How does CU fix attendance for basketball?

[Buffnik]

Boyle made it clear in his post-game that he believe there is blame to go around and that there's room for improvement in a ton of areas:

"Any time there's an empty seat in the Coors Events Center, we've got room for improvement," Boyle sad. "Our organization, and I'm talking about from marketing to students to coaches to players, you name it, we've got work to do when we don't sell out a BYU team that's been to the NCAA Tournament eight of the last nine year — a big-time team, and we've got to sell these games out.

"We've got to get this place sold out."

And when Tad says the following, he is absolutely spot on:

"If we want to be where we want to be, which is a Top 25 program, you don't have opposing fans," he said. "They get the 24 seats or whatever they get behind the bench and that's all you see and all you hear. We're not there yet. That's why we've got work to do as a program."

So... what needs to be done? It's certainly better than it used to be and I understand it's a process. Especially in a state that doesn't live and breathe basketball. But what are the first steps here?

Fan experience with facilities upgrades? It's hard for me to go there since we've now got booze areas available and the decline has coincided with that.

Parking and shuttle enhancement so it's easier to get in and out of games? I think there's something to that. Maybe the parking garage at the IPF will become another place to park for hoops games. Pulling some game traffic onto campus off Arapahoe and up Folsom would be a good thing. Could more be done?

Enhanced marketing? I think that's a given. So much improvement is there to be had with the ticket office and promoting the exchange program. Also, billboards and other advertising around the Denver metro.

Playing a game in Denver? Unlike in football, I think this would be a great thing for basketball. Just like Kansas plays some "neutral" games in Kansas City. Beyond that, I've advocated for this before and want to bring it up again now: we need to have a tourney among the in-state teams every year. To avoid conference games, it just needs to be CU, CSU, Denver and Northern Colorado. If it's not big enough for Pepsi, that could be a round robin at the Keg (3 games in 3 days). And if CSU wouldn't agree to that, then fine. Keep that series as it is and make Air Force the MWC representative. Heck, make it both men's and women's if you can. All I know is that we need to promote college basketball in the state.

 

[Sykobuff]

People, unlike folks on this board, aren't as fanatical about cu sports. Sure, if the buffs start winning they will get some sell outs but, just seems we will never have a fan base like an ohio state who could be playing incarnate word and sell out.

The C-unit rocks but people seem to find other things to do.

 

[GoonieBuff]

Speaking with friends, I've been told and discussed these things. Some I agree with and some I'm not sure, but they all seem to have some legitimacy, at least in playing a role in the fan decision to attend games or not. Anyway, these are based on conversations with multiple steady CU basketball fans, not just fair-weather fans or Denver/Boulder locals who barely follow the team:

- Team was not very fun to watch last year and couldn't justify upping season tickets after that.
- Poor non-conference scheduling at home. BYU was the premier non-con game, and nothing was even close after that. We hadn't played BYU in 60 years, so you can't expect that game to drum up a lot of interest by itself.
- Price increases (while still a good value) on season tickets, put them out of their entertainment budget.
- Interest to go to BYU game, but ticket prices were still at a semi-premium.
- Looking to purchase some type of value pack.

 

[sackman]

I think a long, sustained run in the top 25 would help a lot. Teams that are ranked get a lot of national coverage. When we have made it into the rankings in recent years, we have usually lost the next week and have been dropped quickly. Spend five weeks in the rankings and make the sweet sixteen and the CEC will be a tough ticket.

 

[Buffnik]

I think a long, sustained run in the top 25 would help a lot. Teams that are ranked get a lot of national coverage. When we have made it into the rankings in recent years, we have usually lost the next week and have been dropped quickly. Spend five weeks in the rankings and make the sweet sixteen and the CEC will be a tough ticket.

While I agree, I also think that too much of CU's attitude has been: winning solves all & the right HC covers all operational deficiencies.

We need to talk about what CU can control from the AD level. Facilities, advertising, outreach to the students, community, etc. This can't just be about whether there's a bandwagon to jump on and a marquee opponent coming to town.

 

[sackman]

While I agree, I also think that too much of CU's attitude has been: winning solves all & the right HC covers all operational deficiencies.

We need to talk about what CU can control from the AD level. Facilities, advertising, outreach to the students, community, etc. This can't just be about whether there's a bandwagon to jump on and a marquee opponent coming to town.

Ok. Well, I suppose I can only answer for myself; there are two reasons I'm not at the hoops games this year. The first is the cost. It's gotten to the point where it's not a cheap anymore. I have to make the choice about spending that money. More importantly, though, is the fact that my daughter simply isn't interested anymore. She used to love going to the games. Now, not so much. I think a lot of that had to so with a guy who got seats next to us last year who was an obnoxious jackass. Not much the AD can do about that. He'd bellow at unbearable decibel levels at the most inappropriate times. People just started moving away from him as the year wore on. By the halfway point of the year, we got to the point where we just didn't want to deal with it anymore.

