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Message: [QUOTE="UcMiami, post: 1987611, member: 199"] The town of Storrs Mansfield is a small rural community and access to it is by B roads for 15 miles from the highways, and by country lanes for the last two or so miles. Getting into and out of town on game days/nights is not fun - on normal nights when I take an airport taxi from Bradley the drivers freak out about how dark and rural a place I am leading them to! The parking is expensive and most of it is a decent walk from the arena. In winter the weather is never predictable - freezing rain on Tuesday night and 50 degrees tonight! If you stay for the whole game and lived 20 miles away, a 7PM game gets you home around 10:30 or 11PM on a week night - not something a lot of parents are going to do with or without their children. And the arena which was a big deal when it was built is very dated and uncomfortable now for at least 50% of the seats. I am not sure what marketing plan can overcome those obstacles. They have done a nice job of increasing the student attendance in recent years by adding in some pretty cool door prizes at the end of each game, but as far as the traveling fanbase ... probably not changing much unless they start dropping prices significantly. Hartford logistically is much easier to deal with - better and quicker access and egress, lots of close parking options, and while the arena isn't any great shakes it holds up a bit better than Gampel. But it is off campus and so student attendance isn't as good. And while Uconn is the state school and the state following is strong, Hartford isn't the college town so the synergy isn't as good as it would be if Uconn was actually part of the city. And prices are still high for tickets and parking. As far as the fan demographic - in person attendance for sports in general but especially for WCBB isn't that great for young single professionals, or for young couples with kids, and especially not for week nights. Financial considerations really do play a large part in entertainment decisions and a lot of people under thirty-five don't have that much disposable income to blow on something they can watch for free on television. So middle aged fans and older are going to remain a majority of the fanbase no matter what marketing gets done - unless of course Uconn does some sort of discounting on tickets. I am sure they have someone crunching numbers and figuring that 10K attendance at current prices brings in more revenue than whatever added attendance they would get with a 25% or 50% discount on tickets. And they are content with the 10K which is better than 345 other WCBB teams get. [/QUOTE]

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