How does CU fix attendance for basketball?

[StormTrooper]

Have to make the games an event again.

1) Advertising. We have one of the best sports video programs in the country and we can't produce some kind of TV spot that makes it look like a game at CEC is a must see event?

2) Go back to the rewards system that made the C-Unit rabid. I don't care if its bribery, get asses in the seats. Select the top 50 students and send half of them to Vegas and half to Seattle for the tournaments for men and women. Give them free swag. Bohn by most measures was not the best AD, but he knew how to engage the students.

3) Upgrade the CEC asap. Put in club boxes, to help offset ticket and donation prices for the average fan, put in a new sound system and find a way to put a center scoreboard in.

The first 2 steps can be done tomorrow. CU attendance was up the past few years because it was fun to go to the games. The C-Unit created a high energy environment that cannot be matched in the Denver metro. Fans felt like part of the action and felt like they had an impact on the game. Casual fans put in a lot of energy and effort last year to try and support and push a team that couldn't have cared less about who was in the building watching them play. The only game where any of them got up for an opponent was when Ski was playing against USC infront of his mom and he refused to lose.

There actually is a rewards program this year, but it's terribly run and the prizes for basketball aren't very appealing. It's weighted to give people more points for going to volleyball, soccer and women's basketball games, which makes sense, and the grand prizes are pretty good, but they don't even regularly update the standings, and people frequently don't get credit for games they were swiped into. I had to go through a lot of haggling to prove to them that I actually attended all seven football games this year in order to get my reward. Marketing basically has its head up its ass and many students aren't even aware that the rewards program exists.
Also, the reward for attending 8 basketball games this year? A wakawaka solar charger...which isn't even CU related at all. At least they had reasonably cool silver replica jerseys for attending 5 football games this year. Also they're using the money they're spending on this as an excuse not to give the students any other freebies at games like t-shirts. My first two years here there was a C-Unit t-shirt given away at an early game, and everyone wore them the rest of the year. There were also free Pepsi whiteout and blackout T-shirts for everyone in attendance at one game each year. There won't be any of that this year, barring a miracle.

 

[Shldr2Shldr]

Same was true of the Auburn game last year, which was 11PM on a Monday night. The opener against Drexel was packed as well. After the CSU loss things really took a turn for the worse for the rest of the year. Even Arizona was only 90% full in the student section (which was at least better than the pitiful showing by the general public).

I have been hard on the C-Unit because I have seen it become a force at the keg and it has fallen off quite a bit in recent seasons. I now think this is a failure on the admins part though. The reason the stands were packed was because of promises of free swag and a free trip to LA/Vegas for the Pac-12 Tournament.

 

[StormTrooper]

I have been hard on the C-Unit because I have seen it become a force at the keg and it has fallen off quite a bit in recent seasons. I now think this is a failure on the admins part though. The reason the stands were packed was because of promises of free swag and a free trip to LA/Vegas for the Pac-12 Tournament.

They've still been giving the top 50 people free tickets, but they stopped paying for the trip after the 12-13 season I think. Also I don't think it's fair to say "recent seasons". The only falloff I've detected was after the loss to CSU last year, so less than one full season.

 

[Goose]

There have been problems with the admin's support of C-Unit for a few years now. The cracks are just now starting to show more.

 

[absinthe]

They've still been giving the top 50 people free tickets, but they stopped paying for the trip after the 12-13 season I think. Also I don't think it's fair to say "recent seasons". The only falloff I've detected was after the loss to CSU last year, so less than one full season.

There have been problems with the admin's support of C-Unit for a few years now. The cracks are just now starting to show more.

Agree with goose I've had some contact with people around the program and the consensus was really that there were support issue from the being of RG's tenure although it sounds like it goes back to Ceal's interim tenure based on posts in this thread. That Kansas win covered up a lot and being ranked prior to Spencer's injury covered up a lot, but if you look closely the issues were there.

I said it early in this thread but the promotion of games and to focus on getting butts in seats is a challenge we have, RG has been a hero in most aspects but this area is a weakness of his or more correctly a weakness of his support staff which has not been adequately addressed.

 

[Shldr2Shldr]

The way I see it, C-Unit , and folsom frenzy for that matter, should try to restructure itself like The MUSS.

