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More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is...

Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

brassbonanza said:
I think that's the point that was being made there. For the local fans of the sport, the local youth leagues, and casual sports fans, the prices make it prohibitive, plus the lack of single day tickets. I'm not as sold on the beer selling and lack of ability to leave between games as being a big factor, I don't think that's more than a minor factor on overall attendance numbers. But definitely lower the prices, or at the very least tier them based on location/offer group rates for bulk purchases. Ironically, the one time they did this for the FFFF, with the $40 weekend books, it seemed to work well. $40 for a weekend ticket for a balcony seat or something would be a great idea.

The problem I see is that the regionals get put in these small cities that, for fans that must fly, the cost is entirely prohibitive because it's a fly and drive deal. Flying into Green Bay, or Grand Rapids, or Toledo is exorbitantly expensive, so you fly to the nearest major city, rent a car, then drive. All too expensive to do that. Are there good sized (~8-10K) rinks in places like Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit? At least there, you have large population bases, more sports fans, more youth leagues, and it's much more accessible for people coming from the east, and the far west. Example - BOS-Green Bay Fri-Sun is $715, BOS-Cleveland same time is $412. Chicago is $290. Eastern sites as they are now are as good as they'll get, Providence is a nice addition. Keep it in population centers, keep it out of these mill town podunk "cities". I would be against playing on home sites, the NCAA tournament should have at least somewhat of a modicum of neutrality. St Paul is fine, hell, if they put it at TD Garden (not going to happen) that'd be fine. But the on-campus thing just won't work for a million reasons. Two super eight team regionals would be worth looking at, though four games in one day would lead to some terrible ice by the end of the day, or two-two-two championships could work if the Friday winners and Saturday winners played each other on Sunday so no one would have a rest advantage. One western site, one eastern. Rotate XCel/Joe and TD/(Providence?).

Also, anyone heard anything else on potential '15 and '16 FF sites, other than the rumored Nashville bid? Hopefully Boston gets off its *** and puts in a legit bid.
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For Cornell fans to fly from Syracuse to Green Bay, booking the flight five days out $653, to Minneapolis $681. The bottom line is any flight booked on that short notice will be expensive, no matter where you're going.
 
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Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

huskyfan said:
ancient economic solution. supply vs demand. lower the prices. let kids under 8 in for free. student discount. senior discount. its not rocket science..
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Not rocket science or good economics either. Maximize revenues and profits, not attendance.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

They did not open the balcony at the X.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

They really need tiered pricing, and preferably non-single session tickets. These reasons are the majority of the reasons I didn't buy tickets (especially tough right after the Final Five). Hey, $20 gets me upper deck instead of $50? I'm sold on that.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

Red Cows said:
I think the ticket costs are incidental compared to the overall cost of attending, unless you happen to be very close to a given regional you want to attend. And, by very close, I mean so close that transportation, food and lodging are not cost concerns because you don't have to spend any money on them.
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False, unless you're just one person.

My family does not have a lot of money. My wife works, I work full time plus a lot of side work, and we try to save a bit. I believe family is important, and with a busy spring and summer on the horizon I felt that we needed a serious family event to spend time together with our two girls. With Michigan making the Green Bay regional five hours from us, we decided to make a trip for the Friday game only. We were glad it was not in Saint Paul, half the distance but twice the ticket price--that would be unworkable.

Nonetheless, despite needing two tanks of gas for my van, food, and a hotel room for the night, the only thing that made me hesitate was when I had to pull the trigger on buying four <b>one-day tickets at the cheap regional</b> for $167. That's <b>One Hundred Sixty Seven Dollars</b> for a family of long-distance Michigan fans to attend <b>One game</b> at a regional that did not sell half its seats. Again, this was the "cheap" regional.

If it hadn't been a unique chance to spend family time and take my girls to their first-ever Michigan game there's no way I would've bothered, for ticket cost as much as anything else.

It's good to know that the X drew, for a huge playoff game between two fanbases within good driving distance, an attendance that is less than or equal to the capacity of each participant.

Nickname issues aside, they would've sold out the Ralph, assuming any reasonable adjustment to the price. And if the nickname issue had prevented it, they would've sold out Mariucci and delivered the ultimate message to North Dakota regarding their nickname.

Neutral sites are not the answer. Not anymore.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

Neutral sites aren't really a problem, either. Except out West.

So doesn't this leave us back where we were 10 years ago? Campus regionals in the West and neutral regionals in the East?

Campus sites for all games fixes something (lower seed hosting) that's really only a problem in the West. I can see the rationale, from a Western perspective. From an Eastern perspective, I just think "Why on earth do we want to go from a flawed system to a seriously flawed system?"

Before making major changes, I'd still be in favor of adjusting prices. A price cut and and a recovering economy might be all the "fix" the problem needs.

The thing about neutral site regionals is that they smooth out the edges of a very imperfect ranking system. Pairwise is crap. We deal with it only out of necessity. Putting all games on campus gives too much importance to an extremely arbitrary, and volatile system.
 
