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NCAA Report of Attendance

urmite

urmite

Spider's Club
Gold Member
Dec 2, 2004
11,564
4,205
113
If I am reading it right, it appears we dropped a bit this past season.

2011-2012 5,660 average
2012-2013 5,960 average for 95th
2013-2014 6,102 average for 86th
2014-2015 5,599 average for 96th

Wasn't 2013-2014 the first with the new capacity? And isn't this the first drop in a few years? It may not look like much and may be due to the schedule but a drop of over 8% may be worth "the powers that be" looking into...
 
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I think the NIT was fine, there were a lot of people there for the Miami game, ASU was ok, the SFNY game was pretty weak if I remember correctly. On the whole, probably neutral.

I remember thinking that our OOC slate didn't have great attendance after we started to slide. I suspect that would account for the drop.
 
Honestly - I think between 5K and 6K is as good as we can expect from our fan base.

You have heard all the excuses before - such as our alumni don't stay in Richmond, our student body is too small, our OOC home games are too weak, etc. So I don't think the administration worries too much if we stay around 5,500 average.

For comparison - our sweet 16 year was only 5900 fans a game, and that included a future NBA draft pick in Harper and A10 POY in Kevin Anderson. That might never happen again for the spiders - NBA pick and POY on the same team.
 
We are averaging almost twice as many people in attendance at basketball games as we have undergrads enrolled. Not many schools can say that. As long as we are consistently above 75% capacity I think we are doing ok.
 
fan2011 said:
We are averaging almost twice as many people in attendance at basketball games as we have undergrads enrolled. Not many schools can say that. As long as we are consistently above 75% capacity I think we are doing ok.
Click to expand...

Completely agree.
 
75% capacity is pretty darn good, especially when you consider that a lot of our home OOC games were against weak no name opponents when students were on semester break.

And our average being lower is a reflection of the reduced seating capacity. We could draw 9000 plus fans for our big games, now we can only pull 7,200 max. The atmosphere is 100 times better in the new RC though, so I'll take a few less average fans for a nearly packed and engaged house for almost every big game.
 
97spiderfan said:
75% capacity is pretty darn good, especially when you consider that a lot of our home OOC games were against weak no name opponents when students were on semester break.

And our average being lower is a reflection of the reduced seating capacity. We could draw 9000 plus fans for our big games, now we can only pull 7,200 max. The atmosphere is 100 times better in the new RC though, so I'll take a few less average fans for a nearly packed and engaged house for almost every big game.
Click to expand...
Plus One
 
I'm not trying to bash our program here. I'm looking for a method to motivate and give a sense of urgency to continuously improve marketing, lol. Work with me...
 
I agree URmite - if VCU, which is just down the road only 10 minutes from UR can sell out and get 7600 fans a night, no reason we should not strive for the same. Yes - they have more students, but what if UR was just able to get 100 more students to attend games regularly? Does VCU have more local alumni? Of course they do - they are a state school. But are you telling me then that every single one of those 7600 fans is an alumni of VCU? I don't think so. Some I am sure are just casual basketball fans that want to see a good game. Some probably go just for the crazy atmosphere in the arena.

It will be interesting to see how they do this year in terms of attendance with Shaka being gone.

But in terms of UR - we have beaten this topic to death. I think as long as attendance stays above 5,000 and we practically give tickets away (there are various $5 tickets, and groupons you can purchase for tickets) - then that is the best we can hope for.
 
VCU does a much better job at marketing than we do, but I think there attendance is driven less by marketing and more by the fact that they followed up there Final Four run with 4 consecutive NCAA runs and being nationally ranked.

Had we been doing that over the past 4 years, we would probably be selling out all of our games as well
 
Our strong run from 1988-1992 was accompanied by very high average attendance (I think around 7300/game). Winning puts people in the seats.

UR has really upped their effort in marketing and has gotten creative with luring people to the RC, but a really strong on court performance is what will move the needle.
 
I think we are doing a pretty good job attendance-wise. This is not an excuse, but obviously VCU has a base of local residents who are in some way connected to VCU that is probably 12-15 times larger than ours. We shouldn't be comparing ourselves to them. That said, if we do compare ourselves to them, it looks pretty damn good to me. Yeah they have a long sellout streak, but their arena is basically the same size as ours, and they haven't sold out all those games easily the last few years. So it's not like they are turning away 10,000 fans every night. All things considered, we are attracting a MUCH higher percentage of our fans than they are of theirs.
 
I was only comparing to our previous years. Just think we (someone) need(s) to keep an eye on it to make sure it isn't a trend. Don't want to lose 400/yr.
 
I believe that 70-75% of capacity is pretty darned good, so see no "burning-platform" here that needs to be fixed. However, the weaker OOC schedule probably did hurt us, and for the really good games, that we sold-out, our total capacity was smaller than before the renovations, so that would reduce the "average" number too. Also, I seem to recall that our "in-conference" opponents may have dipped a bit, with the departure of a team or two (Xavier?), so that probably did not help eithher. Could we market more effectively? Yes, if we have reasonably strong (or familiar) teams to play against! Would love to see a continuing effort to play Va. Tech, UVA, and Wake (or others that we know would be strong "draws."). .
 
Spideroldie said:
I believe that 70-75% of capacity is pretty darned good, so see no "burning-platform" here that needs to be fixed. However, the weaker OOC schedule probably did hurt us, and for the really good games, that we sold-out, our total capacity was smaller than before the renovations, so that would reduce the "average" number too. Also, I seem to recall that our "in-conference" opponents may have dipped a bit, with the departure of a team or two (Xavier?), so that probably did not help eithher. Could we market more effectively? Yes, if we have reasonably strong (or familiar) teams to play against! Would love to see a continuing effort to play Va. Tech, UVA, and Wake (or others that we know would be strong "draws."). .
Click to expand...

We get Wake at home every other year. I don't see UVA or Va Tech stepping in our stadium. Winning is the key, the more we win the more attendance we will have.
 
As bad as Tech is they should want to play us to put a little life in their Richmond fan base or basketball program in general. The better question is would we want to play, Tech, given how bad they have been the past 3-4 years.

I am always leary of playing bad BCS programs, but they typically have talent to beat us, and the reward for beating them is an RPI hit.
 
MrTbone said:
Doesn't that translate to neither party winning nor losing the bet? Perhaps that's the art of the deal...
Click to expand...

I already tried that trick, when I told a woman whoever loses has to take the winner to dinner.

She wasn't buying it...
 
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