching us play horribly against these nobody programs that I can't even watch on tv 2/3 of the time. I watch highlights/lowlights after and read all about it.

This is a situation that is going to force us back to the Big East. If we bounce back next year, we'll see what the attendance looks like but I suspect it will be a big yawn from the fans to see us pummel USF, Tulane etc. like we should. If we don't bounce back next year, we have other issues to deal with too.

 

[whaler11]

The season was already lost by the time they got back from Maui so I'm not surprised at all. The scheduling does need to be fixed somehow. How do you let your "premier" OOC game be at 2pm on a weekday two days before Christmas? I don't think you can blame that on the conference.

That game was well attended.

They agreed to play the game at 2pm so that the Auburn players would have more time to get home for Christmas.

 

[whaler11]

You know how the MAC plays football games on like Tuesday's and Wednesday's? That's basically what's happened to the American. We played a freaking Sunday 8pm game this season. I'd almost rather go back to just being on local television and get 7pm weekday games, 12/2/4 pm Saturday games and maybe one or two Sunday games a year.

The ACC has a sunday night television package. Somehow they have survived having those games played at that time for years and years.

 

[Dogdeacon]

The ACC has a sunday night television package. Somehow they have survived having those games played at that time for years and years.

A HUGE difference between the ACC and even Big East/much less AAC is that in ACC country those games have been on network TV forever and are part of culture. When I was in NC mid-90's random ACC games would displace primetime TV/i.e. Seinfeld. So at least in NC its been an entire culture that supports & watches the league consisting of many fan bases. In CT you are simply going after one fan base.
Not to put us in their disgusting company, but it is similar to how BC can't draw any fans now - they get a bump for UNC or Dook, but otherwise their target market is ONLY BC fans b/c there simply isn't a wide swath of college basketball fans (I'd guarantee their 2nd biggest best sales market is fans of other schools). The conference dysfunction has further alienated and eliminated northeast fans of college basketball - its simply easier to know/follow/root for and against local teams and that's been stripped away.

 

[NCHusky91]

Hopefully this past season was rock-bottom and things will turn around quickly, but it's going to require better leadership from the bench, AD's office, and conference HQ.