Chip on U attendance: Coyle, football program have a lot of work to repair disconnect

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Chip has a column on sagging attendance at local sports venues around town. On the Gopher football program he writes:

The reality is simple: Win and fans will return.

The Gophers football situation, however, is more complicated than their record. A major miscalculation by former athletic director Norwood Teague caused many fans to drop their tickets.

Teague mistook one good season and Jerry Kill’s popularity as an opening to squeeze more money out of fans by instituting his ill-fated “scholarship seating” price hike.

Teague sold his plan as something common in college athletics, but he underestimated backlash from a fan base that has had its patience and loyalty stretched thin by generations of mediocrity.

New athletic director Mark Coyle wisely scrapped the final installment of price increases before this season, but the damage was already done. Judging by attendance this season, Coyle and the football program have a lot of work to repair that disconnect.

http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-ticket-buyers-sick-of-hope-hype-only-wins-will-do/404899576/

Go Gophers!!
 

Drop the prices back to pre-price hike levels. Maybe change the seating zones around if you don't want to make it exactly the same as they were.
 

Taji34 said:
Drop the prices back to pre-price hike levels. Maybe change the seating zones around if you don't want to make it exactly the same as they were.
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I think they will minimally need to go back one year in their pricing to see any appreciable progress in filling the stadium. That being said it will never really make any progress until we get back to winning at least some of our rivalry games.
 

I agree with the article that winning cures a lot. However, it seems that attendance is down across the board in NCAA football. As it was pointed out on the 1500ESPN yesterday, until the CFP is scrapped for something with automatic berths, we're really just going to watch a bunch of exhibition games and a bowl. Penn State won the Big Ten and they don't make a playoff and same with Oklahoma. In 2016 people realize that this is pretty much the only sport where popularity wins out. There is not excuse to not have an 8-16 team playoff. Every other of football and sport does it. What costs more, West Virginia traveling for conference games or possibly playing in a couple playoff games. The current system possibly got the 4 teams right, but we will never know. Ohio State is playing for a chance at a National Title because they're a helmet school, with a popular coach that didn't win a conference and squeaked by in a handful of games.

As for MN I'm with those that go to a couple games a year, but buy tickets the week of the game or on the street and use the savings to attend other events/sports with my family throughout the year. Winning probably won't get me in the seats anymore than now, but it will cause me to spend more on tickets when I choose to go. This year could end up being an anomaly and based on opponent and last years 6-7 record. As stated many times, the 20 year attendance numbers are pretty flat and consistent.
 

Finally someone in the media properly diagnosed the dumb ill fated scholarship seating program as the obvious reason for the football attendance decline.

For many of us, this failed idea was an "I told you so" event in the making from the day it was announced. I don't pretend to be an insider or a brilliant Gopher football program mind, but this debacle was easy to see coming all along. Sadly, a good chunk of the lost season ticket base were people that had tickets for many years or decades. They had already proved they were willing to renew without the promise of winning many times in the past, and as such, will be harder (or impossible) to get back regardless of winning level in the future. It took a lot to get them to leave. It will now take more to get them back.

Somewhat irritating is remembering all the know-it-alls on Gopherhole stating this was critical for future funding, unavoidable, a good idea, etc.
 


Schnauzer said:
Finally someone in the media properly diagnosed the dumb ill fated scholarship seating program as the obvious reason for the football attendance decline.

For many of us, this failed idea was an "I told you so" event in the making from the day it was announced. I don't pretend to be an insider or a brilliant Gopher football program mind, but this debacle was easy to see coming all along. Sadly, a good chunk of the lost season ticket base were people that had tickets for many years or decades. They had already proved they were willing to renew without the promise of winning many times in the past, and as such, will be harder (or impossible) to get back regardless of winning level in the future. It took a lot to get them to leave. It will now take more to get them back.

Somewhat irritating is remembering all the know-it-alls on Gopherhole stating this was critical for future funding, unavoidable, a good idea, etc.
Click to expand...

Dead on. A ton of Gopher fans told us how great this move was and how we "didn't get big time college football" if we didn't agree with it. It was worse on the pay sites as the site owners doubled down big time on this move and chastised any Gopher fan who disagreed with them.
 

Schnauzer said:
Finally someone in the media properly diagnosed the dumb ill fated scholarship seating program as the obvious reason for the football attendance decline.