 

[gobuffs58]

part of the problem for me is just the drive to and from...over an hour each way ...for football i just deal with it because its just 5-6 times....hoops i try to go to a couple of games but dont need season tickets

 

[FightCu1414]

The price increase was a poor choice. Coming off last season it was ill-timed. My family wanted to go to the Arizona or Utah game, but seeing the prices to be 50 bucks a piece for the cheapest made it a little bit harder to swallow that pill.

 

[FightCu1414]

part of the problem for me is just the drive to and from...over an hour each way ...for football i just deal with it because its just 5-6 times....hoops i try to go to a couple of games but dont need season tickets

This is a very very good point. There was someone in the crowd saying the C-Unit stunk because of games being during break. That makes sense to me then I asked where they are from. They reply they are from Denver and it is too far to drive up for a wednesday night game. I am working in Denver next semester and hoping to drive up for games, but it definitely makes it harder.

 

[Buffnik]

Ok. Well, I suppose I can only answer for myself; there are two reasons I'm not at the hoops games this year. The first is the cost. It's gotten to the point where it's not a cheap anymore. I have to make the choice about spending that money. More importantly, though, is the fact that my daughter simply isn't interested anymore. She used to love going to the games. Now, not so much. I think a lot of that had to so with a guy who got seats next to us last year who was an obnoxious jackass. Not much the AD can do about that. He'd bellow at unbearable decibel levels at the most inappropriate times. People just started moving away from him as the year wore on. By the halfway point of the year, we got to the point where we just didn't want to deal with it anymore.

Ok. And you were admittedly a casual fan.

I guess what I'm looking at is how to get that base that almost guarantees a sellout every home game.

The Keg seats a 11,064.

There are 2 separate things here:

1. Filling sections 13-17 (student section). Anyone have a number on how many seats that is (assuming the band takes a certain number, too)?

2. Filling the rest of the arena.

My guess is that we're talking about finding 2,000 or so students out of a student body of 26k undergrads and another 5k post-grads. That should be achievable.

With the other 9,000 seats, we're talking about a Boulder City population of 105,000, a Boulder County population of 310,000, and a Denver metro population of 2.75 million... all growing. It doesn't take great marketing to find 9k season tickets out of that, especially when you consider game pack options and the opportunity for a vibrant ticket exchange. Especially when it's the best basketball team in the state -- ahead of the NBA team and at a much better price.

 

[Buffnik]

This is a very very good point. There was someone in the crowd saying the C-Unit stunk because of games being during break. That makes sense to me then I asked where they are from. They reply they are from Denver and it is too far to drive up for a wednesday night game. I am working in Denver next semester and hoping to drive up for games, but it definitely makes it harder.

Do we think that it will help next season when the Hwy 36 project is complete? I actually think that will give an incremental bump to both football and basketball.

 

[onealcd]

I think some of the issue student wise has to do with the kind of kids being accepted these days. Some are very passionate and some will not go unless the team is really good.

Last night is definitely weird because of finals.

 

[buffaholic]

Fix traffic control. Came in last night on Colorado and each green light at 28th street, the cop would wave 2 cars per lane thru and then hold them up for the rest of the green light. Ostensibly, so he had room to wave in all the traffic turning left off of 28th onto Colorado, so it didn't pile up there beyond what the left hand turn light would handle. That all sounds good except for 1 thing:

You get up to Regent and where the cop is waving traffic into the parking garage. He is allowing equal numbers in from the north and the south. Why? Why? There's never more than 10 cars coming from the south on Regent. There's 2000 cars backed up coming from the north on Regent. Just letting in a 4:1 ratio from the north would solve the traffic backup issue on Colorado!!!!

 

[Buffnik]

I think some of the issue student wise has to do with the kind of kids being accepted these days. Some are very passionate and some will not go unless the team is really good.

Last night is definitely weird because of finals.

Sure. But isn't that true anywhere for a good academic school that gets most of its students from out of state?

Going back to non-students, I don't think there's some special CU problem here other than weather. In our case, snow in the forecast likely made a lot of families head for the powder this weekend. And I'd agree that with the Hwy 36 issues and parking/traffic management at CU that people didn't want to deal with the hassle. It's so damn frustrating when you can see the arena from Colorado Ave or 36, know you could walk to it in under 10 minutes, and also know that it's going to take you another 30 minutes to park.

