Interesting article on declining football attendance
-
KU with the dubious distinction as an example…
-
This is bitter sweet.
The bitter: I grew up loving playing football.
This could have many drivers.
The possibly sweet: the American people may be starting to realize it’s a brain damaging game that should be stopped until the brain damaging can be stopped.
-
Not just football. Here in Baton Rouge a local chicken finger place Raising Canes is giving away LSU basketball tickets with the purchase of a meal. I watched part of last nights LSU-Missouri game (don’t ask) and it looked like about 2000 fans in Columbia. I was actually a little saddened because of course I’ve seen that house rocking, at least for our games, many times and it was always one of the toughest places for KU to play. But that’s another story, and well, Missouri sucks.
-
@jaybate-1.0 You think people are choosing not to watch out of concern for the athletes? MMA seems popular.
-
If it’s just this season, it’s prolly the election circus.
If it were recent seasons, too, I thought possibly the broad audience might be tiring of a sport causing their family members not to recognize them in large numbers after my generation played so much football. First hand experience with Alzheimer’s is chastening.
-
@wissox though here in NW Arkansas (right on the MO line), I can catch the KC AM stations sometimes and was listening to 810 I think briefly on way home. They were talking about the sorry state of MU bball and the poor attendance. AD or someone on the radio begging people to come out and support the team.
KState Kietsman (?) saying Anderson basically wasn’t gonna be fired mid-season being an MU guy.
-
My assumption is that a lot of this has to do with businesses assuming that millennials are some different species and throwing up their hands instead of admitting they have an unattractive product. People don’t want to feed the greed machine, and it’s abundantly clear that cash moves everything in college sports. Keep the cost down (as the article has said) but also don’t disintegrate 100 year old rivalries for tv contracts. Don’t stack teams for shoe companies. Don’t limit viewership in home states (!). Blind greed will lose because people have a choice, and millennials are people. Everyone has other options, just millennials might know better what they are, have access to them, have the sense to choose cost effective, enjoyable alternatives, and not have the nostalgic affinity for past times that have cannabalized their fan base.
-
@DoubleClutch Thanks for the interesting post. I’ve been complaining about football ticket prices for the last several years. Tickets alone cost my family of four $ 160 for seats on the goal line for the Rhode Island game. I spent about the same amount on lemonade because the temperature in the bowl was about 200 degrees. I probably still have the right side tan lines to prove my attendance.
-
This was always the eventual end with college sports becoming a big money event. The best teams will have good attendance, the rest will not.
In basketball, that’s survivable enough because many smaller programs play in venues that seat less than 10,000 people. Here’s a link to the capacities for the different D1 facilities. Look at how many of those arenas are tiny. You can survive when you’re only drawing a few thousand in most of those arenas because that’s capacity.
For football, the minimum stadium size for D1 is (I think) 15,000 or so. That’s quite a bit more of an investment, and if you can’t draw at least 8,000-10,000 in a smaller venue, you’re probably well underwater.
Because of the venue size, basketball can survive with smaller crowds. Football really can’t.
-
CFB isn’t going anywhere. Did any team actually lose money from having a football program this season? I doubt it. Until teams lose money from having a football program it won’t change.
TV money has gotten too good at this point for anyone to lose a football program. Not to mention that with Title IX rules, it would be tough to get rid of a football program and another 100 women’s scholarships. Alumni at any school would freak out if that were to happen. The student loan bubble will hit and close down entire schools before football programs hit the fan. Football will be illegal before it is taken out as a program. Even NAIA schools can afford to keep a football program. And in fact, I bet they posted record revenues. I saw several NAIA football games broadcasted on ESPN3. Baker even played for the championship on ESPNU I believe.
TV will not let these “products” fail. Do they want small conferences? No. Do they want a 5th big conference? No. But will they let potential money-makers fail to get the Big XII to break up or get rid of small conferences? No chance.
The decline in attendance is directly correlated with TV. And there are 3 obvious resaons:
- Broadcasting is at a level that you would rather watch it on TV and see the replays and drink cheap beer and eat cheap food than go to a game. Especially when your team sucks. Why spend $100 to be disappointed when you can spend $20 and change the channel when the game gets completely out of hand?
- Nationalized television is growing more every year. You can watch any number of top 25 matchups every week. No point in watching your crappy team when you can watch a much more entertaining game.
- Overkill. There is football on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. There is too much football. So by the time Saturday hits, you have watched football Sunday, Monday and probably Thursday at the very least. And that is if you haven’t watched even more sports during the week. People are tired of sports because they are so available. A Saturday football game isn’t something you plan your weekend around anymore.
-
@Kcmatt7 Yes, lots of teams lot money on football this year. Just about every non major conference program relies on some type of subsidy to fund football and the rest of their athletics programs because their TV contracts are crap compared to the major conferences.
-
@Kcmatt7 said:
There is football on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Frankly, I find it unAmerican, probably a godless Commie plot, that Tuesday is left out.
-
Hillary called…she says the Russians hacked the football attendance figures so soccer can become king…
-
@JayHawkFanToo you need to stop. Read the news lately! It’s not Hillary they are talking about.
-
Conference expansion has also hurt football. Big 10 fans aren’t exactly getting excited to watch Ohio State play Rutgers or Iowa play Maryland. That just isn’t a draw. Conference expansion has stretched the interest of casual conference fans too thin.
