The apparent decline in WBB attendance, despite this year's extremely talented and exciting team, was raised on another thread and I felt it deserved a separate discussion.
I went back and looked at the official attendance figures as far back as they are provided and found something interesting. This is average attendance at home games. Of course, they may have changed how they count attendance--at some point they might have counted ticket sales even if the tickets are unused. So I am not sure how that figures in to these totals.
19-20 2319 (so far, with just two weeknight games against inferior opponents)
18-19 3063
17-18 2865
16-17 3160
15-16 3207
14-15 3574
13-14 3463 Chiney's Senior year
12-13 4284 First Pac-12 Network year
11-12 4250 Nneka's Senior year
10-11 4839 Two Ogwumikes lead us to finals where we lose to A&M
9-10 4280
8-9 3953
7-8 4139 Wiggin's senior year return to final four and relevance
I wish that the stats went back much further. Perhaps someone can locate more.
My impression is that there was a marked decline from 4800 to 2800 beginning around the time the Pac 12 network initiated, which was also around the time the two Ogwumikes graduated. Was that causal or coincidental? I don't know. It seems to have taken about a year after the Pac 12 network initiated to see the big drop, as if 1000 people kept coming for a year until they decided to watch on TV instead. Chiney's senior year showed a big decline and so it was not just the lack of star-power that was the cause.
I have noticed for years that the weekday games get much worse attendance than the Sunday games, and the Sunday afternoon games get much better attendance than the Sunday evening games. I presume this is because nearly everyone who attends is from off campus and many have other commitments.
This year's attendance at two home games has been terrible, but it is early season and both those games were on awkward week nights. Tonight's game will be a somewhat better measure--on a Sunday and against a good opponent--but they put it at 5:00 which is not optimal rather than the more normal Sunday afternoon game. Those Sunday afternoon games would attract lots of school kids, people from retirement homes, etc. who may not attend a game held during the Sunday dinner hour. Hopefully we will do better tonight than 2319 sold tickets.
Looking ahead, the two games against Oregon were horribly scheduled for attendance--obviously TV choices. When we are up there we play them at 6 on a Thursday night. Given that Oregon sold 7000 season tickets they will probably be sold out despite the lousy time. On the other hand, Oregon comes here 6pm on a Monday night--we play no game on that Sunday so this was clearly held over a day for TV purposes. Ugh.
I went back and looked at the official attendance figures as far back as they are provided and found something interesting. This is average attendance at home games. Of course, they may have changed how they count attendance--at some point they might have counted ticket sales even if the tickets are unused. So I am not sure how that figures in to these totals.
19-20 2319 (so far, with just two weeknight games against inferior opponents)
18-19 3063
17-18 2865
16-17 3160
15-16 3207
14-15 3574
13-14 3463 Chiney's Senior year
12-13 4284 First Pac-12 Network year
11-12 4250 Nneka's Senior year
10-11 4839 Two Ogwumikes lead us to finals where we lose to A&M
9-10 4280
8-9 3953
7-8 4139 Wiggin's senior year return to final four and relevance
I wish that the stats went back much further. Perhaps someone can locate more.
My impression is that there was a marked decline from 4800 to 2800 beginning around the time the Pac 12 network initiated, which was also around the time the two Ogwumikes graduated. Was that causal or coincidental? I don't know. It seems to have taken about a year after the Pac 12 network initiated to see the big drop, as if 1000 people kept coming for a year until they decided to watch on TV instead. Chiney's senior year showed a big decline and so it was not just the lack of star-power that was the cause.
I have noticed for years that the weekday games get much worse attendance than the Sunday games, and the Sunday afternoon games get much better attendance than the Sunday evening games. I presume this is because nearly everyone who attends is from off campus and many have other commitments.
This year's attendance at two home games has been terrible, but it is early season and both those games were on awkward week nights. Tonight's game will be a somewhat better measure--on a Sunday and against a good opponent--but they put it at 5:00 which is not optimal rather than the more normal Sunday afternoon game. Those Sunday afternoon games would attract lots of school kids, people from retirement homes, etc. who may not attend a game held during the Sunday dinner hour. Hopefully we will do better tonight than 2319 sold tickets.
Looking ahead, the two games against Oregon were horribly scheduled for attendance--obviously TV choices. When we are up there we play them at 6 on a Thursday night. Given that Oregon sold 7000 season tickets they will probably be sold out despite the lousy time. On the other hand, Oregon comes here 6pm on a Monday night--we play no game on that Sunday so this was clearly held over a day for TV purposes. Ugh.