Another Thread About SU Attendance, Now With Numbers!

[Scooch]

Let me preface this post by acknowledging that I’m a nerd, have always been a nerd, am in a profession based on said nerdyness, and I am proud of it…

Given all the stadium and attendance talk on here recently, I was curious to go beyond the rhetoric and examine the analytics. Using NCAA.org data I compiled a spreadsheet of Power 5 Conference attendance for football (2013) and men’s basketball (2012-13). I looked at 65 teams in total, as I included Louisville, Rutgers and ND.

If you rank schools by total accumulated football attendance (not just average per game) SU finished 61st out of 65 last season. Only BC, Duke, Washington State and Wake Forest had less people attend games. (note: 4 of the bottom 5 are ACC schools. Ouch.)

Doing the same exercise for hoops places SU at #1. Kentucky edged us in average per game last season, but we had 1 more home game so we attracted more total attendance.

Here's where it gets fascinating, to a nerd like me. When you rank the 65 schools on total combined football and men’s basketball attendance SU is 25th (656K). The 10 schools around us are Clemson (679K), UNC (670K), Georgia (668K), Florida State (663K), Kansas State (648K), Missouri (648K), Oklahoma (646K), Notre Dame (641K), and Arizona State (624K).

But SU has a dynamic in its attendance that is not present, in such a large degree, at any other P5 school. SU has the highest hoops share of combined attendance by a mile. 65% of our total combined attendance is hoops. There are only 3 schools in all of the Power 5 conferences that have a higher share of hoops than football: SU, Kansas (54%), and Maryland (53%). Kentucky is 50/50, and the other 61 schools are all more football than hoops.

Our total attendance is actually pretty damn competitive in P5, we just rely more on hoops than anyone else.

It’s also interesting to note that we have a definitive glass ceiling when it comes to football. If we added 30K to our 61st ranked total (5K more/game) we'd merely move to 56th and still land in the bottom quintile of schools. Even if we managed to sell out every game and added a 7th home game we’d only have ranked 41st, not in the top half of P5.

For the life of me I can’t figure out how to cleanly insert data tables into this site. If someone knows how let me know and I’ll post the rankers.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Just join Scooch, 'cause, uh, no one's gonna really be free until nerd persecution ends.

 

[KaiserUEO]

a little tidbit to that.

#s from wikipedia, but if you look at the top 25 football stadium capacitys...only 5 are pro stadiums. and 1, is the old pontiac superdome which isnt being used.

in other words, the big colleges out seat the pros.

they are 'pro-colleges'.

when it comes to attendence...auburn and penn st arent playing the same sport as Syracuse.

 

[Millhouse]

Let me preface this post by acknowledging that I’m a nerd, have always been a nerd, am in a profession based on said nerdyness, and I am proud of it…

Given all the stadium and attendance talk on here recently, I was curious to go beyond the rhetoric and examine the analytics. Using NCAA.org data I compiled a spreadsheet of Power 5 Conference attendance for football (2013) and men’s basketball (2012-13). I looked at 65 teams in total, as I included Louisville, Rutgers and ND.

If you rank schools by total accumulated football attendance (not just average per game) SU finished 61st out of 65 last season. Only BC, Duke, Washington State and Wake Forest had less people attend games. (note: 4 of the bottom 5 are ACC schools. Ouch.)

Doing the same exercise for hoops places SU at #1. Kentucky edged us in average per game last season, but we had 1 more home game so we attracted more total attendance.

Here's where it gets fascinating, to a nerd like me. When you rank the 65 schools on total combined football and men’s basketball attendance SU is 25th (656K). The 10 schools around us are Clemson (679K), UNC (670K), Georgia (668K), Florida State (663K), Kansas State (648K), Missouri (648K), Oklahoma (646K), Notre Dame (641K), and Arizona State (624K).

But SU has a dynamic in its attendance that is not present, in such a large degree, at any other P5 school. SU has the highest hoops share of combined attendance by a mile. 65% of our total combined attendance is hoops. There are only 3 schools in all of the Power 5 conferences that have a higher share of hoops: SU, Kansas (54%), and Maryland (53%). Kentucky is 50/50, and the other 61 schools are all more football than hoops.

Our total attendance is actually pretty damn competitive in P5, we just rely more on hoops than anyone else.

It’s also interesting to note that we have a definitive glass ceiling when it comes to football. If we added 30K to our 61st ranked total (5K more/game) we'd merely move to 56th and still land in the bottom quintile of schools. Even if we managed to sell out every game and added a 7th home game we’d only have ranked 41st, not in the top half of P5.

