Duke Attendance

[sun]

Most of the Big East schools have fairly small enrollments and Duke's undergraduate enrollment isn't much larger.
For the spring, 2023 semester, Duke has 6915 undergrads and 9291 graduate professional students.
Duke's incoming 1st years are 1749.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/office.of.the.university.registrar.duke.university/viz/EnrollmentStatistics_Snapshots_V4/AbouttheData

Plus Duke suspended their WBB season in Dec. 2020 of the 2020 -2021 season due to covid concerns.
Kara Lawson became their new coach before that season.

Duke's women's basketball team ends season

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Duke women's basketball team has decided to end its season, it was announced.

www.espn.com

Who knows how much tickets cost for students to attend Duke home games and what the school does to try to attract students to the games.
Maybe more Duke fans are watching their games on TV for convenience rather than attending games in person.

 

[KY Card Fan]

They're much more expensive, now. My season ticket is $280, each.

With a "senior" discount our lower level midcourt seats at the Yum Center are $126 each plus a $75 "donation" to the Cardinal Athletic Fund, so $201 total. The lower bowl is essentially sold out on a season ticket basis - it's pretty much impossible to find two seats together. There are 11,300 seats in the lower bowl. So 2,500 or so no-shows most games.

What's the cost of a season ticket at Gampel?

 

[awhom111]

Most of the Big East schools have fairly small enrollments and Duke's undergraduate enrollment isn't much larger.
For the spring, 2023 semester, Duke has 6915 undergrads and 9291 graduate professional students.
Duke's incoming 1st years are 1749.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/office.of.the.university.registrar.duke.university/viz/EnrollmentStatistics_Snapshots_V4/AbouttheData

Plus Duke suspended their WBB season in Dec. 2020 of the 2020 -2021 season due to covid concerns.
Kara Lawson became their new coach before that season.

Duke's women's basketball team ends season

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Duke women's basketball team has decided to end its season, it was announced.

www.espn.com

Who knows how much tickets cost for students to attend Duke home games and what the school does to try to attract students to the games.
Maybe more Duke fans are watching their games on TV for convenience rather than attending games in person.

Tickets are free for students to all Duke sporting events (other than the time required to get into men's basketball). Student attendance for all sports has been declining for years. Men's basketball just managed to increase again recently.

 

[sun]

Tickets are free for students to all Duke sporting events (other than the time required to get into men's basketball). Student attendance for all sports has been declining for years. Men's basketball just managed to increase again recently.

Thanks for the info. While it's not good to lose that many fans attending, Duke is still drawing many more fans that most of the Big East schools including St. John's in NYC.

The chart was posted in the thread below by DefenseBB :

Big East Attendance-mid season edition

When UConn moved from the American to (back) the Big East in 2020-21 season, there was high hope that attendance for the conference would be boosted, then Coronavirus hit in March 2019, shutting down attendance at virtually all NCAA games for the 2020-21 season. With attendance back in 2022 and...

the-boneyard.com

 

[Figurehead]

Holy smokes! Oregon lost that Sabrina Ionescu fanbase.

Many here don't realize the fan bases slowly growing disdain of Graves. The guy is just happy sitting on the end of the bench during the game and then afterwards saying week after week to the media " I have got to start coaching better". His teams are not performing to what is on paper. Fans at Oregon will support just about any team as long as the product is there.

I never did understand the poor support at Stanford.

 

[cockhrnleghrn]

Many here don't realize the fan bases slowly growing disdain of Graves. The guy is just happy sitting on the end of the bench during the game and then afterwards saying week after week to the media " I have got to start coaching better". His teams are not performing to what is on paper. Fans at Oregon will support just about any team as long as the product is there.

I never did understand the poor support at Stanford.

Stanford's alumni base is national and not really concentrated around Palo Alto; state universities tend to have the majority of their alumni base close to campus. In the case of South Carolina, of course, we have a lot of alums in SC, but also in Charlotte, Atlanta and NYC. That base isn't largely in California for Stanford. They're also in a pro sports market, which usually hurts college sports attendance.