For many of us, this failed idea was an "I told you so" event in the making from the day it was announced. I don't pretend to be an insider or a brilliant Gopher football program mind, but this debacle was easy to see coming all along. Sadly, a good chunk of the lost season ticket base were people that had tickets for many years or decades. They had already proved they were willing to renew without the promise of winning many times in the past, and as such, will be harder (or impossible) to get back regardless of winning level in the future. It took a lot to get them to leave. It will now take more to get them back.

Somewhat irritating is remembering all the know-it-alls on Gopherhole stating this was critical for future funding, unavoidable, a good idea, etc.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Especially with the B1G TV contract that was finalized this season. No reason to fleece the loyal fans. If you're selling out every seat on Saturdays and the team winning the division, you may have some leverage to increase ticket prices, but until then, let's not pretend that demand is high enough to jack up the price.
 

LakerFan said:
I think they will minimally need to go back one year in their pricing to see any appreciable progress in filling the stadium. That being said it will never really make any progress until we get back to winning at least some of our rivalry games.
Click to expand...

At this point I don't know that a rollback will bring a ton of people back into the fold. There is just very little buzz around the program so there is not much to generate fan excitement about the program for those not present on this message board. A good showing against WSU in the bowl will help.

Some of this is also symptomatic of sports in general. It is tougher and tougher for people to justify the cost of season tickets and sporting events in general. In a lot of cases it is just easier to save a couple hundred dollars and just watch the game at home on the flat screen.
 

This isn't as simple as "win and they will come". The team has won a lot more than what most fans have experienced and it hasn't helped. Winning isn't everything when it comes to Gopher sports.
 



The schedule will cure some of that as well. I can see a 3K+ jump just because of that...I do think Coyle will adjust the donation zones as well. Really think only seats between the 20s should have it. He probably should throw in some freebies for season ticket renewals next year.
 

I got a letter from AD Coyle as a "Scholarship Donor" where he mentions something vague about working on giving back to the fans and season ticket holders. Wonder what he has in mind.
 

Any word on whether the field will be flipped with the Gophers going to the opposite sideline? Certainly would be good to know before renewing tickets.
 

An essential additional idea...

Reform the marketing department to rebuild game day atmosphere. The gophers try and compete with the pros through gimmicky loud speaker music, monster truck rally announcer, scoreboard antics etc.

College teams will lose this fight (against pros) every time.

The gophers AD needs to create and embrace another types of atmosphere through fan/band driven tradition (the U completely abandoned this many decades ago when the admin deprioritized atheletics and later moved to the effing metro dome). As a result, a state schoool with tons of history and multiple national championships offers no tradition or sense of community - resulting in a vanilla fan experience. This is truly shocking. And it won't be improved by playing a bunch of jock jams and having some DJ screem at you.

Start by engaging the students and using the band. Let it flow organically from there.
 



Wins. It is all wins.

They can do all the outreach they want but without some big wins nobody will care. The other stuff will help, when combined with wins.

-----------------------

They do need to do some sort of outreach / something to establish more of a culture and etc with season ticket holders. Right now it is very, transactional only. I buy tickets... they give them. That's it.

I got a survey about season ticket holder benefits:

- There were benefits I didn't realize I was entitled to based on my giving level (seriously, not sure how I was going to find that out).

- They asked me to rate awesome benefits in the survey that I ... don't get.

Even the survey seemed a bit tone deaf / clumsy.
 

Torres9 said:
An essential additional idea...

Reform the marketing department to rebuild game day atmosphere. The gophers try and compete with the pros through gimmicky loud speaker music, monster truck rally announcer, scoreboard antics etc.

College teams will lose this fight (against pros) every time.

The gophers AD needs to create and embrace another types of atmosphere through fan/band driven tradition (the U completely abandoned this many decades ago when the admin deprioritized atheletics and later moved to the effing metro dome). As a result, a state schoool with tons of history and multiple national championships offers no tradition or sense of community - resulting in a vanilla fan experience. This is truly shocking. And it won't be improved by playing a bunch of jock jams and having some DJ screem at you.

Start by engaging the students and using the band. Let it flow organically from there.
Click to expand...

Not really following you...they do engage the students throughout and the band is prominent in all home games before during and after. Same announcer we've had for years. Not doing any different than other colleges.
 