For the life of me I can’t figure out how to cleanly insert data tables into this site. If someone knows how let me know and I’ll post the rankers.

Thanks. It's important to include basketball attendance. When the overall population is small and there aren't as many distinct individuals. It's somewhat zero sum (not quite). How many games can people be expected to go to?

 

[KaiserUEO]

Thanks. It's important to include basketball attendance. When the overall population is small and there aren't as many distinct individuals. It's somewhat zero sum (not quite). How many games can people be expected to go to?

true, and hoop sucks a lot more life out of you.

20 games over 4 months or so can be tough for sure.

back in my Yankee season tix hey day and i was going to 30-40 a year over 6 months, it seemed like there was a game every night.

tiring.

 

[Timonen]

Thanks. It's important to include basketball attendance. When the overall population is small and there aren't as many distinct individuals. It's somewhat zero sum (not quite). How many games can people be expected to go to?

this is also why it's a bit scary to be so leveraged on the basketball side. we ask more of bb attendees/season ticket holders so if the bottom falls out, we'll be disproportionately impacted. luckily, we can probably run on fumes for a while and be fine based on the last decade.

 

[IthacaBarrel]

true, and hoop sucks a lot more life out of you.

20 games over 4 months or so can be tough for sure.

back in my Yankee season tix hey day and i was going to 30-40 a year over 6 months, it seemed like there was a game every night.

tiring.

Hoops can be brutal with weather as well, I swear one year every drive down 81 was taking your life into your own hands, if it wasn't snowing going there it was on the way home usually both. One thing prior to kids, one thing with your kids travelling with you.

 

[Pyle]

Kentucky edged us in average per game last season, but we had 1 more home game so we attracted more total attendance.

Kentucky is a bunch of cheating beeches. They include all staff at the game in the attendance numbers. Janitors, vendors, ticket takers, etc, the ENTIRE facility staff.....
I'm pretty sure if you count turnstiles we kick their arse.

 

[Scooch]

Thanks. It's important to include basketball attendance. When the overall population is small and there aren't as many distinct individuals. It's somewhat zero sum (not quite). How many games can people be expected to go to?

This was exactly why I started poking around with that data to begin with. My thought was that with people only having so much discretionary income to spend on sporting events, perhaps our out-of-this-world hoops program's attendance was harming, to some extent, our mediocre football program's attendance. Why not spend your money on top-10 matchup basketball games than buy tix to football games for a program that hasn't sniffed the top 25 in over a decade?

Most schools with comparably great hoops programs have a distinctly smaller arena capacity, which limits the damage to the football attendance. Our enormous hoops capacity totally alters that typical dynamic.

It's why I scoff that parking, tailgating, etc are primary reasons why people don't attend football games. The same people (almost literally speaking) endure that limited parking, bad weather, etc. to attend basketball games by the tens of thousands. It's not like any of that stuff changes from September vs. February. What changes is that the hoops team is worth paying to see.

 

[Millhouse]

This was exactly why I started poking around with that data to begin with. My thought was that with people only having so much discretionary income to spend on sporting events, perhaps our out-of-this-world hoops program's attendance was harming, to some extent, our mediocre football program's attendance. Why not spend your money on top-10 matchup basketball games than buy tix to football games for a program that hasn't sniffed the top 25 in over a decade?

Most schools with comparably great hoops programs have a distinctly smaller arena capacity, which limits the damage to the football attendance. Our enormous hoops capacity totally alters that typical dynamic.

It's why I scoff that parking, tailgating, etc are primary reasons why people don't attend football games. The same people (almost literally speaking) endure that limited parking, bad weather, etc. to attend basketball games by the tens of thousands. It's not like any of that stuff changes from September vs. February. What changes is that the hoops team is worth paying to see.

this is why i'm so hell bent on them reaching out to families of football fans who don't care about basketball that hate the atmosphere at the ralph.

i really think those people are out there. pitch the quad, band, otto, all that. commercials that show the type of people there. show kids running around in the grass. nauseating drivel like that.

as long as we accept a low ceiling on attendance, we could marginally increase attendance out of a pool of people that may not be going to basketball. it's not going to be some huge windfall but if they're looking for new customers, i think that's where to go.

football schools with alumni that travel like VT have pretty crappy basketball attendance. our locals do just fine

 

[OttoinGrotto]

What changes is that the hoops team is worth paying to see.

There is that.

