Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

[Nowheresville]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

Actually, this will likely be my first ever Triple-Header hockey weekend. Catching the men's game Friday night, and then probably both womens games on Saturday and Sunday. That's assuming I have the energy to drive back up to Madison again on Sunday Afternoon, and don't fall into the temptation of watching the debacle in Chicago on BTN instead.

[D2D]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

Actually, this will likely be my first ever Triple-Header hockey weekend. Catching the men's game Friday night, and then probably both womens games on Saturday and Sunday. That's assuming I have the energy to drive back up to Madison again on Sunday Afternoon, and don't fall into the temptation of watching the debacle in Chicago on BTN instead.

Nowheresville, welcome to my world!

(but I'm not complaining!)

[Badger Booster]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

http://www.uwbadgers.com/sports/w-ho...021213aac.html

Well, here we go again. Assuming there are no weather issues, I'm curious how many tickets will go unused. Optimistically, I'm going to say it will be virtually packed Saturday night with maybe a few more opens seats Sunday. Badger fans, if you have tickets and can't use them, please give/sell them to those who want to go!

[D2D]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

That is very cool that both games are sold out. Hopefully this time the actual attendance will resemble a sellout as well. No question that it's a huge series for both teams, and a full building can only help the home team.

[Nowheresville]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

I don't think it is cool at all that the games are sold out. It just highlights what an incredibly bad job they did in planning for LaBahn and how little UW cares about its womens hockey program. This is just another case where you're going to have hundreds of potential fans turned away, and less opportunity to get more people interested in the sport. Last year, there was a listed attendance of 3,500 for the final regular season home game against Ohio State, and even factoring no-shows, UW knew they were going to be turning away close to 1000 potential fans by only putting in seats for 2200. If you were playing these games at Kohl, I'd bet you could see nearly 4000 tickets sold to each game.

Assuming they haven't changed how they deal with ticketing, I'd assume Saturday has a reasonably good crowd but it still will be easy to find an open seat, and Sunday will have as many, if not more, empty seats as the Minnesota game. I'm very curious as to how the Soldier Field game will impact Sunday, since I have to think that a fair number of womens season ticket holders could be making the trip to Chicago.

[D2D]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

While I agree 2,200 is too small I still think it's cool to have the games sell out. Most schools would love to have this "problem" for womens hockey where attendance for the majority of schools is typically less than 500. There is no denying that a sold out building creates a great atmosphere, especially compared to hosting the games in a much bigger arena and having lots of empty seats. There's also something to be said for the "buzz" that's created when it becomes a hard ticket to get. People who are truly interested in going to a game and possibly becoming regular fans will find a way to get in. If it ever gets to the point where there is lots of ticket scalping out front before each game then it's time to raise the price of admission! This would reduce the number of tickets that get bought up in advance for cheap but end up going to waste. They need to find that happy medium or come up with a creative way to ensure that the available seats are consistently occupied.

[Badger Booster]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

I also agree that it's a good thing that it's a sellout all things equal. However, it does highlight the capacity issues the UW had to know that would be an issue when building it. I'm hoping that this will, at the very least, kick a couple of games over to Kohl in the very near future.

I understand the economic theory behind it, but if the athletic department's solution to this is raising prices, this ticket holder is going to freak out. Don't financially punish us for building an arena that can't handle the demand.

[ARM]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

Raising prices is just pure supply and demand. If the athletic department cared 2 cents about what women's hockey fans think, there wouldn't be all of these Friday 2 p.m. games.

The solution to this problem may be in part a realization of those holding tickets that they now have value. In the past, the available tickets far exceeded the demand, so if you held a ticket that cost a few bucks, it may not have been worth the trouble to try to resell it or turn it back in to the ticket office. Now, maybe some resale market may become popular or a process may be set up at LaBahn to turn unused tickets back in and get some sort of credit if they can be resold. I'm sure that the team would rather have its fans seated in the arena and not driving back home while the game is in progress.

[brookyone]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

Personally think that sellouts via building a too small capacity arena are not the most favorable byproduct. More of a hindrance to an objective of building interest and increasing attendance in my view. A great atmosphere due to a packed house is...great. Not so much if fans are being turned away and potential fans begin deciding to forego any effort to attend due to potential for that effort to be futile.

Should have built accommodations for 3000-4000 minimum IMO. UW women's hockey deserved that much IMO. I'd question any positive economic angle if you're not selling as many seats as you likely could.

[Timothy A]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

http://www.uwbadgers.com/sports/w-ho...021213aac.html

Well, here we go again. Assuming there are no weather issues, I'm curious how many tickets will go unused. Optimistically, I'm going to say it will be virtually packed Saturday night with maybe a few more opens seats Sunday. Badger fans, if you have tickets and can't use them, please give/sell them to those who want to go!

CRAP! I didn't order the Saturday tickets yet. I had an inkling this might happen....

I agree they build the rink too small. They should have built it big enough or very close to the max attendance of the previous years, not counting fill the bowl events. This is bad to turn away fans in 3 games now. They are talking about thousands of people between the 3 games. And I got bumped for 2 of the 3 games (I have the Sunday tickets already). Hockey at the UW is such an afterthought, it really sucks.

