[NU Sports] Attendance Woes

[Arthur Miller]

Our attendance figures are indeed embarrassing and egregious.  Why on earth
are we averaging 6000 less per game than in '94, when NU hadn't had a
winning season in 20 years?  I can't figure this oiut.

I agree that the primary factor is ticket prices; $40 is simply too high.
Lower price = higher demand; this is a law of human nature.  Has anyone
noticed how many of the $20 end zone seats were sold this year?  Quite a
few, which to me is evidence that people will sit in the end zone to save a
few bucks when 30-yard line seats are available in the upper deck.

Increasing the total attendance is important; it's good for recruiting, it
contributes to the gameday atmosphere, and it honors our players.  If I was
Mark Murphy, I'd institute a ticket policy something like this:
- Implement tiered pricing based on who we're playing.  For the 2005
schedule, charge $20/ticket for the Ohio and NIU games, $30 for Penn State
and Iowa, and $40 for Wisconsin and Michigan as they always draw big crowds.
- Sell tickets in sections 101-103, 113-124, 134-36, 223-24, and 234-35 at
half the price of face value.
- Charge only $20/ticket/game for season ticket holders.  In any other
business, volume buyers get a discount--besides, season ticket holders are
the primary indicator of health in ticket sales.

-Art Miller


-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of Sanford_Stein at rush.edu
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 4:20 PM
To: nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] Attendance Woes





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.