 

[Millhouse]

The same people (almost literally speaking) endure that limited parking, bad weather, etc. to attend basketball games by the tens of thousands. It's not like any of that stuff changes from September vs. February.

sure it changes, it gets way way worse in February

 

[Millhouse]

Hoops can be brutal with weather as well, I swear one year every drive down 81 was taking your life into your own hands, if it wasn't snowing going there it was on the way home usually both. One thing prior to kids, one thing with your kids travelling with you.

that stops me from going to more games. hard to get there in time for a 7:00 game with any sort of drive. it's amazing that they can get 30k on a weeknight in a town this size in awful weather.

 

[Scooch]

sure it changes, it gets way way worse in February

Ha, true.

I vividly recall driving up from CT for a hoops game in February years ago. My wife and I ran straight into a horrible snowstorm outside Albany. I white-knuckled it for a couple hours before things cleared up. I vowed never to drive up again in the dead of winter, it's just too damn harrowing and unpredictable.

 

[Rocco]

And I'll add that the "4 of the 5 bottom" football attendance schools that are in the ACC... are all private. That needs to be taken in serious consideration when being grouped with all of the other massive state schools in that list.

Duke, BC, Wake and Syracuse are all fine academic institutions who happen to also field competitive football programs. Syracuse and Duke are also perennial basketball powers to boot.

If we could get back to getting 45-47k in the Dome for the big games (which we showed we could last year against Clemson), we have a very good home field advantage. That place was loud as hell even after we were down 21 to start that Clem game.

 

[sutomcat]

For the life of me I can’t figure out how to cleanly insert data tables into this site. If someone knows how let me know and I’ll post the rankers.

Regarding your primary point, I agree. Fans in CNY and the surrounding areas are great; they are loud and as dedicated and devoted as any fanbase in the country.

But...they are frontrunners.

Whatever results you see on the playing field (winning, losing) you can also expect at the turnstiles.

To be sure, there are a lot of other valid contributing factors but the overwhelming factor that controls attendance is the strength of the teams the fans are being asked to support.

Football had a long run where the product on the field was very good and attendance was very good as well. An NC or a couple of strong runs at one were the only thing holding the program back from selling out every game.

We have the best lacrosse program in the country and the biggest crowds for lacrosse as well.

We have one of the best basketball programs in the country and the best or second biggest crowds for hoops as well.

We won't ever lead the country in attendance for football but I am convinced if someone can get this program into the top ten and keep them there for 3 or 4 years, SU football tickets will be as hot as SU hoops tickets.

Regarding the second part of your post, my recommendation is to screen capture your spreadsheet, paste it into Paint or whatever your favorite image editor is, crop it, save it and upload it (full size) into one of your posts. It isn't really elegant but it comes out readable and doesn't look bad.

 

[CUSU]

Regarding your primary point, I agree. Fans in CNY and the surrounding areas are great; they are loud and as dedicated and devoted as any fanbase in the country.

But...they are frontrunners.

Whatever results you see on the playing field (winning, losing) you can also expect at the turnstiles.

To be sure, there are a lot of other valid contributing factors but the overwhelming factor that controls attendance is the strength of the teams the fans are being asked to support.

Football had a long run where the product on the field was very good and attendance was very good as well. An NC or a couple of strong runs at one were the only thing holding the program back from selling out every game.

We have the best lacrosse program in the country and the biggest crowds for lacrosse as well.

We have one of the best basketball programs in the country and the best or second biggest crowds for hoops as well.

We won't ever lead the country in attendance for football but I am convinced if someone can get this program into the top ten and keep them there for 3 or 4 years, SU football tickets will be as hot as SU hoops tickets.

Regarding the second part of your post, my recommendation is to screen capture your spreadsheet, paste it into Paint or whatever your favorite image editor is, crop it, save it and upload it (full size) into one of your posts. It isn't really elegant but it comes out readable and doesn't look bad.

Couldn't agree more. The combination of being top 25 back to back years would lead to better attendance for sure. Everyone forgets that basketball attendance wasn't what it is now until we were a perennial top 25 team.

 

[JeremyCuse]

This was exactly why I started poking around with that data to begin with. My thought was that with people only having so much discretionary income to spend on sporting events, perhaps our out-of-this-world hoops program's attendance was harming, to some extent, our mediocre football program's attendance. Why not spend your money on top-10 matchup basketball games than buy tix to football games for a program that hasn't sniffed the top 25 in over a decade?
Most schools with comparably great hoops programs have a distinctly smaller arena capacity, which limits the damage to the football attendance. Our enormous hoops capacity totally alters that typical dynamic.
It's why I scoff that parking, tailgating, etc are primary reasons why people don't attend football games. The same people (almost literally speaking) endure that limited parking, bad weather, etc. to attend basketball games by the tens of thousands. It's not like any of that stuff changes from September vs. February. What changes is that the hoops team is worth paying to see.

