STrib: Gophers attendance drop among nation's steepest declines, lowest since 1992

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I said many of these suggestions in my season ticket holder survey. I am not expecting much to change but suggested starting with the pricey donation. Many of the above ideas are also good and there is no reason that the U could not be responsive to their fans. I have to think the media $ has made the athletic department indifferent to the average fan.
 

I think it’s fair to speculate if PJ is sacrificing a little now in order to build for the future. I really hope he is given the results so far.
 

Big picture - the hard-core fans are still attending games. There just aren't that many of them.

Let's say for sake of argument the "hard-core" fan base is 15,000 to 20,000. So attendance (actual attendance, not 'tickets sold') over that figure depends on casual fans, fans of visiting teams, and band-wagon jumpers.

Basically, as I see it, the casual fans and band-wagon jumpers have quit going to games. Maybe some are spending their entertainment $ elsewhere, and some (I suspect most of the casual fans) are watching at home on their big-screen TV's. Fans of visiting teams - we know Neb, IA, and WI will show up. If the Gophers don't have a home game with one of those teams, the visiting fans are limited to the players' parents and girlfriends.

So, this is a multi-faceted problem. It involves marketing, game-day experience, cost of tickets, cost of concessions, and the big one - the general perception of Gopher Football.

You could drop prices for tickets and concessions. You could market the bleep out of the program. But until the perception changes ("The Gophers suck"), the fans are going to stay away.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
Big picture - the hard-core fans are still attending games. There just aren't that many of them.

Let's say for sake of argument the "hard-core" fan base is 15,000 to 20,000. So attendance (actual attendance, not 'tickets sold') over that figure depends on casual fans, fans of visiting teams, and band-wagon jumpers.

Basically, as I see it, the casual fans and band-wagon jumpers have quit going to games. Maybe some are spending their entertainment $ elsewhere, and some (I suspect most of the casual fans) are watching at home on their big-screen TV's. Fans of visiting teams - we know Neb, IA, and WI will show up. If the Gophers don't have a home game with one of those teams, the visiting fans are limited to the players' parents and girlfriends.

So, this is a multi-faceted problem. It involves marketing, game-day experience, cost of tickets, cost of concessions, and the big one - the general perception of Gopher Football.

You could drop prices for tickets and concessions. You could market the bleep out of the program. But until the perception changes ("The Gophers suck"), the fans are going to stay away.
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Groundbreaking stuff.
 

20,000 season tickets plus approximately 18,000 licensing fees is equivalent in dollars to having a 38,000 person fan base. i don't see prices dropping for season tickets any time soon.

If you give free tickets to students you are saying there is no value to your product, it's a no-no in the sports marketing world. I do think you can hide the cost in student fees or charge ten bucks a ticket that includes a hot dog and a soda though.
 


STPGopher said:
You can just come out and admit you are a Gopher fan. It will not be held against you.
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I do love teams that have dropped 14 in a row to my alma mater, so you may have a point there.

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HoustonTXGopher said:
20,000 season tickets plus approximately 18,000 licensing fees is equivalent in dollars to having a 38,000 person fan base. i don't see prices dropping for season tickets any time soon.

If you give free tickets to students you are saying there is no value to your product, it's a no-no in the sports marketing world. I do think you can hide the cost in student fees or charge ten bucks a ticket that includes a hot dog and a soda though.
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In ‘90 or ‘91 Wisconsin was in a similar, if not as dire, situation. They sold student tickets that were punch cards. They also had re-entry then. The same die hard students as usual bought the season tickets. By mid-season tons of people who didn’t buy tickets were attending the games, using cards that had been collected and carried out of the stadium to be ‘re-admitted’. The UW knew and did not care. It would not surprise me if it was Barry’s idea, but that’s probably giving him too much credit. There are ways.
 

Judd: Cause for concern: Report shows Gophers fans avoiding the Bank in big numbers

The first sign that Tracy Claeys’ tenure as the Gophers’ football coach could be a brief one came during the 2016 season when it became apparent that many fans had decided to stay away from TCF Bank Stadium.

Part of it might have been the 2015 departure of Jerry Kill, who resigned for health reasons, and part of it certainly was based on the “scholarship seating” price increase that was approved by former athletic director Norwood Teague in December 2014, when the Gophers were headed to the Citrus Bowl. Teague’s replacement, Mark Coyle, froze the scholarship seating plan that affected 28,050 seats for 2017.

Coyle’s hope was that by stopping that plan and hiring energetic coach P.J. Fleck fans would return to the on-campus stadium and embrace Fleck as they had done with Kill. It’s been clear from the eye-test this year that hasn’t happened and a Star Tribune story published on Friday documents just how empty TCF Bank Stadium was this season.