They really need to ramp up marketing to a younger, family crowd. The 30 something crowd is really lacking. We took the Creative Charters plan to Colorado last year and I bet the average age on the two flight's was in the early 60s . These people are starting to die off. He'll, Creative Charters even had a registered nurse on board. My wife said she would roll back prices to the first year of TCF. She also said Minnesotans are big on " Giveaways ' She would do something along those lines for the non-conference dogs. She has a lot of great idea's, but you guys always accuse me of tooting my horn, so we'll leave it at that.
 

ruppertflywheel said:
They really need to ramp up marketing to a younger, family crowd. The 30 something crowd is really lacking. We took the Creative Charters plan to Colorado last year and I bet the average age on the two flight's was in the early 60s . These people are starting to die off. He'll, Creative Charters even had a registered nurse on board. My wife said she would roll back prices to the first year of TCF. She also said Minnesotans are big on " Giveaways ' She would do something along those lines for the non-conference dogs. She has a lot of great idea's, but you guys always accuse me of tooting my horn, so we'll leave it at that.
Click to expand...

I'm a fairly recent Alum (3ish years out) and the U did absolutely nothing to market to new alumni. They have the ticket deal, barely advertise it at all. They do nothing to bridge the gap between students and "real life".
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
Wins. It is all wins.

They can do all the outreach they want but without some big wins nobody will care. The other stuff will help, when combined with wins.
Click to expand...

In a lot of ways it really is as simple as this.

I think people forget, even the Vikings struggled with attendance before 98 when Moss showed up.
 

ruppertflywheel said:
They really need to ramp up marketing to a younger, family crowd. The 30 something crowd is really lacking. We took the Creative Charters plan to Colorado last year and I bet the average age on the two flight's was in the early 60s . These people are starting to die off. He'll, Creative Charters even had a registered nurse on board. My wife said she would roll back prices to the first year of TCF. She also said Minnesotans are big on " Giveaways ' She would do something along those lines for the non-conference dogs. She has a lot of great idea's, but you guys always accuse me of tooting my horn, so we'll leave it at that.
Click to expand...

For me, it is all about tailgating. I'm in my early 30's and if they want me to keep my season ticket (had season tickets since I was a Freshman at the U in 2003) the next few years, the tailgating situation needs to improve. I typically am donating (which is required with my season tickets) between $1000-$1300/season and have not been able to get a tailgate lot anywhere near the stadium. And, I don't mean the lots immediately next to the stadium either. It has been beyond frustrating to drive past some of those tailgate lots and seem them half empty (or more) only to find out every year I go to renew every year that nothing is available in those said tailgate lots. I don't know what you do differently, but if I ever got a pass, I know I would be out there every home game.

There are other things that bother me, but that to me is the most frustrating thing about it.
 

PMWinSTP said:
Not really following you...they do engage the students throughout and the band is prominent in all home games before during and after. Same announcer we've had for years. Not doing any different than other colleges.
Click to expand...

I disagree. I watch a lot of college football (and sports in general - also a season ticket holder FWIW) and I think (for the reasons I cite) the Gopher experience is on the stale side. I think this is a shame given our history (becoming ancient at this point).

The fact we’ve been doing it this way for years is part of my point.

Anyway, reasonable minds can disagree (and I’m definitely not trying to suggest I’m some how more ‘credentialed’ than you).
 

Schnauzer said:
Finally someone in the media properly diagnosed the dumb ill fated scholarship seating program as the obvious reason for the football attendance decline.

For many of us, this failed idea was an "I told you so" event in the making from the day it was announced. I don't pretend to be an insider or a brilliant Gopher football program mind, but this debacle was easy to see coming all along. Sadly, a good chunk of the lost season ticket base were people that had tickets for many years or decades. They had already proved they were willing to renew without the promise of winning many times in the past, and as such, will be harder (or impossible) to get back regardless of winning level in the future. It took a lot to get them to leave. It will now take more to get them back.

Somewhat irritating is remembering all the know-it-alls on Gopherhole stating this was critical for future funding, unavoidable, a good idea, etc.
Click to expand...


+ infinity

This article is spot on that the pricing increase was an obvious debacle from day one. Even an intellectually challenged fool like me could see that is was going to be a colossal failure. I dropped two of my four season tickets and have been highly critical of the program ever since Woody made this asinine play.

I was chastised by several GH Pollyanna idiots (e.g., MplsGO4) for speaking out about it. The biggest wussy on the planet, LessBolstad, called me out on matter surrounding this fiasco and boldly waged a bet that he totally puzzied out when I took him up on it. The mods even blocked a thread I started related to this matter and played the troll card on me. Not that any of this really matter, just say'in.

It is both frustrating and sad how many fans we lost as a result of this mess. The good news is that it looks like Coyle will pull this ticket pricing debacle out of the U’s arse. While I think a lot of the damage has been done and not entirely reversible, it will be a nice start on healing the wounds should Coyle dial back season ticket prices. If he does in fact reduce prices to some significant degree, I even promise not to be such as arse about things.
 