Those same people show up for both sports. Comparing bball attendance to football attendance is apple and oranges . Theres not a ton of new fans showing up for basketball games who are blowing off the football team by the tens of thousands there for the most part the exact same fans. The Dome really only holds 30K comfortably for bball, Football outdrew that for all but the Wagner game, who do you think is going to the dome for bball?

 

[VaSaltine]

Let me preface this post by acknowledging that I’m a nerd, have always been a nerd, am in a profession based on said nerdyness, and I am proud of it…

Given all the stadium and attendance talk on here recently, I was curious to go beyond the rhetoric and examine the analytics. Using NCAA.org data I compiled a spreadsheet of Power 5 Conference attendance for football (2013) and men’s basketball (2012-13). I looked at 65 teams in total, as I included Louisville, Rutgers and ND.

If you rank schools by total accumulated football attendance (not just average per game) SU finished 61st out of 65 last season. Only BC, Duke, Washington State and Wake Forest had less people attend games. (note: 4 of the bottom 5 are ACC schools. Ouch.)

Doing the same exercise for hoops places SU at #1. Kentucky edged us in average per game last season, but we had 1 more home game so we attracted more total attendance.

Here's where it gets fascinating, to a nerd like me. When you rank the 65 schools on total combined football and men’s basketball attendance SU is 25th (656K). The 10 schools around us are Clemson (679K), UNC (670K), Georgia (668K), Florida State (663K), Kansas State (648K), Missouri (648K), Oklahoma (646K), Notre Dame (641K), and Arizona State (624K).

But SU has a dynamic in its attendance that is not present, in such a large degree, at any other P5 school. SU has the highest hoops share of combined attendance by a mile. 65% of our total combined attendance is hoops. There are only 3 schools in all of the Power 5 conferences that have a higher share of hoops than football: SU, Kansas (54%), and Maryland (53%). Kentucky is 50/50, and the other 61 schools are all more football than hoops.

Our total attendance is actually pretty damn competitive in P5, we just rely more on hoops than anyone else.

It’s also interesting to note that we have a definitive glass ceiling when it comes to football. If we added 30K to our 61st ranked total (5K more/game) we'd merely move to 56th and still land in the bottom quintile of schools. Even if we managed to sell out every game and added a 7th home game we’d only have ranked 41st, not in the top half of P5.

For the life of me I can’t figure out how to cleanly insert data tables into this site. If someone knows how let me know and I’ll post the rankers.

A nerd with no data tables? Wha??!!

 

[VaSaltine]

Let me preface this post by acknowledging that I’m a nerd, have always been a nerd, am in a profession based on said nerdyness, and I am proud of it…

Given all the stadium and attendance talk on here recently, I was curious to go beyond the rhetoric and examine the analytics. Using NCAA.org data I compiled a spreadsheet of Power 5 Conference attendance for football (2013) and men’s basketball (2012-13). I looked at 65 teams in total, as I included Louisville, Rutgers and ND.

If you rank schools by total accumulated football attendance (not just average per game) SU finished 61st out of 65 last season. Only BC, Duke, Washington State and Wake Forest had less people attend games. (note: 4 of the bottom 5 are ACC schools. Ouch.)

Doing the same exercise for hoops places SU at #1. Kentucky edged us in average per game last season, but we had 1 more home game so we attracted more total attendance.

Here's where it gets fascinating, to a nerd like me. When you rank the 65 schools on total combined football and men’s basketball attendance SU is 25th (656K). The 10 schools around us are Clemson (679K), UNC (670K), Georgia (668K), Florida State (663K), Kansas State (648K), Missouri (648K), Oklahoma (646K), Notre Dame (641K), and Arizona State (624K).

But SU has a dynamic in its attendance that is not present, in such a large degree, at any other P5 school. SU has the highest hoops share of combined attendance by a mile. 65% of our total combined attendance is hoops. There are only 3 schools in all of the Power 5 conferences that have a higher share of hoops than football: SU, Kansas (54%), and Maryland (53%). Kentucky is 50/50, and the other 61 schools are all more football than hoops.

Our total attendance is actually pretty damn competitive in P5, we just rely more on hoops than anyone else.

It’s also interesting to note that we have a definitive glass ceiling when it comes to football. If we added 30K to our 61st ranked total (5K more/game) we'd merely move to 56th and still land in the bottom quintile of schools. Even if we managed to sell out every game and added a 7th home game we’d only have ranked 41st, not in the top half of P5.

