Minnesota has 2nd worst attendance decline in nation of P5 conference since 2015

BleedGopher

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per the Post Bulletin:

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and it appears the University of Minnesota is desperate to put more fans in the stands at football, basketball and hockey games.

Attendance at these big-name sporting events has plummeted in recent years. In terms of actual people coming through the gates (not ticket sales), the Gophers football squad last year drew an average of 22,656 fans. The attendance decline TCF Bank Stadium since 2015 is the second-worst among the nation’s 65 “power conference” football teams.

Basketball attendance isn’t much better. The Big 10 has become a ticket-selling hoops juggernaut, with the best average attendance of any college basketball conference, but attendance at Williams Arena is down more than 10 percent since 2014. Minnesota ranks near the bottom of the conference in ticket sales.

And hockey? Well, a late-season Gophers game at 3M Arena at Mariucci used to be one of the hottest tickets in town, but a little more than two months ago, the Gophers couldn’t sell 2,000 tickets for a playoff game against Michigan. And that was the announced attendance — far fewer people than that were actually present, and photos of the nearly empty arena went viral.

What to do?

University officials are betting on beer.

The plan currently under consideration would expand alcohol sales to general seating areas at Williams Arena and 3M Arena at Mariucci. Currently, alcohol is sold only in premium seating areas at these venues. Alcohol is already sold throughout TCF Bank Stadium.

While increased alcohol sales are projected to provide an additional $250,000 in revenue each year, that’s not the main objective. The thinking is that more people will attend games if they can buy a lower-priced ticket and enjoy a beer or glass of wine.

The potential pitfalls of such a change are obvious. Anyone who has attended a handful of professional sporting events knows what it’s like to sit near someone who’s had one too many drinks. (Or five too many.) A drunken fan can really detract from the enjoyment of those nearby. If you’ve witnessed a fight in the stands — and they do happen — alcohol was almost certainly involved.

But unless the U is ready to ban alcohol sales entirely — and it’s not — then we’d prefer the new proposal to the current policy. We’ve never liked the notion that people in “premium” seating are able to buy drinks that the average fan cannot.

If the well-heeled people sitting in luxury suites are surrounded by fine wine and imported beer, then the metalworker who paid $15 for a general admission ticket should be able to drink a Miller Lite while he watches the Gophers hockey team.

But make no mistake — alcohol sales won’t fix what ails the Gophers sports programs.

A lot of factors make it difficult for Gophers sports teams to attract fans, and the biggest one is the competition from professional sports teams. The Gophers football team plays in a new-but-smallish stadium that’s just a few miles from the gigantic palace where the Vikings play. The Vikings own the loyalty of most Minnesota football fans, and that’s not going to change.

Gophers hockey has to compete with Minnesota Wild for fans’ attention and dollars, and while Mariucci is very nice, it’s a far cry from the Xcel Energy Center. The biggest blow to Gophers fans and players was the U’s switch from the WCHA to the Big 10. Fans packed Mariucci each week to see the likes of North Dakota and Colorado College, teams with which the rivalries were long, storied and even bloody.

Finally, although the Timberwolves are consistently lousy, basketball fans who go to one or two games each year can watch a middle-of-the-pack Gophers team, or they can choose to see LeBron James, Steph Curry or one of the half-dozen other NBA superstars who come to Minneapolis every year.

Williams Arena is a great college venue, but James Harden never plays there.

It also doesn’t help that the U of M has made mistakes that test fans loyalty. A few years ago, the now-infamous athletic director Norwood Teague approved a plan that required fans who renewed their season tickets to make an additional donation to the athletics department.

Minnesotans love their sports, but we’re a thrifty bunch, too. Given the choice between being extorted or using that money to buy a 70-inch flat-screen on which to watch games for free, many people chose the latter.

That last problem isn’t specific to the Gophers. The Twins are a first-place ball club, with a lot of exciting new players, yet for the first few weeks of the season, attendance at Target Field was absolutely abysmal. When every game is on TV, why hassle with parking and an hour-long drive home after the game?

So the Twins got creative, offering a “flash sale” of $5 seats — and in a matter of hours had unloaded more than 30,000 tickets that might otherwise not have been sold.

The University of Minnesota is going to have to do something similar, and already it has cut prices in the least-expensive seating areas of Mariucci and Williams Arena.

