Another Thread About SU Attendance, Now With Numbers!

[JeremyCuse]

How many season ticket holders are there, though?

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

They form the base of both the bball and football attendance, I cant recall the exact figures but football seasons are in the 20K + range I believe.

 

[Crusty]

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.

So, a real nerd would look at trends not static analysis. Who is going up and who is going down and who is staying the same? That should keep you out of trouble for a few hours.

BTW I can't figure out how to post tables either so I just take screen clips of them and upload as images.

 

[Timonen]

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.

there are other ways to get at the revenue with a smaller venue (demand pushing up prices, corporate, etc) so, on its own, we don't need the unique size to get the money. from a fan experience, smaller would be quite a shift.

 

[cpatrocks]

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.

why don't you just make it a Google Doc and post the link?

 

[Cheriehoop]

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

Why not tap into that basketball attendance by giving people who buy season tickets to basketball, a targeted incentive to buy football tickets too?

 

[cpatrocks]

Why not tap into that basketball attendance by giving people who buy season tickets to basketball, a targeted incentive to buy football tickets too?

Season Ticketholders are offered a discount on the OrangePack donation if you get both BBall and Football season tixx.

 

[GoSU96]

there are other ways to get at the revenue with a smaller venue (demand pushing up prices, corporate, etc) so, on its own, we don't need the unique size to get the money. from a fan experience, smaller would be quite a shift.

This is Syracuse NY, not NYC. There is a lot of price sensitivity here. I wouldn't bet that less seats is going to drive equal or more revenue.

 

[retro44]

You guys almost had me convinced that Basket Ball fans are more hardnosed than Football fans

 

[Timonen]

This is Syracuse NY, not NYC. There is a lot of price sensitivity here. I wouldn't bet that less seats is going to drive equal or more revenue.

This is a tangent based in a hypothetical so nothing any of us should lose sleep over, but if you cut capacity from 30k to 16k, that will handle the price sensitivity in large part.

 

[tep624]

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.

About as accurate a statement as you will find. Fair weather indeed.

 

[Scooch]

For those who care, here is a data table, in JPEG format...