[Nowheresville]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

I'm curious what UW thinks about the sell-outs, especially sell-outs with hundreds of empty seats. Will they take it as a sign to move some games to Kohl, will they raise prices - especially for season tickets, or do they think it is cool and thus do nothing at all.

I don't think women's hockey has anywhere near the support to build a secondary ticket market even if every game sold out, and fans who are turned away are just going to go do something else. The question to me is how many of those fans turned away this weekend never come back.

[WiscDC]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

http://www.uwbadgers.com/sports/w-ho...021213aac.html

Well, here we go again. Assuming there are no weather issues, I'm curious how many tickets will go unused. Optimistically, I'm going to say it will be virtually packed Saturday night with maybe a few more opens seats Sunday. Badger fans, if you have tickets and can't use them, please give/sell them to those who want to go!

Crap, my red card is rendered useless again!

[D2D]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

I was curious about the attendance numbers so I looked at the offical records as shown on the box scores. A few interesting facts:

1. Through 14 home games this year, all at LaBahn, average attendance is 1791.
2. Only the first (10/19/12 vs. Bemidji) and the most recent (1/27/13 vs. Minnesota) are shown as being sellouts (per official capacity of 2,273).
3. The lowest home attendance this season was 1,262 vs. Minnesota State on 11/2/12.
4. Last year's average attendance, all at Kohl, was 2,689 for 21 home games (including two WCHA playoff games and one NCAA tourney game).
5. Three games last season had attendance below 1,000 (vs. this season's low of 1,262). The lowest was 544 vs. Lindenwood on 9/25/11.
6. If you exclude the "fill the bowl" game on 1/28/12 vs. Bemidji, which drew 12,402, the average attendance was 2,203 for 20 games (including the two WCHA playoff games and one NCAA tourney game).
7. Ten of last year's 21 home games drew more than LaBahn's official capacity of 2,273. If you exclude the "fill the bowl" Bemidji game, a total of 5,499 fans would have turned away if the same numbers had shown up to see those games at LaBahn (an average of 611 too many for those 9 games).
8. Including concessions but excluding parking, that's roughly $30,000 in lost revenue based on an average ticket price of $5.

Considering it cost over $25 million to build a 2,273 capacity LaBahn, how much more would it have cost to build a 3,500 capacity LaBahn? No idea but I'm guessing it would take a long time to pay for that extra cost, if the $30,000 estimate is anywhere close to being accurate. Then again, you could argue that a bigger LaBahn would draw more fans, as it's possible that more people would show up if they knew they could always get a seat.

Bottom line IMO is that you can look at it from two perspectives. If your a big supporter of womens hockey and you want to get more fans interested and grow the game on campus, you would argue that they should have built it bigger. If you look at it from an accountant's point of view, you would say it's plenty big enough, as they don't fill all the seats now nor would they have filled them for half the games last year when they were played at Kohl. So it was "prudent" to build it as they did because the added revenue would have taken decades to pay for the extra construction cost.

I have a feeling which side most forum readers would say is the right one!

[WiscDC]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

Eating tickets is an issue that, obviously, was never a problem before. Look at the UMD series last year. On Friday afternoon, 1924 was the official attendance. There was a ton of snow falling that day, so plenty of people didn't bother going. I can assure you, there weren't close to 1924 people there. The Saturday attendance of 3694 seemed about right. Of course, 1924 isn't a sellout at La Bahn Arena, but people didn't have a problem with eating their tickets.

From what I heard at the Sunday Minnesota game, a lot of Gophers fans here for women's hockey and men's basketball left the night before to avoid travelling in the weather, so that's a contributing factor.

What bugs me the most is how this affects Red Card usage. In all the other sports that you can use the pass for, there isn't the threat of a sellout. I don't want to buy a ticket separately if I don't have to, but I can only use the Red Card on game day (so starting an hour before the game). It makes everything more complicated.

[Badger Booster]

Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2012-2013 - The LaBahn Era Begins

Let's be honest, if you look at it from an accountant's standpoint, all sports but football, men's basketball and men's hockey would be eliminated.

In the 13 years of the program, attendence has grown from an average of 808 (mostly on the strength of the opening weekend against UMD) to over 2,600 (somewhat inflated due to Fill the Bowl). It has been a nice steady growth helped greatly by their on-ice performance. While there would eventually be a plateau, there is no reason to think that the number wouldn't have continued to grow. However, as it currently stands, they are essentially at capacity with no room for growth. Volleyball and women's basketball have the facilities to have the crowd sizes grow as they perform better. Not so for women's hockey. Not saying they should have built a 9,000+ arena, but they should have done a better job figuring out a way to fund the original 4,400 seat design which would have set the standard for women's arenas and probably would have been the nicest practice facility for men's hockey.

For grumps like me, moving a couple of games (especially ones against Minnesota, North Dakota and UMD) to the Kohl Center would go a long way showing that the adminstration is actually paying attention to the women's hockey program.