 

[triaddukefan]

Stanford's alumni base is national and not really concentrated around Palo Alto; state universities tend to have the majority of their alumni base close to campus. In the case of South Carolina, of course, we have a lot of alums in SC, but also in Charlotte, Atlanta and NYC. That base isn't largely in California for Stanford. They're also in a pro sports market, which usually hurts college sports attendance.

Duke has a similar problem in terms of being a national school. Plus the fact that our neighbors are the State Flagship and the Land Grant doesn't help matters. That being said... before ND and Louisville came aboard, Duke lead the league in attendance in most years.. there were some years we averaged 6-7 thousand fans. I know our non-conference home schedule wasn't appealing, but its perplexing why attendance hasn't jumped through the roof since the beginning of ACC play.

 

[awhom111]

Stanford's alumni base is national and not really concentrated around Palo Alto; state universities tend to have the majority of their alumni base close to campus. In the case of South Carolina, of course, we have a lot of alums in SC, but also in Charlotte, Atlanta and NYC. That base isn't largely in California for Stanford. They're also in a pro sports market, which usually hurts college sports attendance.

State universities also tend to draw natural support from residents regardless of whether they have direct ties. There was a Duke professor who always mocked UNC's "school of the people" status in the state as locals being ignorant of the overall history of who was actually attending UNC.

Stanford is hit by the double-whammy of lacking school of the people status and attracting a fairly large percentage of students that have zero interest in sports. Cal and UCLA have also lost their school of the people status over the past half-century and that clearly has transferred to sports as well. Oddly enough, by historically being the school of both the upper class and not targeting the same type of middle class student drawn to Cal and UCLA, USC is probably the closest to a "school of the people" in California.

 

[Drew8]

I think Shyanne had a pretty magical start to last season that drew some fans.

This year Duke is a pretty gritty defensive oriented team with a winning style of play.

 

[jake0414]

State universities also tend to draw natural support from residents regardless of whether they have direct ties. There was a Duke professor who always mocked UNC's "school of the people" status in the state as locals being ignorant of the overall history of who was actually attending UNC.

Stanford is hit by the double-whammy of lacking school of the people status and attracting a fairly large percentage of students that have zero interest in sports. Cal and UCLA have also lost their school of the people status over the past half-century and that clearly has transferred to sports as well. Oddly enough, by historically being the school of both the upper class and not targeting the same type of middle class student drawn to Cal and UCLA, USC is probably the closest to a "school of the people" in California.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “school of the people” status?

 

[awhom111]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “school of the people” status?

A school that large portions of residents of a state (or parts of a state) identify with or take pride in, including those who did not attend the school or have relatives who did.

 

[triaddukefan]

A school that large portions of residents of a state (or parts of a state) identify with or take pride in, including those who did not attend the school or have relatives who did.

They are annoying fan base in the history of the universe. Without a doubt.

 

[DefenseBB]

Um, my initial point was that the Duke attendance has dropped by 50% this year despite being better. Also, I don’t buy “National alumni based” as a reason. Look at ND for both Men’s and Women’s basketball, Duke’s Men seem to draw well and like I said the Women’s Blue Devils have done ok over the years. The PAC-12 has never really done well save for maybe Arizona With the excuse that the weather in those areas allows for more outdoor activities for the public. Again, based on well some programs have promoted to the community (think what SC, Miss State and now LSU), I think both Duke and Stanford could and should do more.

 

[sun]

Um, my initial point was that the Duke attendance has dropped by 50% this year despite being better. Also, I don’t buy “National alumni based” as a reason. Look at ND for both Men’s and Women’s basketball, Duke’s Men seem to draw well and like I said the Women’s Blue Devils have done ok over the years. The PAC-12 has never really done well save for maybe Arizona With the excuse that the weather in those areas allows for more outdoor activities for the public. Again, based on well some programs have promoted to the community (think what SC, Miss State and now LSU), I think both Duke and Stanford could and should do more.

Duke is trying to increase attendance at womens games by "tenting."