-
I read the news constantly and the ongoing theme is that the Russians are blamed for everything…it was just a joke.
FYI, there is ZERO, nada, zilch, zip evidence the Russians hacked the elections. Podesta’s e-mail was hacked by phishing…this is what happens when your e-mail password is literally…“password.” Would you like me to send you some links?
-
@JayHawkFanToo since you are soooo very smart, what do you think?
-
I work with computers for a living and have access to at least 20-30 technical publication every week that have studied this and other related issues in great detail and thus I have a lot more information than the average person.
Do you know the FBI contacted the DNC very early on and told them that their server was likely compromised and the contract worker in charge of the system at first did not even believe the call was from the FBI. After a number of additional calls, it took the DNC well over 3 months after it was first notified to finally do something about security. Do you know that to this day the FBI has not been granted access to the servers and the tentative conclusion they reached are based on information collected by third party techs. hired and paid for by the DNC? Hard to believe, isn’t it?
Do you know that Podesta’s e-mail was hacked by a simply phishing attack? That is when you get an e-mail telling you there is a problem with your account and you need to login to a site on the e-mail and provide your id and password, not different than the Nigerian Minister than wants to give you $5M. The released e-mails show that Podesta did repliy to the fake e-mail and provided his id and password that happened to be “password” hard to believe, isn’t it? No one has claimed that any of the e-mails are fake. Democrats are upset because they were embarrassing and showed a concerted effort to hack the Democratic primaries in favor of Hillary, among other thins…that was the closest to hacking the elections we have had. A former British Ambassador is on record indicating that he personally traveled to the US and got a drive from DNC insider with the e-mails, many think the insider is the individual that was found shot dead in the street in Washington DC for no apparent reason and robbery was ruled out. since nothing was missing.
Election machines cannot be hacked via the internet since they are not physically connected to it. Some are manufactured by companies with ties to George Soros…it makes you go…what?
The individual in charge of managing Hillary’s server was so incompetent that he was asking on Redit how to manage the server and how to permanently delete e-mails. When the news of the home server first came out, I was at meeting of IT professionals and everybody laughed and concurred that likely the Russians, Iranians, Koreans, Israelis, Indians, most Eastern block countries an even our own allies spying agencies along with anyone with a basic hacking ability likely had copies of the e-mails…the system was just that laughable. Do you know that the Department of State was hacked over two years ago and Kerry himself indicated he is not sure how secure the system is and now it has finally requested $300M to revamp the system? Interesting that the administration did not do anything for years about it other than Obama telling Putin to “cut it out”…his own words. On a more serious note, if you or I had done what she did with classified information, we would certainly be in jail; a lot of people have gone to jail for a lot less than that. OTOH, I understand that Hillary might run for mayor of New York City…
This is not really the forum for it but I would be happy to provide you additional information since the MSM ignores most of it.
I think the elections are over and regardless of how many times they try to stop it, Trump will be sworn in as the next president in a couple of weeks. For the record, I was not a Trump supporter but I believe that we should move on and work together for the good of the country, regardless of personal; ideologies.
Back to KU basketball…
-
@JayHawkFanToo I knew you would tell me! Guess you didn’t get I didn’t want to hear it!
-
Sometimes I am sarcasm impaired in this board…
-
Being a huge NFL fan, I was watching an NFL-network talk show, and they basically said the election really distracted things, and the ratings numbers have indeed gone up to near-normal levels, but for the season, the NFL viewership was down about 8%, which was discussed as a “huge marketing problem”.
Some other reasons cited in addition to the election distraction was “too many commercials” and “inconsistent officiating elongating games”.
-
Many reasons why attendance is down including the availability of games on TV but more importantly its is economics. While the last few years have seen no growth or actually a loss in the income of most Americans, the cost of attending live games has become close to prohibitive. Forbes magazine has been tracking cost for many years and for football uses the following criteria:
“The prices of four (4) average-price tickets, two (2) small draft beers, four (4) small soft drinks, four (4) regular-size hot dogs, parking for one (1) car, two (2) game programs and two (2) least-expensive, adult-size adjustable caps.”
Back in 2014 the Cardinals have the 21st most expensive experience and it was $414, and since then cost has gone up which means in the more expensive markets, the cost now is around $500. The cost is so high that all sports have seen a reduction in attendance and even the Yankees and Red Sox have seen drops in attendance and are selling tickets at half price via Groupon.
Also, the numerous on and off court issues of players have turned a lot of fans off. Things like the Kaeppernick fiasco have made fans refuse to support prima donas that make a whole lot of money and don’t even seem to have any respect for the fans that pay their salaries. Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys owner, made it clear to the players that that type of behavior affects the bottom line and anyone participation in what he called “his stage” would be gone…most Americans can identify with this since no one else can get away with this behavior at his or her place of work and on company’s time.
-
@JayHawkFanToo Wholeheartedly agree. The Kaepernick thing went from curiously ill-advised–> to bad --> to worse (defending Castro). He made his organization look bad, he made his college look bad, he made his foster parents look bad, and he did incalculable damage to any perception of his own intelligence. I wonder if he had a high GPA in college, if it was for those b.s. classes they just have for athletes? Because, to quote Michael Irvin, Dallas WR from back in the 90s: “(He) dont know nuthin about nuthin!”
The corollary to the cost-analysis, is what KU basketball would rate?
How about them Chiefs, and Arrowhead stadium?