Allowing you guys to charge for a membership and allowing you to get sponsors (with AD approval) would open up all kinds of incentive programs for the student sections.

$10-20 Folsom Frenzy Membership
$10-20 C-Unit Membership
$20-50 Combined Membership w/ added perks.

-Memberships include shirt at first home game (with sponsor on back, get them to pay for the shirts)
-Tier rewards program based on games attended (bonus points for soccer, volleyball, women's basketball, etc.)
-Grand prizes for top 50 students.
- football either $100 Book Store gift card, or trip to CU Bowl Game (AD can now pay for this as FF is paying for itself using memberships)
- Basketball, Trip to Pac-12 Tournament. 25 to men's, 25 to women's based on seniority. Repeat memberships get higher priority. (AD can now pay for this as CUnit is paying for itself using memberships)

 

[NW Buff]

There actually is a rewards program this year, but it's terribly run and the prizes for basketball aren't very appealing. It's weighted to give people more points for going to volleyball, soccer and women's basketball games, which makes sense, and the grand prizes are pretty good, but they don't even regularly update the standings, and people frequently don't get credit for games they were swiped into. I had to go through a lot of haggling to prove to them that I actually attended all seven football games this year in order to get my reward. Marketing basically has its head up its ass and many students aren't even aware that the rewards program exists.
Also, the reward for attending 8 basketball games this year? A wakawaka solar charger...which isn't even CU related at all. At least they had reasonably cool silver replica jerseys for attending 5 football games this year. Also they're using the money they're spending on this as an excuse not to give the students any other freebies at games like t-shirts. My first two years here there was a C-Unit t-shirt given away at an early game, and everyone wore them the rest of the year. There were also free Pepsi whiteout and blackout T-shirts for everyone in attendance at one game each year. There won't be any of that this year, barring a miracle.

Until you get the men's basketball attendance where you want it, I don't think the bolded makes sense.

It does sound like they need to get the marketing group sorted out. Thanks for the info.

 

[Buffenuf]

There are a ton of good points here, and I agree with many of them. To start right off the AD/Marketing portion of this has fallen down, they rely too much on the good will Tad has built up and the assumption that winning fixes everything. A focus on driving attendance in general for all sports has been a weakness of RG - I'd like to see him hire some one and allocate funds to specifically work on that. To date this basketball season:
- Attempts at student engagement have been poor BYU is a good example - free pizza probably lifts student numbers by 500
- Attempts to engage fan base have been poor, Tad's sellout challenge is great and I noticed some mentions of it in CU's media accounts like twitter but that was it, too little too late
- On bad weather days update season ticket holders on the expected road conditions in boulder, I live in Denver we had probably double the snow out of this last storm than Boulder, I texted rugged for a road update.
- Price walk up tickets slightly more competitively (not for the Arizona's of the world but for Nichols, UNC etc.)
- Family night against ****ty teams or over breaks (kids under 7 free if they wear Buff gear?)
- Market the ticket transfer system better.
- Have one of the staff writers for CUBuffs.com send out a game preview 3-5 days before the game to season ticket holders via email and over their official team social accounts.
- Player profiles, there is a player poster every game, let us know who it is ahead of time, give us a bio for them and send that out like the preview above but 24 hours before tip-off
- Market add-on tickets for ****ty games, they do this once a year for football but again over breaks against bad teams it should be done for CUHoops
- Try to better manage traffic flow digital board on 36 that says "if you are going Colorado wait is approx 25 minutes - exit baseline for faster parking" or similar; Used official twitter accounts to help encourage this flow as well. With the hope of getting more people to filter round to lawschool and those lots earlier.
- Increase the CUnits budget
- Make the points system for students more lucrative, create one for regular ticket holders that gives some prize to the top 250 in % of games attended

Outstanding! All good points!!!! I hope you forwarded this to RG! His marketing minions appear to be pinheads.

 

[LaserDeathHawk]

For me there is a hangover effect from football. I buy my season tix, I pay for chair backs, I paid for your rooftop access, I bought the over priced hotdogs and drinks and the results were underwhelming.

I know intellectually that the product at the keg is better but I have a real Pavlovian "meh..." reaction to driving three hours round trip to pay it all again.

 

[pcbuff]

I am a very bandwagon fan of basketball. For me the games I watched last year were not exciting and the effort on the court wasn't there. I felt like Tad lost all of the momentum he gained.

