Is this accurate? I live on the left coast and no longer get the privilege to attend basketball games. Were there really only 6,300 fans there for a conference game following a big road win? This is roughly only 2/3 the capacity of Barnhill.
I would question the accuracy of the scanners, but when I did so during football season I was quickly advised as to how the numbers had been padded for years and that now we are finally getting the true numbers. This was the statement given from the insiders, who would certainly know, although I think they may have also started to question the validity of the UA’s numbers as the season progressed.
So are these the true numbers? I had to give up my season tickets when I moved, and granted the crowds had fallen off at that time, but I don’t recall them being this sparse, even for some of the early season games. For those that were there tonight, does this number seem accurate?
I wasn’t at the Vandy game, but I was at the Mizzou game, When I got home I read the box score and it said crowd was 7.1k scanned, I can tell you for a fact at was way more than 7k people there, as someone that’s been to many games at BWA, I know what a 7k crowd looks and feels like, that Mizzou crowd felt like at least 10k and that’s at the very very least. It took me nearly 30 mins to get off the UofA campus after the game because of the traffic, I’ve been to a ton of non-conference games with 5k-7k in attendance and when game is over you can easily get off the campus in 5-10 mins.
They were actually talking about this subject on Bo’s show and they all agreed something is off with the scanned tickets this year because it doesn’t seem accurate. I wonder if has something to do with the new machines they are using. Before this year they would use those hand scanners, now they got some new machines you just hold your ticket up to and it scans you in. What I’m thinking is going on is you have people just walking in and putting there ticket up to it and not waiting for the beep and it’s so many people walking through the people working there aren’t catching them all, so you probably have 2-3 thousand people that didn’t get registered as a scanned ticket.
This question being asked speaks volumes about the attendance as it’s happening to about every program that’s not in the top 20 along with cost and aging diehard Hog fans. WPS
I was there. It looked more than the Georgia game. So the attendance number is surprising. But not too far off. Maybe we had close to 8K.
I did not expect a large crowd for a Tuesday 8 pm game. It just doesn’t happen anymore. I drive from Little Rock and back same night and so do about 6 around where we sit. But there are not too many of us. Televising all games has changed everything.
But as I say, does it matter? What matters is tickets sold and the revenue. Tickets sold was 13,587. That is good enough to have a healthy program.
I think the attendance with come back to 12-15 thousand per game, actual people in the stands, not sold tickets, when we get the program winning more. When I say winning more…when we are a Top 25 team and are competing for an SEC title. It has been so many years since we were among the best, people have become complacent and are not hungry to come like they were. It is not easy to fill an 18,000 seat arena with an average SEC team.
It won’t take much to get the people out. If we continue on this streak like we are and compete well down the stretch, people will show up. After this many years of mediocrity, the program is going to have to win the fans back, I think.
I just seen pictures of people last night doing the Hog Call in the arena. That looked like more than 6 or 7k.
Hogstats, who I’m sure has been to more games than just about anyone on here just tweeted that number last night was not accurate, if anyone would know, it would be him. Especially considering he’s a numbers guy and pays attention to stuff like that.
Yea I was quite disappointed in the crowd too, as one earlier poster said especially just after one of the biggest road wins in the last few years. I doubt the lower deck was half full. I was sitting in row 5 in a section of the upper deck, the only person in my row and maybe only 5 or 6 people sitting in all the rows behind me. I went to the Fla game which they said had 9K in attendance and it was a less than that game in my estimation. Of course I had season tix the first 6-7 years Bud was open so I may be a bit biased by those packed houses. And actually to me it looks like very few students are in the stands. I mean what else are they going to do in Fayetteville on a Tues night? Study??
This has been discussed before, but game times are set by TV schedules and for weekday games the times do not encourage actual fan attendance. The perfect time for a weekday game is 7:00; not too soon after work and not too late. All are either at 6:00, difficult for some to get there on time; or 8:00, too late for those that have to get up early for work or school. I have two season tickets used for most games by my son who lives and works in Fort Smith. He hates to miss a game, but has missed a couple of these 8:00 weeknight games because they are so late.
I think it would be wise to lower capacity some when they do the planned remodel of BWA. I think that is their plan. Tennessee lowered their capacity a few years ago when they redid Thompson-Boling Arena. There’s just no need in having such a large capacity anymore. They do on occasion have 18-19,000 attendance, and it would increase crowd size if we had a consistent top 10-20 team, but the days of having sellouts for midweek games are pretty much over, and are over for 95% of the schools in the country. Too big of a supply hurts season ticket sales, 15-16,000 would be plenty big enough now. That’s still bigger than almost everyone’s arena, other than a few (Kentucky, North Carolina, Syracuse, Louisville). Would still be bigger than every Big 12 and Pac 12 arena.
Not sure what they did at UK but Tennessee put premium seating in the upper deck in place of some of their nosebleeds. You’d need some elevators to do that at BWA though so not sure how that would work. Maybe escalators at least when they redo the concourse.
Here’s what Tennessee did. The gray stuff at the top used to be nosebleeds.
I’ve been in UT’s arena. Those suites are way up high compared to BWA suites. They accomplished two things by building them though, generated premium seat income, and removed a large number of seats they didn’t need. The two newest arenas in the SEC, Auburn and Ole Miss have capacities below 10,000. That was the best decision they could have made. Even with recent success at Auburn with Bruce Pearl, their small arena seems more big time because of fewer empty seats than their former home, Beard Eaves Coliseum, which held about 12,000.
Tennessee’s attendance for their Tuesday game with Missouri was listed as 17,000, which I’m sure is tickets sold, because ESPN shows our attendance as 13,000. So even with the number 1 ranked team, they have at least 5,000 unsold tickets for an arena that is still too large.
One thing to remember about attendance is that they used to report total attendance as all the bodies in the building: spectators, players, coaches, support staff, and concession staff. Now they only report tickets sold.
