Average Men's Attendance

[Squarebanks]

Greg,

The official attendance for the two Minnesota State games were 714 and 698, both well below the rink's 1,200 capacity. If both had been at capacity or the Patty Ice Center was off campus I would remove them from the team's attendance figures, as I have done for other teams impacted by such considerations (and did for Maine's 2 games in Portland this season). But I don't see either reason being valid in this case.

As for correlating attendance to performance and especially home performance, I agree that there is one and there are numerous papers/articles on the subject, even some on college hockey:

Baseball
What Do Your Fans Want
Fair-Weather Fans

NHL
Winning Percentage and Attendance in the NHL
Fan Attendance: Does Winning Actually Bring in the Crowds?
Sensitivity of Attendance to Wins

College Hockey
The Impact of Winning on Filling a College Hockey Arena
Determinants of college hockey attendance

"Determinants of college hockey attendance" looks at other factors besides winning, including ticket prices and the impact of an NHL team within 75 miles. Unfortunately, he didn't try to factor in the impact of having other college teams within a short distance of each other (i.e. Boston).

Sean

Thanks for the links.

Regarding the Patty Center, something to remember is it is a practice rink in every sense of the word. It isn't going to draw people in.

There are some rumblings going around that the Carlson Center has a new ticket counting system that is thwarting the attendance numbers. I can certainly attest that when we played UAA a couple weeks ago, the Saturday attendance was listed as under 2,000 but I'd be shocked if it was actually that low.

But there is no doubt that the WCHA move has impacted our attendance. In the old CCHA days we always had big crowds for UM/MSU, Ohio State, and Notre Dame. Without those big draws attendance has crumbled, and it is complicated by the fact that we have been lousy at home the last two seasons.

The other issue is we tend to get stuck with crappy home weekends (I.e. Thanksgiving weekend, Finals weekend, etc.) followed by being on the road the month of January. There is no doubt the scheduling was more advantageous in the CCHA. Not having a home game for six weeks in the middle of the season isn't advantageous for branding.

[SJHovey]

Just from an eye test point of view. I attended the First Desert classic last year and the attendance figures were wildly over what was actually there. Not only that but in a number of the ASU games, the attendance figure is missing from the box score entirely. So you have to wonder how they are counting and why.
Second, it strikes me as ironic about the NCHC, because one of the reasons they used in the rationale as to why they split off was that the attendance was starting to drop off for games with the lower teams. Now we are down the line a bit more and of course that was a red herring and the attendance dropped anyway. In other words, if you want to believe something, you can find reasons to believe it, true or not.

I'd like to see a link to a single quote from the NCHC or a representative of an NCHC school saying one of the reasons the conference was formed was because "attendance was starting to drop off for games wth some lower schools."

[willythekid]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

I'd like to see a link to a single quote from the NCHC or a representative of an NCHC school saying one of the reasons the conference was formed was because "attendance was starting to drop off for games wth some lower schools."

I was thinking the exact same thing... Jeebus, get over it already.

[manurespreader]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

I was thinking the exact same thing... Jeebus, get over it already.

I Am over it, but it is ironic you have to admit. If you want proof and certainly that's nice to have, you might be able to find some of the old DU threads where they were talking about defending the brand, the drop off in attendance at Denver, how they shouldn't have to play Tech because we were just so beneath them, how it hurt the numbers for crummy teams to come into town, Plus the quotes from peg bradley dopes about the things they were dissatisfied with. All of that came out a few months before the split was announced.
I'm not mad about it in the least, but when these type things are said they stick out in your memory.

[Suze]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

Thanks for the links.

Regarding the Patty Center, something to remember is it is a practice rink in every sense of the word. It isn't going to draw people in.

There are some rumblings going around that the Carlson Center has a new ticket counting system that is thwarting the attendance numbers. I can certainly attest that when we played UAA a couple weeks ago, the Saturday attendance was listed as under 2,000 but I'd be shocked if it was actually that low.

But there is no doubt that the WCHA move has impacted our attendance. In the old CCHA days we always had big crowds for UM/MSU, Ohio State, and Notre Dame. Without those big draws attendance has crumbled, and it is complicated by the fact that we have been lousy at home the last two seasons.

