[NU Sports] Attendance Woes

[Sanford_Stein at rush.edu]

Why is attendance so bad?

1.  Ticket prices?  They've doubled since the peak attendance years of the
late 1990's.
      I know that they're not out of line with the Big Ten (and the %
increase not out of line with pro
      teams), but how do they compare to the "peer institutions" mentioned
below?  I know a ticket
      at Duke three years ago was only $22.

2.  Two non-conference home games a year before the students are in school?
This probably
      drags down the average compared with those schools that start in
August.
      (Do we have the Big Ten game numbers?)





For reasons that have never been quite clear to me, the NU Football Media
Guide publishes a page called (something like) 'Ryan Field Attendance
Figures', and then fails to give any figures, mentioning only that fans in
Chicago have a lot of choices.

Fortunately the NCAA publishes attendance figures.  Unfortunately, our
attendance continues to be pretty weak.

Many have alluded to the 'exciting games' for this year's team, but it
hasn't seemed to carry over to the box office.

92   32,989
93   30,965
94   34,382
95   38,230
96   42,310
97   41,868
98   40,907
99   30,845
00   33,498
01   33,763
02   28,611
03   28,771
04   28,408

Some of our peer institutions are way ahead of us - Stanford, 45,000 per
game, BC 43,000 per game, Army  36,000 per game, Navy 30,000 per
game...Even Baylor is averaging almost 30,000 per game.

We became the first school in the modern era to see their attendance erode
by 25% in one year when it plummeted from 40,907 in 98 to 30,845 in 99.

All of this after a pretty major upgrade to facilities.

The team is turning in .500 seasons and generally exciting games - why is
attendance so bad ?  Can RW draw crowds in Chicago ?

Chuck Herron   Tech '85

_______________________________________________
nwu-sports site list
nwu-sports at tssi.com
http://romaine.tssi.com/mailman/listinfo/nwu-sports