The Gophers, who will close the regular season on Saturday in Wisconsin, played their home games this season in a stadium that was less than half full for five of their seven games. The Gophers’ average announced attendance was 37,914, according to the Star Tribune, making it their lowest since Jim Wacker’s first season as coach in 1992. The Gophers’ played their home games at the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis at the time.

The paper points out that the situation is actually worse than that for the athletic department. That’s because the 37,914 figure was announced attendance, or tickets distributed, not the actual number of tickets scanned at the turnstiles. That figure shows that the Gophers’ actual average attendance was 22,656.

In Fleck’s first season as the Gophers coach, the team averaged 44,358 fans for its home games. That was an increase of 544 fans per game from Claeys’ only full season as the Gophers coach.

The Gophers finished 5-7 overall and 2-7 in the Big Ten last season, and are a win shy of being bowl eligible (they are 5-6 overall and 2-6 in the conference) entering Saturday.

The Gophers’ finished their home schedule with three small crowds, in part due to apathy and in part due to terrible weather and the Big Ten’s insistence on playing Friday night games.

The Gophers’ victory over Indiana came on a rainy Friday night. That Oct 26 game had only 20,357 tickets scanned, according to the Star Tribune. The final two home games were played with game-time temperatures of 21 and 23 degrees, respectively. There were 15,434 tickets scanned for the Gophers’ victory over Purdue on Nov. 10 and 15,160 scanned for a loss to Northwestern last Saturday.

http://www.1500espn.com/news/2018/1...shows-gophers-fans-avoiding-bank-big-numbers/

Go Gophers!!
 

If you want to know why Athletics are struggling just look at the Gopher Sports website. It could be a case study on poor website and E-Commerce strategy.

The website is trash and it’s the digital face of gopher athletics.

THEY SERVE ADS FOR OTHER PRODUCTS ON THE DAMN WEBSITE.
 



Would love to know how many on this attended at least 4 games this year.
 

BleedGopher said:
Judd: Cause for concern: Report shows Gophers fans avoiding the Bank in big numbers

The first sign that Tracy Claeys’ tenure as the Gophers’ football coach could be a brief one came during the 2016 season when it became apparent that many fans had decided to stay away from TCF Bank Stadium.

Part of it might have been the 2015 departure of Jerry Kill, who resigned for health reasons, and part of it certainly was based on the “scholarship seating” price increase that was approved by former athletic director Norwood Teague in December 2014, when the Gophers were headed to the Citrus Bowl. Teague’s replacement, Mark Coyle, froze the scholarship seating plan that affected 28,050 seats for 2017.

Coyle’s hope was that by stopping that plan and hiring energetic coach P.J. Fleck fans would return to the on-campus stadium and embrace Fleck as they had done with Kill. It’s been clear from the eye-test this year that hasn’t happened and a Star Tribune story published on Friday documents just how empty TCF Bank Stadium was this season.

The Gophers, who will close the regular season on Saturday in Wisconsin, played their home games this season in a stadium that was less than half full for five of their seven games. The Gophers’ average announced attendance was 37,914, according to the Star Tribune, making it their lowest since Jim Wacker’s first season as coach in 1992. The Gophers’ played their home games at the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis at the time.

The paper points out that the situation is actually worse than that for the athletic department. That’s because the 37,914 figure was announced attendance, or tickets distributed, not the actual number of tickets scanned at the turnstiles. That figure shows that the Gophers’ actual average attendance was 22,656.

In Fleck’s first season as the Gophers coach, the team averaged 44,358 fans for its home games. That was an increase of 544 fans per game from Claeys’ only full season as the Gophers coach.

The Gophers finished 5-7 overall and 2-7 in the Big Ten last season, and are a win shy of being bowl eligible (they are 5-6 overall and 2-6 in the conference) entering Saturday.

The Gophers’ finished their home schedule with three small crowds, in part due to apathy and in part due to terrible weather and the Big Ten’s insistence on playing Friday night games.

The Gophers’ victory over Indiana came on a rainy Friday night. That Oct 26 game had only 20,357 tickets scanned, according to the Star Tribune. The final two home games were played with game-time temperatures of 21 and 23 degrees, respectively. There were 15,434 tickets scanned for the Gophers’ victory over Purdue on Nov. 10 and 15,160 scanned for a loss to Northwestern last Saturday.

http://www.1500espn.com/news/2018/1...shows-gophers-fans-avoiding-bank-big-numbers/

Go Gophers!!
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But Rickman says there were 25k there![emoji23]


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Oregon Gopher said:
But Rickman says there were 25k there![emoji23]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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And dpodoll68 counted at least 30K in the stands at the Purdue game! The Strib should use them as references, not the University's official scanned numbers.
 