The other issue is we tend to get stuck with crappy home weekends (I.e. Thanksgiving weekend, Finals weekend, etc.) followed by being on the road the month of January. There is no doubt the scheduling was more advantageous in the CCHA. Not having a home game for six weeks in the middle of the season isn't advantageous for branding.

I agree, the scheduling with the new WCHA has been much worse for attendance. UAA's next home games are at 1:30 on both Friday and Saturday. Add to that the fact that the games are on LIVE television, it's a recipe for disaster.

[Sean Pickett]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

...one of the reasons they used in the rationale as to why they split off was that the attendance was starting to drop off for games with the lower teams. Now we are down the line a bit more and of course that was a red herring and the attendance dropped anyway.

I'm not going to bet into a debate about whether or not attendance was a factor in the creation of the NCHC, but your comment did get me interested in how attendance has been affected by the change. I looked at Denver's last four seasons in the WCHA and first 3 and half in the NCHC. In the WCHA Denver had 14 league home games a season and over the last four they hosted either Minnesota or Wisconsin, which I have ignored, leaving 12 other home games per season, while in the NCHC Denver has 12 league home games a season. Overall Denver's league attendance has dropped from an average of 5,528 for WCHA opponents to an average of 5,094 for NCHC opponents, a 7.9% decline. The average attendance for the 5 WCHA teams that joined the NCHC was 5,615 when in the WCHA and is currently 5,458 in the NCHC, a 2.8 decline. The average attendance for the other WCHA teams was 5,426, while for Miami and WMU it is currently 4,731, a 12.8% decline.

Sean

[Sean Pickett]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

Thanks for the links.

Regarding the Patty Center, something to remember is it is a practice rink in every sense of the word. It isn't going to draw people in.

There are some rumblings going around that the Carlson Center has a new ticket counting system that is thwarting the attendance numbers. I can certainly attest that when we played UAA a couple weeks ago, the Saturday attendance was listed as under 2,000 but I'd be shocked if it was actually that low.

But there is no doubt that the WCHA move has impacted our attendance. In the old CCHA days we always had big crowds for UM/MSU, Ohio State, and Notre Dame. Without those big draws attendance has crumbled, and it is complicated by the fact that we have been lousy at home the last two seasons.

The other issue is we tend to get stuck with crappy home weekends (I.e. Thanksgiving weekend, Finals weekend, etc.) followed by being on the road the month of January. There is no doubt the scheduling was more advantageous in the CCHA. Not having a home game for six weeks in the middle of the season isn't advantageous for branding.

Thanks for the additional information about the Petty Center.

Interesting to hear about the Carlson Center counting system, although you would expect that it was tested and working properly before being used.

Back in 2012-13 BU ended up with no home games for four weeks from the end of January to the end of February. That was the longest stretch BU had no home games outside of the holiday break gong back to the start of the 2003-04 season when BU also had no home games for four weeks after opening the season at home. The four weeks was bad enough and the Beanpot games were in that stretch.

Sean

[Squarebanks]

Thanks for the additional information about the Petty Center.

Interesting to hear about the Carlson Center counting system, although you would expect that it was tested and working properly before being used.

Back in 2012-13 BU ended up with no home games for four weeks from the end of January to the end of February. That was the longest stretch BU had no home games outside of the holiday break gong back to the start of the 2003-04 season when BU also had no home games for four weeks after opening the season at home. The four weeks was bad enough and the Beanpot games were in that stretch.

Sean

UAF has no home games this season between December 17 and February 3. Seven long weeks.

[purpleinnebraska]

I'd like to see a link to a single quote from the NCHC or a representative of an NCHC school saying one of the reasons the conference was formed was because "attendance was starting to drop off for games wth some lower schools."

To be honest, I heard that way more from Wisconsin people than from NCHC people. It was a lousy argument (Denver, Kato, UAA, CC - to the average fan, what's the difference?) but it allowed them to blame others for how crappy their program had become.