 

[Buffenuf]

I am a very bandwagon fan of basketball. For me the games I watched last year were not exciting and the effort on the court wasn't there. I felt like Tad lost all of the momentum he gained.

Eureka! pcbuff exemplifies a TYPICAL Buffs "fan"! And I use the word "fan" very loosely!!!

One "down" experience and "teh meh" settles in, rather than expectantly wait for improvements. Watching the Auburn game alone was enough to see the changes that took place, sans 'Ski and that were later confirmed by what happened in Ft Fun. Anyone paying the least bit of attention to what happened in the summer and early fall, learned that Tad was not going to put up with another season of "Me" on his team.

Now its RG's time to turn up the heat on his Marketing staff, such as they are and reach out to..er..uh.. "fans" like pcbuff.

 

[Buffnik]

I think the earlier post about Mark Cuban made a lot of good points.

Within that, there's the fact that Cuban doesn't have 40k people (20k season ticket holders) every week for football plus all the previous ticket buyers for his organization's football team that he can market to.

For a marketer only needing to get 11k people out of that + a captive audience of 30k students + thousands of university employees + tens of thousands of local alumni... this is a dream scenario and the definition of shooting fish in a barrel.

Any sales & marketing person looking at that and CU's inability to sell out games is pulling his/her hair out in frustration at the professional incompetence.

 

[GoBuffs!!]

I think another thing they could look to is "young alumni" nights, or "Engineering school" nights, etc. They have events all the time watching away football games, random nights for this or that. Why not market directly to groups that show up to just about anything (not sports related). Then you will hopefully get some of them to come back over and over.

Similar to what they do for local schools, but as great as it would be to have a bunch of kids there, that's hard to sustain with regular mid-week 8pm games.

As far as the "blue hairs", we sit near a bunch of them, and although I would say the ones near us mostly suck it up and come, its hard for them. They all live close, so maybe offer an add-on for shuttle service? I know a bunch of them money isn't the problem, but walking in snow/ice is, I would think this would be very attractive to them.

 

[MtnBuff]

I think another thing they could look to is "young alumni" nights, or "Engineering school" nights, etc. They have events all the time watching away football games, random nights for this or that. Why not market directly to groups that show up to just about anything (not sports related). Then you will hopefully get some of them to come back over and over.

Similar to what they do for local schools, but as great as it would be to have a bunch of kids there, that's hard to sustain with regular mid-week 8pm games.

As far as the "blue hairs", we sit near a bunch of them, and although I would say the ones near us mostly suck it up and come, its hard for them. They all live close, so maybe offer an add-on for shuttle service? I know a bunch of them money isn't the problem, but walking in snow/ice is, I would think this would be very attractive to them.

This could be a great idea. Don't want to be cynical but these are people who often have money and a connection to the university. Make that bond stronger and donations will rise. You might take it one step further and in addition to the shuttle create some kind of a club or recognized group. Send a newsletter, have a couple of pre-game gatherings with refreshments and somebody shaking hands. I'd expect the financial payoff to be very good in the long term in addition to building solid goodwill among a group that has more influence than many give them credit for.

 

[Ruckus]

Eureka! pcbuff exemplifies a TYPICAL Buffs "fan"! And I use the word "fan" very loosely!!!

One "down" experience and "teh meh" settles in, rather than expectantly wait for improvements. Watching the Auburn game alone was enough to see the changes that took place, sans 'Ski, Hop, and Dustin along with the addition of GmfK, Fortune, Yaz, and healthy Jelly and Dom, and that were later confirmed by what happened in Ft Fun. Anyone paying the least bit of attention to what happened in the summer and early fall, learned that Tad was not going to put up with another season of "Me" on his team.

Now its RG's time to turn up the heat on his Marketing staff, such as they are and reach out to..er..uh.. "fans" like pcbuff.

Fixed the section in bold.

 

[jsmilkst]

Can't believe I'm the first one to say this on this thread, but the answer seems obvious... hookers and blow

 

[Buffenuf]

Fixed the section in bold.

Absolutely, but those of us who pay the least bit of attention, knew all about the health issues and their resolution , as well as GmfK and Fortune.
(Hopkins and Thomas never looked like they were having any fun when they got PT---bad omen!)