"Every year, as part of the tenting process to secure one of the 840 spots in Section 17 for the Duke-North Carolina men’s basketball home game, participating groups can earn more points in tenting by attending certain other athletic events. And two of the three by far most-attended women’s basketball home games this year (Clemson and Virginia Tech) were designated as such....
“Honestly, I hadn’t been to a women’s game until the day of the tenting test in order to receive the extra points,” said freshman Katalina Guma. “The only other game I’ve been to (the Virginia Tech game) was also for an attendance event.”"..."

Season-high attendance, K-Ville tenters propel Duke women’s basketball past Virginia Tech

Attendance for Thursday's top-20 women’s matchup was boosted primarily by students hoping to watch an unranked men’s team take on an unranked Tar Heel squad the following week.

www.dukechronicle.com

 

[azfan]

With Oregon having a down year and the last two seasons not exactly on fire, I consider a Top 10 attendance ranking a tribute to the Ducks' loyal fan base. Second only to Arizona in league and miles ahead of league leading Stanford and Utah.
ps Utah numbers (as presented here) are quite puzzling. That is one entertaining, high execution ball team. Should be filling the joint.

I think Portland is on the short list for WNBA expansion because of pretty solid fan interest in that part of the country.

 

[azfan]

Um, my initial point was that the Duke attendance has dropped by 50% this year despite being better. Also, I don’t buy “National alumni based” as a reason. Look at ND for both Men’s and Women’s basketball, Duke’s Men seem to draw well and like I said the Women’s Blue Devils have done ok over the years. The PAC-12 has never really done well save for maybe Arizona With the excuse that the weather in those areas allows for more outdoor activities for the public. Again, based on well some programs have promoted to the community (think what SC, Miss State and now LSU), I think both Duke and Stanford could and should do more.

An alternative explanation might be that these areas have reached their ceiling in terms of interest in WBB. I'm of a mixed mind on this observation but I scratch my head at the examples discussed in this thread.

In my area Grand Canyon has a rabid and vocal fan base primarily students and they do a very nice job of filling their arena and putting on a show. As mentioned the kitties draw extremely well. Alternatively even during CTT's best years the Sun Devils have never drawn. I attend Lumberjack games in the Walkup skydome with less than 150 fans.

Really hard to figure. I think though this does highlight the challenges in broadening and deepening the fan base. I think promotion and marketing are important but not complete part of a strategy.

I hope it's not true but I fear that women's basketball might be a niche experience for most people like lacrosse, Australian rules football, billiards, or ping pong.

I recall reading that the fan base for watching poker is three times the size of women's basketball. If that's true that's both deeply concerning and weird.

 

[azfan]

Most of the Big East schools have fairly small enrollments and Duke's undergraduate enrollment isn't much larger.
For the spring, 2023 semester, Duke has 6915 undergrads and 9291 graduate professional students.
Duke's incoming 1st years are 1749.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/office.of.the.university.registrar.duke.university/viz/EnrollmentStatistics_Snapshots_V4/AbouttheData

Plus Duke suspended their WBB season in Dec. 2020 of the 2020 -2021 season due to covid concerns.
Kara Lawson became their new coach before that season.

Duke's women's basketball team ends season

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Duke women's basketball team has decided to end its season, it was announced.

www.espn.com

Who knows how much tickets cost for students to attend Duke home games and what the school does to try to attract students to the games.
Maybe more Duke fans are watching their games on TV for convenience rather than attending games in person.

This doesn't seem to impact the attendance at men's games.

Duke basketball attendance effect is absolutely staggering

As the numbers clearly show, the Blue Devil effect is in full effect this season, the last under 42nd-year Duke basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski.

balldurham.com

 

[sun]

An alternative explanation might be that these areas have reached their ceiling in terms of interest in WBB. I'm of a mixed mind on this observation but I scratch my head at the examples discussed in this thread.

In my area Grand Canyon has a rabid and vocal fan base primarily students and they do a very nice job of filling their arena and putting on a show. As mentioned the kitties draw extremely well. Alternatively even during CTT's best years the Sun Devils have never drawn. I attend Lumberjack games in the Walkup skydome with less than 150 fans.

Really hard to figure. I think though this does highlight the challenges in broadening and deepening the fan base. I think promotion and marketing are important but not complete part of a strategy.