[Yuppie Scum]

When Japan bid on the 2022 World Cup part of the bid was a plan to develop technology enabling it to provide a live telecast of every game in holographic 3D. The idea was to broadcast the games onto the playing fields of about 400 stadiums around the world so fans who couldn't go to Japan could attend the games locally and watch them as if they were there. However, the issue of attendance in the originating venue could still be a problem for the reasons already mentioned, if not for the World Cup then for other events that might want to use the same technology.

I've got a bridge to sell ya..

Is this like the outdoor Qatar soccer stadiums that will somehow be magically kept at 70 degrees in the summer?

[Happy]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

thanks to this thread, I learned that the most watched college hockey game of all time was MN vs Maine for the NC in 2002. cool.

[Sean Pickett]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

I haven’t updated my men’s home attendance spreadsheet, but over on the BU thread there is currently a discussion about attendance at the Hockey East opening round games. I think it is a good idea to move the discussion into this thread, as I think it is more appropriate for such a discussion.

I have all Hockey East opening round and quarterfinal game attendance from 2002 up to today. I have also been compiling true home games game-by-game attendance of all Hockey East teams and currently have complete information back to the 2001-02 season for all teams and I am able to compare each team’s regular season average attendance with their playoff average attendance. As most of the discussion on the BU thread has been about the opening round I will focus on those games in this post.

This past weekend completed the fifth season Hockey East has had an opening round and the third in which it has been a best of three series. Most people forget Hockey East had an opening round 8 vs 9 game back in 1995, the first season Massachusetts was in the league. In that game Massachusetts upset Boston College before just 723 fans. When Hockey East brought back the opening round in 2014 it was single elimination and the three games had the best average attendance for the opening round, 3,841 per game. Since then the average attendance for the opening round games has decreased each year: 3,065 in 2015, 2,406 in 2016 and 2,266 this year.

However, looking deeper at the opening round shows a more complicated story. Since 2014 nine of the 12 teams in the league have hosted at least one opening round game/series. Both Northeastern and Vermont have hosted three times, Merrimack and Notre Dame have hosted twice, while Boston University, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Providence have hosted once each.

Of the 2 teams that have hosted 3 times we see different attendance patterns. For Northeastern, which has hosted for three consecutive seasons, attendance has been very poor. In 2015 they had a 2 game average of 1,673, a 40% (1,117) drop from their regular season average of 2,790. In 2016 they had a 2 game average of 1,261, a 52.1% (1,370) drop their regular season average of 2,630 and down 24.6% (412) from the playoff attendance the previous year. This year they had a 2 game average of 1,276, down 45.1% (1,049) from their regular season average, but up a tick from the playoff attendance last year.

For Vermont, which hosted in 2014 and 2015 before hosting again this year, attendance dipped, then improved. In 2014 Vermont hosted a single game which had an attendance of 2,823, a drop of 24% (892) from their regular season average of 3,715. In 2015 they had a 3 game average of 2,663, a drop of 33.2% (1,323), but only down 5.6% (160) from the playoff average the previous year. This year, after hosting no playoff games in 2016, Vermont’s 2 game average was 3,228, a drop of 12.4% (456) from their regular season average and an increase of 21.2% (565) from their playoff average of 2015 and an increase of 14.3% (405) from their playoff average of 2014.

Of the two which hosted twice Notre Dame had a sellout of 5,022 for the single elimination game in 2014, an increase of 4.5% (216) from their regular season average of 4,806. In 2015 they didn’t do as well, with a 3 game average of 3,884, down 15% (684) from their regular season average of 4,568. That average is only 1.6% (65) less than their 2016 2 game quarterfinal average of 3,949 and had a smaller drop from the regular season attendance (-15% (-684) vs -18.4% (-889)). And the average for the first two games of the 2015 opening round was 4,141, better than the 2016 quarterfinal round, before the poor attendance for the third game of the series (the lowest of any game that season) brought it down.

The other team to host twice, Merrimack, has seen their playoff attendance improve from 2016 to this year. In 2016 their 3 game average was 2,282, a drop of 3.8% (91) from their regular season average of 2,373. This year their 3 game average was 2,416, an increase of 4.3% (100) from their regular season average of 2,316.

