The Attendance Juggernaut

[DobbsRover2]

The post about the PAC attendance reminded me again of just what UConn's big role in the WCBB is, as the big mama attendance booster. A dozen or so teams' attendance numbers are dominated by the UConn visit. For Stanford, switch UConn last year for UTenn this year and you have an attendance problem, as the Vols just don't excite the masses anymore outside of the Vandy bloodfest and TBA (and even there the figures are down a bit and could finish up that way), and its the Huskies who pack them in. This year's big game for Stanford pulled in about 6000 against UTenn, 1300 less than last year's showcase against the Huskies.

The new AAC teams are of course getting an attendance boost from the UConn visit. But maybe no team has needed UConn more than MD. 15,327 fans packed in there for the Huskies, while for MD's other 11 games an average of less than 3000 have attended. This year MD is averaging 4542 fans. Last year MD averaged 5100+ fans, but that mark was highly dependent on the 15,800+ fans for the Duke game and 8700+ fans for the UNC game. And of course the ACC at their spiteful best stripped away all of the departing MD's attendance-packing home matchups and left them with mainly dregs matchups there except for ND in a final year of solo games against UNC and Duke and home-and-aways with GTech and Syracuse. So a good upstanding sterling character school like UNC will have the benefit of an MD visit, as will of course Duke. And good luck to MD about getting the average attendance over 5000 again, but just think how bad it would be if they didn't have UConn.

Big mama's coming to your town. Pack'em in.

 

[UcMiami]

The post about the PAC attendance reminded me again of just what UConn's big role in the WCBB is, as the big mama attendance booster. A dozen or so teams' attendance numbers are dominated by the UConn visit. For Stanford, switch UConn last year for UTenn this year and you have an attendance problem, as the Vols just don't excite the masses anymore outside of the Vandy bloodfest and TBA (and even there the figures are down a bit and could finish up that way), and its the Huskies who pack them in. This year's big game for Stanford pulled in about 6000 against UTenn, 1300 less than last year's showcase against the Huskies.

The new AAC teams are of course getting an attendance boost from the UConn visit. But maybe no team has needed UConn more than MD. 15,327 fans packed in there for the Huskies, while for MD's other 11 games an average of less than 3000 have attended. This year MD is averaging 4542 fans. Last year MD averaged 5100+ fans, but that mark was highly dependent on the 15,800+ fans for the Duke game and 8700+ fans for the UNC game. And of course the ACC at their spiteful best stripped away all of the departing MD's attendance-packing home matchups and left them with mainly dregs matchups there except for ND in a final year of solo games against UNC and Duke and home-and-aways with GTech and Syracuse. So a good upstanding sterling character school like UNC will have the benefit of an MD visit, as will of course Duke. And good luck to MD about getting the average attendance over 5000 again, but just think how bad it would be if they didn't have UConn.

Big mama's coming to your town. Pack'em in.

And with that marquee matchup to work with MD went all out in promoting the game - something I suspect they haven't done for their other home games. Be nice if a few athletic departments would decide to make an experiment with their women's team and do big promotions for all or most of the games for a year or two running - even with ticket prices at $10, getting an extra 500 bodies on average for each game would give you a decent budget to work with. Even if you couldn't work out a sponsorship deal for free give-aways at each game, you could take $1000 to cover the coast and still be $4000 ahead not counting profits from parking and concessions. Do it for one year and maybe you end up ahead by a few thousand which justifies the next year and the next and maybe, just maybe you build a bigger core of supporters and create a buzz around the program that increases your recruiting profile and the quality on the court, and the return from each additional promo.

 

[DobbsRover2]

About a dozen teams will have the chance to set up a carnival atmosphere with the UConn Globetrotters coming in, but like you say, the school's AD has to really promote the opportunity to showcase that they are part of the big time in WCBB and they want everyone to see it. MD, Duke, and PSU all did a solid job as the OOC away hosts of Husky games this year, and hopefully that effort will continue in the future.

 

[John Glass]

again, 15,327 fans packed in ? nope

 

[DobbsRover2]

again, 15,327 fans packed in ? nope

Um, okay we know that official stats may not be exact, but go to the UConn image gallery of every other pic in that MD game and Comcast looks packed to the gills. Picking out one pic that has a big empty area down front that was clearly kept clear for some unknown reason proves absolutely nothing. From all the other pics, it is obvious that there were many thousands in the full upper decks. Comcast seats about 18,000, so maybe there were on 15,326 there. Not a big deal.

 

[John Glass]

Um, okay we know that official stats may not be exact, but go to the UConn image gallery of every other pic in that MD game and Comcast looks packed to the gills. Picking out one pic that has a big empty area down front that was clearly kept clear for some unknown reason proves absolutely nothing. From all the other pics, it is obvious that there were many thousands in the full upper decks. Comcast seats about 18,000, so maybe there were on 15,326 there. Not a big deal.

I am sure most of the Maryland fans avoid sitting in the best seats, and pack into the nose bleed section. ... about 50% of the best seats are empty.

more stealth fans here

 

[DobbsRover2]

I am sure most of the Maryland fans avoid sitting in the best seats, and pack into the nose bleed section. ... about 50% of the best seats are empty.

If you say so, a whole empty section behind the the UConn bench points to some type of reserved seats, possibly for the Prez if he wanted to make a quick trip up to see his girls for a 4th time. Scanning through the rest of the pics, the lower seats outside of that section look 90% full, and I'll give the empty seats the benefit of the doubt and say they were probably at the stands getting some turtle soup or hitting the restrooms. Looks like a hopping Comcast joint to me.

 

[Phil]

I drove down to the MD game, and naively thought I would get good seats through the UConn Club. I don't blame them, as they can only allocate the seats provided by Maryland, but my seats were in the upper deck, along with some of the player's parents. I saw the empty section behind the UConn bench, and thought I would see what would happen if I walked down there and acted like I belonged.

However, it wasn't straight-forward to get to. The only way I could see to get there was through a section of big donor suites, where I clearly did not belong. There must be another way to get there other than walking through the suites, but I wandered down during a time-out, and didn't have much time to check other options. I thought about checking it out at half-time, but I had starting chatting with another UConn fan relegated to the upper decks, and decided to stay.

It may well be that locals know the route to those seats, but the locals probably prefer sitting near their own team, so I throw out the possibility that there were empty seats behind the visitors bench because Maryland wasn't gracious enough to let visitors fans use them, and they saved them as last choices for local fans, so maybe that's why that section was almost empty.