That will help, but it’s a short-term fix. The best way to put fans in stands is to win, and for years, the big-ticket Gophers programs have underperformed.

When the football team wins the Big 10 West and plays in a New Year’s Day bowl, attendance will grow. If Richard Pitino can deliver a regular-season Big 10 championship and a berth in the Final Four, Williams Arena will be packed.

And when the best college hockey team in the nation is in Minneapolis, rather than Duluth, then 3M Arena at Mariucci will once again be the hottest ticket in town.

https://www.postbulletin.com/opinio...cle_f2371122-78a8-11e9-bc11-974a48668f9f.html

Go Gophers!!
 

Hmmm.....sure.....TCF has been half empty for a while.....but I went to a few games at the Barn last year and it was pretty filled for those games.
 

Attendance at these big-name sporting events has plummeted in recent years. In terms of actual people coming through the gates (not ticket sales), the Gophers football squad last year drew an average of 22,656 fans. The attendance decline TCF Bank Stadium since 2015 is the second-worst among the nation’s 65 “power conference” football teams.

Attendance decline is absolutely an issue. But feels like they cherry picked the year here. The opponent is a big part of attendance and 2015 vs 2018 are very different.

2015:
TCU (Season opener vs #2 team in country)
Kent St
Ohio
Nebraska
Michigan
Illinois
Wisconsin


2018:
New Mexico St
Fresno St
Miami
Iowa
Indiana
Purdue
Northwestern
 

Tickets are too expensive, non conference schedule sucks, it's normally cold, and now with Rutgers and Maryland that's two more duds to rotate through in conference
 

Attendance decline is absolutely an issue. But feels like they cherry picked the year here. The opponent is a big part of attendance and 2015 vs 2018 are very different.

2015:
TCU (Season opener vs #2 team in country)
Kent St
Ohio
Nebraska
Michigan
Illinois
Wisconsin


2018:
New Mexico St
Fresno St
Miami
Iowa
Indiana
Purdue
Northwestern

Except that attendance was lower in 2016 and 2017, too.

This issue has been discussed to death on this board (and will again now, I assume). The cost of season tickets is the biggest factor by far, in my opinion. But it goes hand-in-hand with the perceived value of what you're buying. You're right that the schedule is clearly a big factor, as is the quality of the home team and the fan experience. All have been lacking, for the most part, as season ticket prices have increased.
 


Except that attendance was lower in 2016 and 2017, too.

This issue has been discussed to death on this board (and will again now, I assume). The cost of season tickets is the biggest factor by far, in my opinion. But it goes hand-in-hand with the perceived value of what you're buying. You're right that the schedule is clearly a big factor, as is the quality of the home team and the fan experience. All have been lacking, for the most part, as season ticket prices have increased.

Think you hit right on the head. Perception nationally of value in attending sporting events is going down with the advent of HD viewing options everywhere where you can invest next to nothing and watch the game. In a society that likes looking at their phones more than talking to the person next to them, you’re going to have a hard time putting butts in the seats when people can see it from their couch for pennies on the dollar comparatively
 

Here we go again. How did attendance drop? How does it improve? Same old questions. New thread. "just win" might be mentioned a time or two. But attendance was a LOT better 10 years ago even through the hockey, basketball, and football teams were in the same ballpark win-wise.

Oh, and as far as this article is concerned... the pro sports... they have been around for a long time and the drops in the three big venues are quite big now. Pro teams will always be a factor but to devote so much discussion to them as the major culprit seems misguided to me in that the same pro teams were around when the three big U venues were regularly full.
 

It has been a good week or so since we talked about attendance issues. I suppose we were due for another round of it
 

Except that attendance was lower in 2016 and 2017, too.

This issue has been discussed to death on this board (and will again now, I assume). The cost of season tickets is the biggest factor by far, in my opinion. But it goes hand-in-hand with the perceived value of what you're buying. You're right that the schedule is clearly a big factor, as is the quality of the home team and the fan experience. All have been lacking, for the most part, as season ticket prices have increased.

After the brutal year that was 15. ... that makes sense to me about 16.
 




I hope the team GPA stays high or we might need a new direction in the program. :p
 

I hope the team GPA stays high or we might need a new direction in the program. :p

Or we could go the Nebraska route and discard academics and stop filtering bad people?

