John A. comment.... What say you?

[Joe6cats]

Anybody got a Terp ticket to sell? John's taunt kinda got me off my butt: long time fan, I have never gone to a game. I know I know, but anyway. So I decided to buy a ticket for this one. But is seems one cannot just buy one ticket. I don't personally know anyone interested in going, hence my question. If you have something, please PM me with the location and price. Thanks for your consideration.

 

[Wonkster]

Anybody got a Terp ticket to sell? John's taunt kinda got me off my butt: long time fan, I have never gone to a game. I know I know, but anyway. So I decided to buy a ticket for this one. But is seems one cannot just buy one ticket. I don't personally know anyone interested in going, hence my question. If you have something, please PM me with the location and price. Thanks for your consideration.

Joe, absent a response from this board, JUST GO TO THE GAME and walk up to the ticket window. I've done this many times and NEVER failed to get in.

Single seats are especially easy to find, because they are the hardest to sell.

 

[Bestiarius]

I keep telling people that the "fannies in the seats" argument is passé. Revenue in the future will be more and more slanted toward TV sources. You can reduce ticket prices to zero, and they still won't reach capacity seating. There's prolly only 7 or 8 thousand good seats, and the rest rate a poor second place to a large screen television.

How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm after They've Seen HDTV?

The future is 7 or 8,000 live fans, and the rest of the seats will be filled with blue-painted, cheering robots. I'll bet they won't be able to convince the robots to eat the food from the concession stands.

Why choose? Attending games is a different experience than watching on TV. Many of us can have the best of both worlds. Go to the game to get the ambiance of being there, and, DVR the game for later reliving of the experience. Two different perspectives, both of which are enjoyable.

 

[Wonkster]

Why choose? Attending games is a different experience than watching on TV. Many of us can have the best of both worlds. Go to the game to get the ambiance of being there, and, DVR the game for later reliving of the experience. Two different perspectives, both of which are enjoyable.

Been doing that since November 1998 when I got my first TiVo, a whopping 14 GB disk model.

 

[Bestiarius]

Been doing that since November 1998 when I got my first TiVo, a whopping 14 GB disk model.

You're a real digit-head Wonk.

 

[arch]

There is absolutely nothing UConn can do about the phenomenon. I hope they realize it before they do something stupid.

Too late. Reducing prices 25-33% has proven to qualify as "something stupid."

I am left to wondering if your theory is "provable false". Did CPTV ratings ascend with the coming of big screen affordable HDTVs? If so, did they stay up?

I do like your theory better than the "old folks are dying off" theory. After all, they're making more of us than they're killing off.

 

[Ozzie Nelson]

I frequently DVR Boneyard stuff.

 

[Joe6cats]

Thanks Wonk! That is what I needed to hear, and unless somebody has something I can't walk away from, I'll do it.

 

[tomcat]

Which really is all the more remarkable when you consider that EVERY UConn game is televised or streamed online.

If you want to increase attendance, stop broadcasting every game. That is a double edged sword. While it allows those who do not live in CT or cannot make the games able to watch the team, it also makes it easier for people to decide they don't want to pay the parking and concession prices or deal with the traffic to sit at home and watch the game. I commented to a friend today that the attendance started to decline as soon as CPTV started broadcasting every game. A blessing and a curse.

I don't know for certain -- I'll defer to others who were actually there during this period, but how long ago did CPTV start broadcasting the games? I seem to recall it was a really long time ago. And I know that for years, as a nearby out of stater, I would try and try to get tickets to UConn games that were televised on CPTV and had a really hard time, as all the games were sold out. I thought this was the case even a few years ago.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that during the Golden Age of UConn basketball, CPTV was televising the games and for a number of years, the games were sellouts. And if I'm right, attendance did not start to drop when CPTV began televising the games. That does not mean that Chapette's solution -- stop televising the games -- would not work, because at least some of those folks would come to games more often if they could not see them on TV.

But TV is not the reason people are not going to the games. If it were, then Chapette's earlier statement would be true, and people would have stopped going to games when CPTV geared up, which I am all but certain did not happen. The reason is a convergence of things, IMHO, ranging from transition of the fan base (i.e. many just getting too old to sit in seats without backs); the fact that it's no longer a novelty; the economy; the fact that (from what I hear) it's getting harder and harder to get around Connecticut these days (especially from south of New Haven); and the fact that there are just a lot of other things, many of them computer-based, for people to do with their time.

 

[tomcat]

I'm now reading Wonkster's reply, which I'm pleased to report makes the point I just made, except more authoritatively. Sorry for the repetition. Should have read the posts all the way to the end before posting.

 

[diggerfoot]

Everybody is responding with their own perspective, some sympathetic, some antagonistic to Altavilla's comments. The one perspective that matters most is that from the student, and not the student who is a diplomat's son with his own car as a freshman (my first roommate), but the average student who goes to the public university because of costs.

For the majority of college sports teams across the country students are the foundation of the fan base. Not only that, but fellow students are what the athletes would most like to see sitting in the seats. Because of the success of the program, coupled with inadequacy of on campus facilities, UConn caters to the student less than perhaps any other college in the country. I see complaints about students not going to games even when the opportunity arises; that's why I framed my previous reply in terms of HABIT. The University makes attending games a difficult HABIT for a student: because of corporate packaging, because of off campus games and because of costs. Now that championships are a HABIT for the team it would require a HABIT from the students to maintain highest attendance levels. UConn makes that impossible.

You can agree with that climate, attributing it to market forces or whatever, but Altavilla's comment remains misguided when the main responsibility for high attendance standards, particularly for niche sports, falls on the very demographic that UConn prevents from forming a habit of attending games.

 

[OneTrickPony]

My entire family, the young and the middle aged, refuse to attend sporting events because of the hideously loud ambiance. Disclosure: we are all (or most of us) musicians, and we can't take the assault on our ears.

I made the decision after my first Hot Tuna concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco...of course after breathing the air in there for a little while, you got lulled into a false sense of security.

 

[Icebear]

I made the decision after my first Hot Tuna concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco...of course after breathing the air in there for a little while, you got lulled into a false sense of security.

Hot Tuna, dang, we really do need to sit down and have a beer some time. We have plenty of life to talk about.

 

[OneTrickPony]

Hot Tuna, dang, we really do need to sit down and have a beer some time. We have plenty of life to talk about.

Agreed...! In the old days in San Francisco you could sit down and have a beer with Jorma and Jack in the little clubs they played in...

 

[CL82]

The university burned a lot of goodwill under Jeff Hathaway, with ticket pricing and season ticket policies. There was an assumption that there was inelastic demand for UConn Basketball. That assumption was wrong. It will take a concerted effort to win the the fans back. They are making an effort but it will be a long row to hoe.

 

[OneTrickPony]

You often can't put the genie back in the bottle...when Perrier misunderstood why people drank their product, they took a permanent 50% loss in market share. Anyone that sacrifices market share to inch up profitability does so at their own risk...