 

[Deleted member 807]

Speaking with friends, I've been told and discussed these things. Some I agree with and some I'm not sure, but they all seem to have some legitimacy, at least in playing a role in the fan decision to attend games or not. Anyway, these are based on conversations with multiple steady CU basketball fans, not just fair-weather fans or Denver/Boulder locals who barely follow the team:

- Team was not very fun to watch last year and couldn't justify upping season tickets after that.
- Poor non-conference scheduling at home. BYU was the premier non-con game, and nothing was even close after that. We hadn't played BYU in 60 years, so you can't expect that game to drum up a lot of interest by itself.
- Price increases (while still a good value) on season tickets, put them out of their entertainment budget.
- Interest to go to BYU game, but ticket prices were still at a semi-premium.
- Looking to purchase some type of value pack.

You are on to something. To add to your observations, Last season's performance was deflating from the embarrassing ESPN game day blow out against Arizona to Askia quitting the team before playing in the most minor of tournaments, and then losing that. Boyle's Camelot came to an end last year when SD fell at UDub.

Add increasing ticket prices on top of a disappointing lack of team chemistry last year, it's hard to pick up fan momentum from where CU left off.Boyle got his fans through his magical first three seasons through pulling off a few upsets.

If CU can match the shock value that came with beating Kansas at the keg, then the buzz will return. While BYU is a legit program, they are not a top 10 ranked team.

I think Josh and King have the star power to put butts in seats. The 2016 brand of team basketball that is generating 90 point wins and >45% shooting will get fans back.

The C-Unit was new, fresh, and coming into its own a few years back. Some of those student crazies have moved on. (Surfer, buff girl). Transitioning solid C-Unit student leadership from the founders to the next generation of leaders who can echo traditions while innovating new concepts that catch attention will also help. The ASU's curtain of distraction is the most noteworthy student fan concept of the 2015-2016 pac 12 OOC. C-Unit has gotta out crazy ASU, out yell the MUSS and/or out travel Arizona to get back on top.

 

[dio]

The team is marketed poorly. The performance last year let the air out of the fan support, and now the mindshare has moved elsewhere. I don't hear any talk in the media about the Buffs either. There is no hype.

 

[The Alabaster Yak]

The transplant issue doesn't help. There just aren't that many people in Colorado anymore that have ties to or care about CU in any capacity. Add to that the fact that Colorado just isn't a basketball-driven sports market and I don't think it's much of a secret.

Deep tournament runs, consistent top 25 teams and marquee wins in Boulder will bring more fans.

 

[Buffnik]

I also think that CU needs to start scheduling some better home/away series with some good regional programs that are easy, inexpensive travel for both teams. Programs like Creighton, Tulsa, Wichita State and New Mexico would be really nice games to have at the Keg. And we need to piggyback AD relationships made with non-conference football scheduling as was done with Georgia. Why don't we have a basketball series with UMass to go with those football games? (We did it with Nicholls.) Did we even talk to Michigan about basketball? What about Nebraska, Texas A&M, TCU and Minnesota? Even Fresno State, which is at least a name casual fans recognize? With scheduling, I think that having a "name" opponent is more important than having a "quality" opponent. So I'd be for a home/away deal with programs like DePaul. They look more interesting than a UC-Irvine on the season ticket package for the casual fan even if they're not as good.

 

[OUBuff]

$50 tickets...? You have got to be ****ting me! You had better start putting seat-backs in all the seats and deliver some better teams to justify that kind of cost per ticket for a college basketball team that never finishes in the T25. Hell, I decided to fly out to see my mother and catch this Friday and Saturday games... not sure what I expected for ticket costs, but $50 certainly wasn't in my mind's eye.

Last year's team was unbearable. Now, this year's team is an entertaining team to watch and at least this team has some value to the entertainment consumer.

 

[Buffnik]

$50 tickets...? You have got to be ****ting me! You had better start putting seat-backs in all the seats and deliver some better teams to justify that kind of cost per ticket for a college basketball team that never finishes in the T25. Hell, I decided to fly out to see my mother and catch this Friday and Saturday games... not sure what I expected for ticket costs, but $50 certainly wasn't in my mind's eye.

Last year's team was unbearable. Now, this year's team is an entertaining team to watch and at least this team has some value to the entertainment consumer.

You won't pay $50 for this Friday and Saturday. BYU was a premium single ticket game. Chairbacks for Nicholls are between $25 and $40 (GA at $15). Same for Saturday's game against Hampton. http://ev12.evenue.net/cgi-bin/ncom...ign=mbbtix&_ga=1.44203104.51493479.1449265686

 

[Deleted member 807]

The transplant issue doesn't help. There just aren't that many people in Colorado anymore that have ties to or care about CU in any capacity. Add to that the fact that Colorado just isn't a basketball-driven sports market and I don't think it's much of a secret.