It worked for a time...
 

I think an issue that isn't discussed enough is the time commitment to attend a sporting event. Take football for instance. The game itself is over 3 hours, then when you include travel time to the game and travel time home you are getting upwards of 5+ hours; this is assuming you are not tailgating. People have busy lives and taking 5+ hours out of your Saturday does not leave much time for anything else. If you watch the game from home, you can still accomplish some tasks while the game is on, plus you save yourself almost 2 hours not having to travel to and from home.
 



I said at the time they did the football price increases that it was asinine and that the team was one bad loss away from an empty stadium (obvious exaggeration).

As it turned out, the timing of the increase could not have been much worse.

2015 - Season 1 - disappointing 5-7 regular season (6-7 w/ Bowl win), Kill walks away mid-season. Season tickets renewals drop ~5000 after this year.
2016 - Season 2 - very good overall record (9-4 w/ Bowl win), announced no season 3 price increase, but season clouded by scandal, Claeys fired.
2017 - Season 3 - hype with the new coach, but disappointing 5-7 finish with no Bowl game.
2018 - Season 4 - very up and down season, improved 7-6 final record. Awful middle of season but excitement after the last four games of the season. Oh and WE GOT THE AXE!!!!
2019 - Season 5 - Question - will the excitement from those final four games move the needle on Gopher football interest? Or will fans on the fence have to see even more improvement and sustained improvement to jump on board?

For hockey, same thing - donations kicked in as the team slumped and B1G Hockey kicked off.

Basketball made no sense as the team hadn't been good enough to justify a price increase.

The problem is, if Coyle reduces the donations, they may keep more renewing ST holders, but they may not increase new ST holders and may end up at a net negative income-wise.

No matter what they do, they may never get former ST holders to come back regardless. I've mentioned this before, but when you do something every week, then you quit for a while for whatever reason, it's less likely you'll want to go back. I used to hunt a lot. Went a year without, now I've been hunting a small handful of times in the last two decades.

If there was an easy answer they'd have done it. Norwood Teague and whatever consultant the U hired to evaluate how much to make the donations should be sued for destroying our fan base. Or burned in effigy. Or given the frowning of a lifetime...

I think an issue that isn't discussed enough is the time commitment to attend a sporting event. Take football for instance. The game itself is over 3 hours, then when you include travel time to the game and travel time home you are getting upwards of 5+ hours; this is assuming you are not tailgating. People have busy lives and taking 5+ hours out of your Saturday does not leave much time for anything else. If you watch the game from home, you can still accomplish some tasks while the game is on, plus you save yourself almost 2 hours not having to travel to and from home.

Agreed - potentially double if you tailgate, not to mention the time to prepare to tailgate. I personally assume I'm tied up all day for Gopher home games. To my point above about former ST holders, something that hit home like a ton of bricks their first game they didn't attend.
 
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I wonder which school dropped more than Minnesota.
 

2nd worst. Wow. Major Declining attendance. Someone’s seat is getting hot.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Gopher volleyball is always a hot ticket. Gopher softball will be sold out again this weekend. I realize these are small venues, but I wonder why fans are drawn to these sports? Hmm, anybody got a theory about this?
 

2nd worst. Wow. Major Declining attendance. Someone’s seat is getting hot.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep, despite all the valid reasons attendance is shrinking throughout sports - advent of dirt cheap HDTV, cost, increasingly annoying traffic, lack of esprit de corps amongst many students among others - the fact remains MN has underperformed vs their peers.

The questions remain valid: how to drum up more excitement and business? Touring the axe around excites diehards that are likely already more likely to attend but I'm not sure it excites Gen ZZZ or the more casual fans looking for a fun event. Make it cheap, make it fun (and winning helps). Does Mark Coyle know how to party?
 

There are some things that the U cannot change. The U of MN is always going to be located in a major metropolitan area - instead of a "college town" like Iowa City or Madison where the team is the only thing in town. And the U of MN is always going to be in competition with multiple pro teams for attention and ticket sales.

In the end, MN fans are front-runners. If the team is perceived as hot, or the new in-thing, it will draw. But, when that team has a down-turn, the fans leave just as fast.

In the long run, the smartest thing for the Gophers may be to just start from scratch to re-build its fan base, by targeting current and recently-graduated students. This will take time, reasonably-priced tickets, and on-field success. I'm talking about a plan that will literally take 5-10 years to really pay off. But, it may be the best thing for the long haul.
 