For the life of me I can’t figure out how to cleanly insert data tables into this site. If someone knows how let me know and I’ll post the rankers.

A nerd with no data tables? Wha??!!

 

[Scooch]

Those same people show up for both sports. Comparing bball attendance to football attendance is apple and oranges . Theres not a ton of new fans showing up for basketball games who are blowing off the football team by the tens of thousands there for the most part the exact same fans. The Dome really only holds 30K comfortably for bball, Football outdrew that for all but the Wagner game, who do you think is going to the dome for bball?

That's exactly my point. The same general pool of people are going to both football and hoops. My guess is that those folks are going to, say, 3 or 4 hoops games, and 1 football game. If you only have so much $ to lay out for tickets it's only rational to spend it on the team that's better and plays a more entertaining brand of their sport.

 

[JeremyCuse]

That's exactly my point. The same general pool of people are going to both football and hoops. My guess is that those folks are going to, say, 3 or 4 hoops games, and 1 football game. If you only have so much $ to lay out for tickets it's only rational to spend it on the team that's better and plays a more entertaining brand of their sport.

My point is that I believe most have dual season for both, a majority of the fans who have football season tickets most also have bball season tickets.

 

[GoSU96]

That's why when considering any stadium change preserving the unique attendance that SU gets for basketball is a huge consideration. That's why a standard 20K basketball/hockey facility should be a non starter.

I know schools allocate revenues differently in their reports to the Dept of Education but SU is one of eight schools (Lville, Indy, Zona, Duke, Kansas, UMd, UK, SU) that show that 40% or more of its Men's teams revenue comes from basketball and only one of four that basketball accounts for 34% or more total revenue.

There's nothing wrong with that, it allows SU to compete with the rest of the BCS programs.

For 2012 SU was 38th in total revenue. It was only school with over $25M in basketball revenue and $30M in football. And that was with the BE TV contract and revenue sharing.

 

[Scooch]

My point is that I believe most have dual season for both, a majority of the fans who have football season tickets most also have bball season tickets.

How many season ticket holders are there, though?

Seasons may create a nice base, but they don't fill the stadium.

 

[WoadBlue]

Let me preface this post by acknowledging that I’m a nerd, have always been a nerd, am in a profession based on said nerdyness, and I am proud of it…

Given all the stadium and attendance talk on here recently, I was curious to go beyond the rhetoric and examine the analytics. Using NCAA.org data I compiled a spreadsheet of Power 5 Conference attendance for football (2013) and men’s basketball (2012-13). I looked at 65 teams in total, as I included Louisville, Rutgers and ND.

If you rank schools by total accumulated football attendance (not just average per game) SU finished 61st out of 65 last season. Only BC, Duke, Washington State and Wake Forest had less people attend games. (note: 4 of the bottom 5 are ACC schools. Ouch.)

Doing the same exercise for hoops places SU at #1. Kentucky edged us in average per game last season, but we had 1 more home game so we attracted more total attendance.

Here's where it gets fascinating, to a nerd like me. When you rank the 65 schools on total combined football and men’s basketball attendance SU is 25th (656K). The 10 schools around us are Clemson (679K), UNC (670K), Georgia (668K), Florida State (663K), Kansas State (648K), Missouri (648K), Oklahoma (646K), Notre Dame (641K), and Arizona State (624K).

But SU has a dynamic in its attendance that is not present, in such a large degree, at any other P5 school. SU has the highest hoops share of combined attendance by a mile. 65% of our total combined attendance is hoops. There are only 3 schools in all of the Power 5 conferences that have a higher share of hoops than football: SU, Kansas (54%), and Maryland (53%). Kentucky is 50/50, and the other 61 schools are all more football than hoops.

Our total attendance is actually pretty damn competitive in P5, we just rely more on hoops than anyone else.

It’s also interesting to note that we have a definitive glass ceiling when it comes to football. If we added 30K to our 61st ranked total (5K more/game) we'd merely move to 56th and still land in the bottom quintile of schools. Even if we managed to sell out every game and added a 7th home game we’d only have ranked 41st, not in the top half of P5.

For the life of me I can’t figure out how to cleanly insert data tables into this site. If someone knows how let me know and I’ll post the rankers.

The good thing about that for Syracuse and the ACC that now is fully in the northeast is that college basketball is bigger in NYC and most of the northeast than football.

The bad thing for Syracuse and the ACC is that nationally college football is much bigger than college basketball.