I'm hoping we spend more timeouts honoring farmers and sick kids. It fires up the crowd every game and gets the student section buzzing.
 

theTurning said:
In a lot of ways it really is as simple as this.

I think people forget, even the Vikings struggled with attendance before 98 when Moss showed up.
Click to expand...

Many Vikings games in 90's were sold out because of the threat of a black-out and/or General Mills buying the excess tickets so the game would be on TV. Not that we want to give BTN any ideas.
 

Stan said:
I'm hoping we spend more timeouts honoring farmers and sick kids. It fires up the crowd every game and gets the student section buzzing.
Click to expand...

Could not agree more...
 

ruppertflywheel said:
They really need to ramp up marketing to a younger, family crowd. The 30 something crowd is really lacking. We took the Creative Charters plan to Colorado last year and I bet the average age on the two flight's was in the early 60s . These people are starting to die off. He'll, Creative Charters even had a registered nurse on board. My wife said she would roll back prices to the first year of TCF. She also said Minnesotans are big on " Giveaways ' She would do something along those lines for the non-conference dogs. She has a lot of great idea's, but you guys always accuse me of tooting my horn, so we'll leave it at that.
Click to expand...

When I was working in the ticket office in college around 2005, we would sell a lot of season tickets to young families at the State Fair. One of the biggest reasons they chose the Gophers was because it was so much cheaper than the Vikings and the entire family could go. They need to ensure this is still true, and keep going after this demographic.
 

Torres9 said:
I disagree. I watch a lot of college football (and sports in general - also a season ticket holder FWIW) and I think (for the reasons I cite) the Gopher experience is on the stale side. I think this is a shame given our history (becoming ancient at this point).

The fact we’ve been doing it this way for years is part of my point.

Anyway, reasonable minds can disagree (and I’m definitely not trying to suggest I’m some how more ‘credentialed’ than you).
Click to expand...

The game day experience changed dramatically with TCF. Not saying they can't tweak things, but I thoroughly enjoy the environment. Get there 1 1/2hours early. Watch the band march out and play on the plaza, grab a beer after somewhere (maybe a tailgate party) then head inside for pregame. Seriously, fans have plenty to do if they choose to participate.

Still not sure what you mean by involving the students and band...?
 

How about this?

They should offer a "Get Your Seats Back" promotion to anybody who cancelled season tickets after having them, say, 5 years.

Grandfathered back in.
 

e.bigelow said:
For me, it is all about tailgating. I'm in my early 30's and if they want me to keep my season ticket (had season tickets since I was a Freshman at the U in 2003) the next few years, the tailgating situation needs to improve. I typically am donating (which is required with my season tickets) between $1000-$1300/season and have not been able to get a tailgate lot anywhere near the stadium. And, I don't mean the lots immediately next to the stadium either. It has been beyond frustrating to drive past some of those tailgate lots and seem them half empty (or more) only to find out every year I go to renew every year that nothing is available in those said tailgate lots. I don't know what you do differently, but if I ever got a pass, I know I would be out there every home game.

There are other things that bother me, but that to me is the most frustrating thing about it.
Click to expand...

We are in Lot 37, which is $1100. So you should be covered to get into that one, and in my opinion that is the best lot anyways. The one lot closer to the stadium always appears to be completely empty, but that is because it is for those older folks that dont tailgate. So it is always filled right before kickoff, but any tailgater that shows up at a decent time would think it was not close to sold out.
 

Stan said:
I'm hoping we spend more timeouts honoring farmers and sick kids. It fires up the crowd every game and gets the student section buzzing.
Click to expand...

The farmer thing is pointless, since it is only done because of a sponsor. Might as well have Wells Fargo sponsor "Honor a Banker" at a timeout. Sick kids doesnt bother me, as they are at the U hospital, and the student athletes spend a lot of time volunteering over there.
 

tikited said:
This isn't as simple as "win and they will come". The team has won a lot more than what most fans have experienced and it hasn't helped. Winning isn't everything when it comes to Gopher sports.
Click to expand...

I don't think this is totally accurate. If the gophers had lost to Purdue and Northwestern this year, but beat Iowa and Wisconsin the fan base would be energized and excited about the future despite having the same record. All games aren't equal. We have 3-5 chances a year to have a win a game that matters(depending on quality of cross over games). We won 0 games that matter this year in 3 chances (IA, Wis, Neb). Therefore apathy despite the 8-4 record
 

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