[NU Sports] interesting study on attendance factors

[Herman Wang]

http://winthropintelligence.com/the-winthrop-digest-volume-9/
There's nothing in there that we didn't already suspect, regarding our struggle to draw fans to Ryan Field, but it puts some data and statistics behind our anecdotal theories.  Perhaps our athletic department can put some of this information to use.

Some relevant (to NU) bullet points:
Teams that were coming off winning seasons ? regardless of whether or not they maintained their winning ways ? actually sold more tickets (89.03% of capacity) than their winning predecessors. 

Undergraduate population does matter. ... Smaller schools did considerably worse; schools ... with less than 10,000 yielded 77% capacity returns, despite winning 57% of their games. These small schools (bellow 10,000) also were generally in large metropolitan areas. 

Large City population and the presence of pro teams hurt attendance. ... Colleges in cities (1 to 4 million people) attracted less than 40,000 fans to their games, only 75% attendance ? below the NCAA average. One factor is the presence of other outlets for sports fans in these cities ? i.e. Big Four sports teams. Colleges who did not have to compete with Big Four teams filled their stadiums to 83% of capacity, regardless of winning percentage. Teams that did? Just 74%.

Private schools have a harder time drawing. Even though private schools, on average, have slightly better football teams than public schools (a Wpct difference of +1%), public schools draw 5,000 more fans on average per game (80.5% vs. 76.5% capacity).