John Galt said:
Would love to know how many on this attended at least 4 games this year.
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6 of 7 for me. Missed Miami of Ohio. Stayed the entire IU, Purdue, and NW games.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 

My take on the whole ticket sales snafu is

1) seems normal for Gopher Football. I am just a short timer so my memory might not be accurate. Season ticket holder since 2012

2) todays business model relies much less on fans in the stands

3) Jerry Kill & PJ Fleck both said the same thing (my interpretation)

Jerry said it differently: we don't have the players but we are going to coach what we have and win as many games as we can.
It was fun going to games and the Gophers were coached well during the game

PJ said it much differently: We are young we are going to be bad and then get worse
Not much fun going to games, very poor to terrible in game coaching.

I have personally been to 4 games in the last 2 years, 1 this year. I don't do night games.

4) I will renew all 4 season tickets as long as I can continue to give them away or it is fun to go again.

5) If PJ starts to win all will be good. I think the kids of the future will like his style. I think he is recruiting better talent. I don't know if he can coach at this level.

Sorry for not being able to respond to your responses I have to be in Madison at noon.
 

This is very sad to see. I hope it can get figured out but its hard to turn things around when we're losing as fans as quickly as we are. I'm doing my part attending but understand we all have different situations.
 


When we were at the Nebraska game my uncle, who was a coach and AD at a small west central Minnesota high school, reminded me that back in the day the Gophers had a program that offered high schools cheap tickets to bring teams to games. If the Gophers brought that back they would not only sell more seats, but help to build future Gopher fans. If they left 1,000 seats open and offered them up to out state and metro schools at $15 that would help fill the place up and breed more fans. Also, need to get the band marching down University again (one of my favorite things as a kid). Of course, field a competitive team and win!
 


This is the trouble with coaching instability that plagued the Gophers football program. Top that with the ill-advised changes that Norwood Teague introduced. He unilaterally made decisions on raising ticket prices and slapping donation requirements upsetting longtime Gopher season ticket holders. Then, after paying $800K for the Gophers to opt out of playing North Carolina what does the !d!#t do? He went behind Jerry Kill's back and schedule TCU as a home and home replacement.

Jerry Kill was in rebuilding mode and wanted lesser teams for his Gopher players to grow and develop from.

The big thing is, how many long time season ticket holder drop the Gophers altogether? All of a sudden people realize there are other alternative to buying Gopher season tickets.

IMHO, once the Gophers start winning, the crowds will come back. Win a Big Ten Title and the season ticket holder base will improve.
 
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Rickman55 said:
There were more than 15,000 at the NW game. I was there. And what would all you experts have done or would do now to change things. I agree the seat license contributed, but don't give me things would have been different with Claeys.
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Agreed. When you figure how bad Claeys would be doing in a pretend hypothetical universe based off his 9-4 smoke and mirrors season and compare it to how we are actually doing, you realize realize how good we have it. The problem is that as much as this makes sense to us on Gopherhole, this idea is kind of hard to translate to a billboard for a marketing campaign.
 

WoodburyTim said:
Agreed. When you figure how bad Claeys would be doing in a pretend hypothetical universe based off his 9-4 smoke and mirrors season and compare it to how we are actually doing, you realize realize how good we have it. The problem is that as much as this makes sense to us on Gopherhole, this idea is kind of hard to translate to a billboard for a marketing campaign.
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Smoke and mirrors season? We led or were tied in literally every fourth quarter that year. It was closer to being better than 9-4 than it was to being worse. It is insane the levels people will go to to try to finish that season.

Apologies in advance if you were being sarcastic and my meter is broken.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Smoke and mirrors season? We led or were tied in literally every fourth quarter that year. It was closer to being better than 9-4 than it was to being worse. It is insane the levels people will go to to try to finish that season.

Apologies in advance if you were being sarcastic and my meter is broken.
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No problem. It was extremely sarcastic. The sad thing is that you can read essentially the same thing on here made by posters being serious.
 


Denver_Gopher said:
When we were at the Nebraska game my uncle, who was a coach and AD at a small west central Minnesota high school, reminded me that back in the day the Gophers had a program that offered high schools cheap tickets to bring teams to games. If the Gophers brought that back they would not only sell more seats, but help to build future Gopher fans. If they left 1,000 seats open and offered them up to out state and metro schools at $15 that would help fill the place up and breed more fans. Also, need to get the band marching down University again (one of my favorite things as a kid). Of course, field a competitive team and win!
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That makes sense. I grew up in rural Minnesota and we went to a few games in the 80’s that way.
 

Butts in seats in Madison today on an above average temp day for this date shouldn’t tell you all you need to know about it being a national problem not just a gopher problem.

They probably still have 50k in the stadium. But it is supposed to be 80k. For a rivalry game.
I know they’re having a bad year vs expectations but they’re supposed to be a top 20 stadium experience.
 

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mkAz said:
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There might not be 50k in the stadium actually.


DOnt hve to worry about it. I know the star tribune will give context to the gopher situation by discussing their peers like Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and northwestern non-capacity crowds.
 

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