I don't understand the "bad schedule" take. When deciding to buy tickets, as a fan of any team, why does it matter if Maryland is on the schedule instead of Michigan (or vice versa)? I would be going to see the Gopher play first and foremost. Someone mentioned the 2016 team and to me, that was the year everything was allegedly supposed to come together for the Kill (then Claeys) regime. What happened? The Gophers lost their first two conference games essentially rendering the rest of the season meaningless in terms of competing for the conference title. I personally lost a lot of interest in even watching the games at that point as we were a long way in to that particular cycle (as someone who viewed Claeys hire as an extension of Kill) and there seemed to be little hope of getting over the hump (that's only my perspective, not saying it's factual). If the Gophers has 0 or 1 loss, those home games against Rutgers, Purdue, and Northwestern would have been a lot more attractive. They wouldn't have been any more attractive to me if they were Michigan, Michigan State, and Nebraska as the Gophers would have been playing games with real stakes.

Lets see the Gophers be more than an opponent for a year (or even two!) before we condemn sports fans in Minnesota for being fair weather or front-runners. The Vikings have had strong attendance almost every year since Randy Moss was drafted and have been merely a slightly above average franchise on the whole for the past 15 years or so. They do a good job of rarely being absolutely terrible, but there have only been two or three really good seasons since Moss was traded. I think fans will support a Minnesota team (pro or college) pretty strongly that shows it can compete and is near the top at least occasionally. Lets see Gopher basketball make a couple Sweet 16's or better and Gopher football win a division title or two and then see how attendance is on a year by year basis to see if my hypothesis is correct (same goes for the Timberwolves...how about winning a playoff series for a start?)
 

You have to get young families in there with kids.

It's a tough sell when Gopher teams aren't winning to lug kids to the U with the drive to get there, the cost of the tickets.

The kids get bored and lost interest. My daughter's family of five decided it is too much of a hassle with security checks.

So,they decided it is easier to stay home and watch in comfort and convenience.
 

You have to get young families in there with kids.

It's a tough sell when Gopher teams aren't winning to lug kids to the U with the drive to get there, the cost of the tickets.

The kids get bored and lost interest. My daughter's family of five decided it is too much of a hassle overall with the kind of entertainment value they are getting for the family.

So,they decided it is easier to stay home and watch in comfort and convenience.
 

You have to get young families in there with kids.

It's a tough sell when Gopher teams aren't winning to lug kids to the U with the drive to get there, the cost of the tickets.

The kids get bored and lost interest. My daughter's family of five decided it is too much of a hassle overall with the kind of entertainment value they are getting for the family.

So,they decided it is easier to stay home and watch in comfort and convenience.

The security point is one that really has been ignored. I doubt it's in and of itself THE reason people don't come. But it's another straw on the camel's back. Especially if you were the type to bring a metal flask with you. Or even for me just the extra time it takes. Not to mention I'll be majorly annoyed the first game I forget to leave my pocket knife in the car and have to throw it away. If I had kids and had to put everything into the little clear bag, etc. - might be an even bigger issue.

It's another point in the "it's so much easier to just stay home" list.
 


Think you hit right on the head. Perception nationally of value in attending sporting events is going down with the advent of HD viewing options everywhere where you can invest next to nothing and watch the game. In a society that likes looking at their phones more than talking to the person next to them, you’re going to have a hard time putting butts in the seats when people can see it from their couch for pennies on the dollar comparatively
If watching from on your device versus butts in the seats get too far out of balance: welcome PPV access fees for the games they want to see.
 

I hope this silences the "nationwide trend" excuse for the poor performance of our athletic department. Everyone is subject to the trend, and only one power 5 school has done worse.

As for pro competition, that was the case before 2015 too. We have just been plain bad at getting butts in the seats.
 

I hope this silences the "nationwide trend" excuse for the poor performance of our athletic department. Everyone is subject to the trend, and only one power 5 school has done worse.

As for pro competition, that was the case before 2015 too. We have just been plain bad at getting butts in the seats.

True, but it has been made worse by the Vikings moving to US Bank Stadium which has siphoned lots of corporate dollars as will as football fans in general discretionary dollars with the licensing fees etc.
 




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