I hope it's not true but I fear that women's basketball might be a niche experience for most people like lacrosse, Australian rules football, billiards, or ping pong.

I recall reading that the fan base for watching poker is three times the size of women's basketball. If that's true that's both deeply concerning and weird.

I don't think that it should be worrisome that some spectator sports aren't considered to be very popular or as popular as they could be.
Folks today simply have too many other outside interests to be motivated enough to attend.
While many who do attend or stream may have enough desire to see the activity continue to remain financially viable, modern society is set up for it to be mostly supported by commercial interests.
And in the case of WCBB, it's supported largely by the Title 9 gov't mandate, tax Dollars, endowments & gifts.
Most folks are contributing without even wanting to, and that goes for college students too through their tuition & activity fees that they end up borrowing money to attend college.
To have a fan base is wonderful, but to not have a fan base doesn't mean that the sport is suffering.
Most all WCBB games are being streamed anyway.
If the primary purpose of WCBB is to obtain a degree then without a doubt the sport is a huge success with or without the fans.
An Olympic sport like BB is mostly just another industry & labor market that creates & provides jobs.

 

[DefenseBB]

An alternative explanation might be that these areas have reached their ceiling in terms of interest in WBB. I'm of a mixed mind on this observation but I scratch my head at the examples discussed in this thread.

In my area Grand Canyon has a rabid and vocal fan base primarily students and they do a very nice job of filling their arena and putting on a show. As mentioned the kitties draw extremely well. Alternatively even during CTT's best years the Sun Devils have never drawn. I attend Lumberjack games in the Walkup skydome with less than 150 fans.

Really hard to figure. I think though this does highlight the challenges in broadening and deepening the fan base. I think promotion and marketing are important but not complete part of a strategy.

I hope it's not true but I fear that women's basketball might be a niche experience for most people like lacrosse, Australian rules football, billiards, or ping pong.

I recall reading that the fan base for watching poker is three times the size of women's basketball. If that's true that's both deeply concerning and weird.

Not so sure I agree with you on your alternative explanation. Duke clearly used to draw 4,800-5,800 (granted JPM drove the attendance down from 5,800 to the 3,400 in her last year) and heck in the late 2000, CTT and ASU had 3,200-3,600 fans a game where as Arizona only had 1,300-1,700 a game. Adia has made a huge effort to garner fan support.

I did some preliminary research on your poker statement I think it is extremely dated as Nielsen is saying Poker viewership peaked in 2013/14 so do you have any better data?

 

[bballnut90]

Holy smokes! Oregon lost that Sabrina Ionescu fanbase.

Pretty common to see attendance figures drop significantly when the programs are no longer competitive. Washington had a huge fan base during Plum's senior year, Oregon State regularly sold out games, Mississippi State packed their arena.....I don't think any draw well now that their programs aren't good. Similarly, I'm guessing we'll see a massive drop off for Iowa once Clark leaves.

 

[DefenseBB]

Pretty common to see attendance figures drop significantly when the programs are no longer competitive. Washington had a huge fan base during Plum's senior year, Oregon State regularly sold out games, Mississippi State packed their arena.....I don't think any draw well now that their programs aren't good. Similarly, I'm guessing we'll see a massive drop off for Iowa once Clark leaves.

Actually, not true. From 2014 to 2020 (year before Clark), the Hawkeye's averaged 5,433 and has been one of the traditional supporters of WCBB, not to the extent that Iowa State (9,611) but better than most programs and easily in the top 15 each and every year.

By the way, the UConn game at Georgetown had 3,587 fans well above the Hoyas average of 677 per game. Let me state the obvious, Every Big East opponent has had their biggest home game attendance when the opponent was UConn. Each program also play before their largest crowds of the year with the game AT UConn (Georgetown drew 11,170 when they played at UConn in early January).

 

[bballnut90]

Actually, not true. From 2014 to 2020 (year before Clark), the Hawkeye's averaged 5,433 and has been one of the traditional supporters of WCBB, not to the extent that Iowa State (9,611) but better than most programs and easily in the top 15 each and every year.