Deep tournament runs, consistent top 25 teams and marquee wins in Boulder will bring more fans.

I'm not sure I buy this argument. The CU system is the largest in the state, with nearly 60,000 students across the four campuses. The wiki page says CU has educated more than 435,000 students. Generally over half a graduating class will stick around within driving distance of the campus. CU is also one of the state's largest employeers, with more than 13,000 employees, thousands more who are retired and picking up a pension, and thousands on top of that who are close family members to Buffs.

The university has been around since 1876 and has roots in many Colorado families that go back three generations or more.

I think you should separate the "transplant" issue with the "locals who don't care about basketball" argument. Basketball crazy transplants are going to come to Boulder because it's the closest/best team around. Folks like Hokie or Nik are transplants who love college sports enough to show up and have a good time without a CU degree. There are lots of passionate transplants.

The CU alum might not have got bitten by the bug for MBB, or don't have the discretionary time and money to dedicate towards college sports. And there are thousands of other personal choices being made that get in the way of prioritizing a trip to Boulder above other leisure time options.

Bottom line, TSheck, is that excuses are the bricks that are used to build a house of failure.

 

[WasianCU]

Do we think that it will help next season when the Hwy 36 project is complete? I actually think that will give an incremental bump to both football and basketball.

I think there is a lot to the 36 project. I know I used to dread driving the 36 route, especially when it becomes a couple times a week under construction.

 

[Tractor]

Light rail to the keg. Sell outs starting 2035

 

[StormTrooper]

The price increase definitely hurts. My parents were kind of amazed at how much the tickets were when they decided they wanted to go to the game last night. They almost didn't go until I found them some on StubHub for below face value.
What Tad has built here far surpasses anything this program has seen in terms of fan support, but it's very fragile. A bad year this year would have done a lot of damage. I think if this team is in the Top 25 by the time of the Utah game you'll start seeing some great environments in Coors again. A good year this year will get that season ticket base back up as well.

 

[SuperiorBuff]

Wrong thread

 

[sockdolager]

StubHub is a good way to go. By cheap general admission tickets, upgrade yourself to row 5 behind the visiting teams bench, feel good about doing your part to help with the empty seat problem on TV

 

[boulder77]

$50 tickets...? You have got to be ****ting me! You had better start putting seat-backs in all the seats and deliver some better teams to justify that kind of cost per ticket for a college basketball team that never finishes in the T25. Hell, I decided to fly out to see my mother and catch this Friday and Saturday games... not sure what I expected for ticket costs, but $50 certainly wasn't in my mind's eye.

Last year's team was unbearable. Now, this year's team is an entertaining team to watch and at least this team has some value to the entertainment consumer.

I think last years debacle took the air out of the sails big time. Between that and the price increases, with a minor assist to the weather, we didn't get a sellout for BYU (even though the AD marketed Tad's challenge all week). I personally think it is shameful, but it is what it is. I also think that the three or four years prior to last year, with the success on the court and the incredibly low ticket prices they had, spoiled the "fansbase". Even with all of that, CU basketball is still the best drawing winter college sport in the state (maybe more of an indictment of the state rather than a feather in CU's cap) and back in the Big 8/12 days, that was not the case.

As a comparison to our peers, I checked the other Pac-12 schools for their price structure (picked a random Pac-12 game not against a "rival"). CU's pricing looks to be right in line:

Colorado - $20 - $60 + $5 per ticket SC
Arizona - $26 - $135 (sold out)
Arizona State - Pac-12 games go on sale 12/17
USC - $22 - $35 + $3 per ticket SC
UCLA - $23 - $208 + $15.25 SC
California - $23 - $93 + $4 per ticket SC
Stanford - $14 - $65 + $7.00 SC
Oregon - $10 - $53 + $3.50 per ticket SC
Oregon State - $18 - $28 no SC
Washington - $20 - $52 + $6.50 SC
Washington State - $12 - $42 + $3 per ticket SC
Utah - $10 - $40 + $1 per ticket SC

 

[Shldr2Shldr]

The season when SD went down, fan support was at ridiculous heights. It took a blow when he got injured but I think the fans were all excited and very interested in the next season.

That season from the loss to CSU, to the routs against UofA, to ski quitting at the end. It was all very visible. It left a sour taste in a lot of fans mouths and I think you are seeing all the effects of that this year. The toxic team environment just turned off the casual fans from CU basketball

 

[chitownbuff]

Hotter cheerleaders.

 

[BinaryBuff]

It's been said in a few posts, but $60/ticket for a chairback seat in a state that isn't basketball crazy and accounting for driving into Boulder and dealing with parking, and yeah, I can see exactly why it's gonna be a tough road to sell the Keg out.