Crowds at PK tourneys

[TMB4405]

Love everything about our start to season. Excited for tonight. Kind of off topic but is anyone else surprised at the small crowds for almost every game in this tourney? Top teams and good games. If this tourney was local here with no Uconn I would think crowds would still be good.

 

[WeAreUCONN]

Yeah, seems weird seeing so many empty seats.

 

[fatlucy]

Hate to think about the ROI on this. Tickets won’t cut it. Has to be the tv revenue.

 

[auror]

Hate to think about the ROI on this. Tickets won’t cut it. Has to be the tv revenue.

This is a Nike marketing expense.

 

[Fishy]

Not really a surprise.

UConn, Nova, Purdue, Bama, North Carolina, Michigan State…..in Oregon over Thanksgiving. And then a gap in the schedule so that the finals were going to be on Sunday night making travel a nightmare.

The tournament was set up for television from start to finish, so the logistics for fans were not considered for a moment. Not surprised few went.

 

[BlueMAB]

This is a Nike marketing expense.

 

[auror]

Normally these holiday tournaments are 1) at small gyms (high school, D2, hotel ballroom, etc.) 2) hosted by a local school participating.

PK are in massive 20k NBA gyms whose local teams (Portland, Portland St.) have no fans, and unfortunately Oregon is bad and not a basketball school anyways. Whereas Maui takes place before the holiday, the PK literally played on Thanksgiving. Who is going to plan to go to this event when you either miss a game or go on literal Thanksgiving.

Especially when all the schools with big fan bases are either in East Coast or midwest outside of Gonzaga (who did actually have fans there).

And it's not like Portland is Maui or Atlantis, a good excuse for the non-basketball fans.

 

[TMB4405]

Understood about travel. However if these games were at XL center this weekend I think we would have had a decent walk up crowd to see major teams.

 

[storrsroars]

You'd think they'd give all their homeless folks free tix

 

[Chin Diesel]

You'd think they'd give all their homeless folks free tix

Free heroin too.

 

[Hoophound]

Selling tickets to games the locals don’t care about has always been hard. Look at bowl games. All but the big ones are mostly empty. I can’t imagine these events would do too well anywhere in this day and age.

I went to the FSU-UF football game Friday night. It was a great game and an unbeatable atmosphere. Still, as a non fan of either team, I would have stayed home if my kids didn’t want me to go with them so bad. There is just no innate pull to see teams play that you don’t care about.

 

[BlueMAB]

Understood about travel. However if these games were at XL center this weekend I think we would have had a decent walk up crowd to see major teams.

Also remember that there are at least 3 of these at the same time in different venues. 2 Men's and 1 Women's.

A better example would be how would crowd look on TV when there are multiple games each day at Bridgeport, Mohegan, and Hartford?

 

[storrsroars]

You'd think they'd give all their homeless folks free tix

That's a personal record for downvotes... didn't realize so many here want to deny the homeless a little respite for entertainment.