Of the five teams to host an opening round just once only Boston University’s can be considered a complete disaster. Their 2016 2 game average was 1,835, a 60.8% (2,841) drop from their regular season average of 4,676. It was also their lowest playoff average since the 2002 quarterfinals hosted at Walter Brown Arena and they also had the lowest single playoff game attendance since then.

Connecticut, which also hosted in 2015, had what can be considered good attendance, with a 2 game average of 4,309. This was down -17.7% (930) from their regular season average of 5,238.

Maine, who hosted in 2014, had 3,678 for a single game. It was down 10.7% from their regular season average of 4,120. That was less than the 4,188 3 game average they had for the 2012 quarterfinals, but better than the 3,182 2 game average they had for the 2010 quarterfinals (and which was down 30.8% (1,389) from the 2009-10 regular season average of 4,510).

New Hampshire hosted in 2015 and had a 2 game average of 3,834. It was a drop of 26.5% (1,379) from their regular season average of 5,213. It was, however, better than their previous two quarterfinal series in 2014 and 2011. The previous year (2014) the 3 game quarterfinal average was 3,077, down 42.1% (2,235) from their regular season average of 5,312 and the 2011 2 game quarterfinal series average was 3,093, a drop of 48.7% (2,939) from their regular season average of 6,032. The 2015 opening round average was up 24.6% (757) over the 2014 quarterfinals and up 24% (741) over the 2011 quarterfinals.

Finally, Providence hosted an opening round series for the first time this year. The 2 game average attendance was 2,069, down 18.9% (483) from their regular season average of 2,552. It was also down 26.3% (740) from last year’s 2 game quarterfinal average of 2,809. It was better than their 2015 3 game quarterfinal average of 1,702 and on par with their 2014 2 game quarterfinal series average of 2,131 and their 2 game quarterfinal series average of 2,010.

Furthermore, the 2014 opening round 3 game average of 3,841 was better than the quarterfinal 11 game average of 3,421. It was also better than the quarterfinal averages back to 2007. The 2015 opening round 10 game average of 2,791 was again better than the quarterfinal 11 game average of 2,791 (the only quarterfinal average below 3,000 since 2002).

For complete regular season, playoff and overall attendance averages for every Hockey East team from 2001-to date you can view my Hockey East Playoff Attendance spreadsheet. It lists each team's regular season attendance average, their playoff average if they hosted a series and their overall season average. It also shows how much the playoff attendance decreased or, on occasion, increased from the regular season attendance. It also shows the overall league averages for each season.

Sean

[Sean Pickett]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

I would also be interested in hearing (reading) about playoff attendance issues for all of the leagues.

Sean

[Snively65]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

I wonder how much spring semester break, which varies school to school and year to year influences the drop off?

[Split-N]

Re: Average Men's Attendance

First of all, thanks for putting the time and effort into gathering and preserving the numbers. Every college (and even pro) sports marketing staff ought to be taking a careful look at what the numbers are saying.

The timing of semester breaks certainly doesn't help playoff attendance but I think there are societal trends that go deeper than that. Here's an example: There is something of a kerfluffle going on here in WashDC stemming from what turned out to be an embarrassing attempt to produce a reality-type TV commercial. None other than Alex Ovechkin was sent to deliver a Papa John's pizza (blecch!) to a teenage girl who was baby sitting for a neighbor. When she opened the door, it was instantly clear that she had no idea who was handing her the pizza. When a field producer told her the delivery guy was the all-star forward of the Washington Caps, the girl replied blandly: "I don't do sports."

I'm far removed from my college days but I do try to keep up with cultural changes and get the clear impression that kids who are now coming of age tend to be somewhat indifferent (at best) to competitive sports. Lots of reasons including Netflix, networked gaming, the various flavors of social media, and the fact that, beyond those, college kids have a wealth of choices competing for their time, attention, and money that didn't exist even 10 years ago, especially in the urban areas.

Declining attendance is a real issue, and not just for HEA or even college hockey. It's hard not to notice rows of empty seats on televised games where there used to be none. And not just for hockey and not just at the college level. I think the marketing people have their work cut out for them going forward.

Wouldn't mind hearing viewpoints from folks who are in the "target demographic."