By the way, the UConn game at Georgetown had 3,587 fans well above the Hoyas average of 677 per game. Let me state the obvious, Every Big East opponent has had their biggest home game attendance when the opponent was UConn. Each program also play before their largest crowds of the year with the game AT UConn (Georgetown drew 11,170 when they played at UConn in early January).

Good call about Iowa, probably wont be as significant as the schools mentioned, but I still think it'll be a significant drop off unless they can stay a top 10-15 team. They're averaging almost 10.5k fans per game right now, and dropping down to 5-6k is a significant drop.

 

[MSGRET]

New Mexico being that high up is impressive to me

New Mexico has always supported their Women's team when they play in the Pit. Until last year they and San Diego State were the top two teams in the Mountain West. UNLV is now the top team in the MTN, but for some reason they play at COX Pavilion which holds a little over 2,000 and is always sold out.

 

[awhom111]

triad would know more about what Duke is doing to try to get more fans in the seats as Cam and I are far away these days. In the past, when women's basketball was one of only three sports to charge anybody, they often had their own marketing person, but now that more sports sell tickets, I would not be surprised if those resources were distributed to multiple areas now. From TV observation, it seems like the lower level is pretty populated and that it is the upper level attendance that is struggling. Also, it may just be a case where Kara has not had the time or energy to get directly involved in marketing. Coach G built some powerful allies over her tenure and Coach P had the kind of personality where she loved being actively involved in trying to bring in fans.

Will be interesting to see where the average ends up after we host NC State and UNC, but it looks like it is still going to be down pretty big, even with recent numbers looking better in conference and with winning. I think that Kara is still figuring out the optimal non-conference mix, but not hosting Iowa or South Carolina obviously made a huge difference (the South Carolina game's attendance was only 17 lower than the combined attendance of all of our non-conference games this season) and for our home-only mid/low-major opponents, it certainly helps to choose closer, more familiar schools.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

I want to say this is a really great thread, because so many folks have hit on so many of the factors that long observation of 15 years at Rutgers and 10 years here in Arizona have shown.

Among the many, many valid comments -

- those that recognize success is a key metric for attendance. For all someone said (above) that Adia worked at developing a fan base, the truth of the matter is she won games. The lesser attendance before her was when the program was not successful at all.

- at the same time, there is an element of a coach being personally charismatic (helps on the recruiting side, as well). Adia has that in spades. Grentz enjoyed a lot of popularity among RU fans from her day, as she was outgoing as opposed to the much more introverted Stringer.

- many of the schools with successful attendance are located where there is less competition from professional sports or other major competition for the entertainment dollar. Ames, Iowa is a leading example. Also, factor in "college town" as a factor that can help. Tucson is both a basketball town and a UArizona town, so the women's team was ripe for becoming popular.

- as noted, again, name recognition and fans identifying with the school is a factor. Excellent discussion by several posters.

- marketing is fine, and important, but as someone above noted, it is not always a priority where WBB is concerned, and when it isn't, it shows. Schools that went out of their way to do the marketing (and that includes Arizona but not Rutgers) benefitted.

- the science of pricing is important, as well. It isn't so much how much you charge (within reason), as accessibility of tickets at a fair price to grow the fan base.

- I have to add that the more "attractive" a team seems (I don't mean appearance of the players, but rather appearance of the style of play, appearance of the team as a positive factor in the community, etc.) the more that can help. UConn runs a reasonably appealing style of play while Rutgers under CVS did not. Don't think for one second that this was not a turn on / turn off for fans on both sides.

I'm not original in this post, just trying to capture in one place some of the excellent points made. Attendance is a tricky thing.

One final thought (and the comments above about NAU made me think of it) - most non Power-5 (or 6 if you prefer to include the BE) have the additional burden that deep NCAA runs are not generally in the cards, as opposed to some so-called mid-major men's programs. I think this is a reality. As well as the fact that in many cases it just isn't great basketball. It can be, I've enjoyed some TV games you wouldn't expect to be good, but it often isn't. I remember a couple of RU fans back in the 1990's who were leaving after a hard fought RU game with some major team and they made the comment they wanted to see some "good basketball" so were going to watch Monmouth play St. Peter's. Most fans are just not that gullible.