Billy D on poor attendance

[Jonas]

Crowd is actually pretty decent

[gatordavisl]

Originally Posted by malscott

current national reality...blame the university president for making our school more academic. Plus, one or more can drink heavily in the comfort of your apt, dorm, home, and watch a decent flat screen. Heck if you drink you can have an old TV it don't matter none! Basketball all you need to do is watch the last 3 minutes anyway. FlavsAz is a good example. A confluence of factors go into sporting event consideration these days.

I've blamed Machen for several things. Making the university "more academic" is not one of them. The "last three minutes" may be true of the NbA, but I've never felt the same way about NCAA hoops.

[MJGator8104]

Originally Posted by Jonas

Crowd is actually pretty decent

I thought it looked much better on the tv than I was expecting...

[Brewski]

That pic must have been really early or really late as it was much more full than that a few mins into the game. It was a bigger crowd than I expected to see that night.

[anstro76]

Originally Posted by Brewski

That pic must have been really early or really late as it was much more full than that a few mins into the game. It was a bigger crowd than I expected to see that night.

they even said on sunshine that it was a decent crowd but late arriving

[ThePlayer]

Originally Posted by PIMking

Kentucky doesn't have 25% on football weekends

Sent from my iPhone using GatorCountry

Yes...but we're talking about OUR basketball program here...not THEIR football program.

[faber]

The President and trustees are to blame. They have an environment of book smart kids who care less about social events in general vs their school work. Seems like a well balanced kid is not what is making up a large majority of Florida's campus these days. Face it, to get in from out of state you need credentials like kids going to Duke, NC etc, and in state its so competitive that you are getting the top 1 percent enrolling at Florida due to the poor economy. Its cheaper to stay in state of course, years ago, the top 1 percent of kids from the high schools went to Texas, Duke NC etc, now they all stay in state at UF......it is what it is!

[REM08]

Brockway just wrote an article about this apparently.
http://www.gainesville.com/article/2...cles/121229949

He tweeted this:

Kevin Brockway ‏@gatorhoops

Florida average turnstile count for first five home basketbsll games - fans in stands - was 4,998.

Kevin Brockway ‏@gatorhoops

High turnstile count for UF hoops at O'Dome so far this season was 6,534 v Marquette, also 6,304 v Wisconsin.

Kevin Brockway ‏@gatorhoops

Low turnstile count for UF home game was 3,095 v Savannah State.

Looks like he was able to get the actual attendance numbers (usually public information/freedom of info if public school). A local UK beat writer did this for UK football recently and it was embarrassing. Makes you wonder though, why on earth to schools release "attendance" numbers that are based on tickets sold/distributed?

[jareduf]

I think a redistribution and placement of seating would help a lot. If they were to make the lower level more compact, and sell only those seats first, the o-dome would look much more packed.

It would then be tough to tell the empty seats up top. This may require allowing students to camp out, which was a ridiculous thing to take away.

[brolowe]

Dang guys! do ya remember bein at school there? The ones who sobered and stayed go to the games this time of year,,,then get loaded. the ones who stayed because school is out and have nowhere to go are too loaded to even get there,,,much less care. Everyone everyone else had somewhere to go for the holidays,,,,,and probably got loaded there. The rest of the time the attendance is really quite good, especially in comparison wiht other schools except a couple ACC and Kentucky and what else do they have going on in those places. However, keep promoting attendance cause we need everyone there ALL the time. Heck, if your holdin tickets and not going, give'em.

[tilly]

Those turnstile counts seem fishy to me.

[MJGator8104]

Is there any kind of rule that after the first so many minutes of the game (say 15 minutes after start of game), if a seat is empty, a person can move from his higher location to better seats down below?

If not, they should make it so, and, if so, after the middle of the first half an announcement could be made and the bottom fill up (or mostly so as not everyone would probably move down).

[tilly]

Originally Posted by MJGator8104

Is there any kind of rule that after the first so many minutes of the game (say 15 minutes after start of game), if a seat is empty, a person can move from his higher location to better seats down below?

If not, they should make it so, and, if so, after the middle of the first half an announcement could be made and the bottom fill up (or mostly so as not everyone would probably move down).

The problem with this is that no one would buy the better seats. Everyone would buy cheap seats and move down. This is why stadiums spend large amounts in payroll for ushers to check your tix.

[keypox]

Originally Posted by malscott

current national reality...blame the university president for making our school more academic. Plus, one or more can drink heavily in the comfort of your apt, dorm, home, and watch a decent flat screen. Heck if you drink you can have an old TV it don't matter none! Basketball all you need to do is watch the last 3 minutes anyway. FlavsAz is a good example. A confluence of factors go into sporting event consideration these days.

FL vs Az might be the worst example for only watching the last 3 minutes in basketball I have ever seen.

[MJGator8104]

Originally Posted by tilly

The problem with this is that no one would buy the better seats. Everyone would buy cheap seats and move down. This is why stadiums spend large amounts in payroll for ushers to check your tix.

Didn't think of that.

[g8wayg8r]

Maybe it's not the attendance but the size of dome for the time of year. Every year the same topic comes ups.

[BEH]

Originally Posted by Jonas

Is this just because UF students get tickets for free, and most schools charge for student tickets (I think)? I've heard that we've actually have a lot of sell outs or near sell outs. The issue is that alumni have to biy season tickets and they don't show up for a lot of the games due to travel issues.

I lived in Florida 15 years and went to every UK basketball game at Gainesville during that time. I never went to Gainesville with a ticket and I never failed to get in and I never paid above the ticket price.

You can do the same at UK, but for a good opponent you will not pay the printed ticket price.

Florida basketball is not a hard ticket to get. Never has been. Basketball is not a beloved sport in Florida and I think that is the reason that UF basketball attendance is bad and has always been that way.

http://www.gatorsports.com/article/2...s-in-the-crowd

I read on another board that a turnstile count "obtained through an open records request, Florida's average turnstile count for its first five home dates was 4,998. Florida had more than 6,000 fans in stands for both Marquette (6,534) and Wisconsin (6,305). UF's low turnstile count was Nov. 20 against Savannah State (3,095)."

Basically that is 42 percent full.

[jjenkins5]

Interesting no one's pointed out that when booster fees went up fairly substantially after 2006 that nearly half (3,100) of the season ticket holders (7,400) did not renew at the higher rates. Was the UAA too ambitious? Possibly. But, in truth it is hard to know because shortly after the price hikes the US and economy started going south. The anemic economic recovery in the subsequent 5 years has not allowed people to start spending discretionary money at anywhere approaching pre-crash levels.

An updated facility, with less seats but better sight-lines from every seat, coupled with the great product Billy continues to put on the court and perhaps some more creative ticket marketing (half season packages, SEC-only packages, Gator sports weekend packages to be combined with tickets to other sports playing at home on a weekend or whatever) will get people back. As for the students, I think figuring out how to let them resume the fun of camping out and creating anticipation and excitement without doing anyone harm to would be worth pursuing.

Even UF football attendance is down. It will be interesting to see what happens next year with that. It may be that in this new economy more and more people simply choose to stay home because in the cost benefit analysis HD games on TV are an acceptable substitute and you get to keep your money in your pocket. Also, with StubHub and similar sites you don't have to be a season ticket holder to secure a ticket to the good games. This really undermines the whole premise of season tickets.

[gatorbogey]

should consider, for most games, making a couple sections in the 3rd tier 'free' and first come, first served seating.