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Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

amherstblackbear said:
A much easier way to grow the sport would be simply to get prices right.
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You are right, of course, but since there is NO WAY that ticket prices are going to be lowered by the NC$$, some of us are trying to suggest SOME alternative that would allow for more people to go. Since it's either lower prices or reduce travel, the travel option has been brought up. Obviously it would be better if neither of these alternatives had to be implemented. But I'll bring up the BU example again (I'm sure there are many others). BU was a 9 seed and had to go to Minnesota. So instead of many more fans in either Worcester or Bridgeport, the NCAA thought it was a smarter idea to put them somewhere where probably less than 100 fans would go. This has NOTHING to do with ticket prices - it has to do with proximity and ease of getting to the game. It's not like they were a 16 seed. You could have kept each team in its own region and it wouldn't have made a huge difference. You could say the same for half a dozen other teams. This is NOT basketball. There aren't 64 teams where you HAVE to make them travel to maintain the brackets. And the basketball schools have much larger fan bases and clearly there is more money is what is a much more popular sport.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

amherstblackbear said:
So doesn't this leave us back where we were 10 years ago? Campus regionals in the West and neutral regionals in the East?
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But what's wrong with that? Many of the campus sites in the West have much larger capacities than the campus sites in the East, making them comparable to the midlevel neutral sites anyway. Newer doesn't always mean better. I thought it was MUCH better when we had the 12 team tournament, but I will concede we don't want to go back to that. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. You don't have to change everything; implement the things that work well and change the things that don't.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

IronRangeHockey said:
Thanks, a bit surprised. Maybe they all filed down closer to the ice, the lower bowl looked alot better than yesterday and the numbers are pretty close right?
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I suspect that the issue with yesterday was the single ticket. Fans who didn't want to spend 7 hours in the arena either skipped part of the early game or the late game.

For both days they either sold out or came close to selling out the tickets that were actually available to be sold. That might have been bad planning by the X given the teams that did make the finals, but I wouldn't be surprised that the NCAA wouldn't let them change the plans and open up the upper deck seats.

The advantage of not opening up the 200s is that they don't have to clean or staff the whole concourse but it also cuts ~8,500 off the possible attendance (and my favorite seats in the whole arena: the upper deck ends). They did the same thing back in 2010 for the regional then also, but attendance was only about 7,500 with UW, UVM, NMU and SCSU.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

Almington said:
I suspect that the issue with yesterday was the single ticket. Fans who didn't want to spend 7 hours in the arena either skipped part of the early game or the late game.

For both days they either sold out or came close to selling out the tickets that were actually available to be sold. That might have been bad planning by the X given the teams that did make the finals, but I wouldn't be surprised that the NCAA wouldn't let them change the plans and open up the upper deck seats.

The advantage of not opening up the 200s is that they don't have to clean or staff the whole concourse but it also cuts ~8,500 off the possible attendance (and my favorite seats in the whole arena: the upper deck ends). They did the same thing back in 2010 for the regional then also, but attendance was only about 7,500 with UW, UVM, NMU and SCSU.
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This.

Also, if there were separate tickets, I'd have most likely gone, and I was in St Paul a couple blocks away. I chose to take the $50 or whatever it was and spend it at the local watering hole with friends and watch the game on tv. I didn't really want to watch UND/WMU.

1. Too nice a weekend to spend 7 hours indoors.
2. Two teams I either don't care about or I hate.
3. No re-entry, really (yeah, you can cheat, but you are missing part of the game then, most likely)
4. Same cost no matter where you sit

In other words, I'm a potential customer that the NC$$ lost due to the regional ticket practices. That's money lost.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

chickod said:
You are right, of course, but since there is NO WAY that ticket prices are going to be lowered by the NC$$,
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The NCAA does not set prices. The arena submits a bid and if they host they set prices where they think they will make money. It can be argued that the NCAA should accept less money or that the arenas should reduce their bids, but good luck with that happening. The NCAA gets the same amount whether an arena sells out and a venue makes a killing or the arena is empty and the arena takes a bath. One would think that if the venues weren't making money, they would bid less. A cynic might assume that they are bidding less but leaving ticket prices high anyway...
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

In that case, the venues need to offer a couple hundred bucks to an econ grad student at a nearby university, in return for a couple hours of work.

Once they "win" their bid, venue costs are, for the most part, set. At that point, they might as well maximize revenue. Maybe they do maximize revenue with half-full buildings and high prices. I doubt it, though. Concessions add up. Especially on day 1, when you've got a captive audience for hours.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

The issue with going 'closest to home, at all costs' is the fact that you can't appease everybody. At all. It would take an extremely rare scenario where you have 2 eastern teams and 2 western teams in each band. Hell, this year alone, the 2 seeds were Miami, Ferris, Duluth and Minnesota. 2 of those are guaranteed flights, nothing you can do about it.

So you say 'forget seeding, just lump 16 teams together and throw them in the closest regional'? Well, let's take a look at how that would be, shall we?

1. Boston College
2. Michigan
3. Union
4. North Dakota
5. Miami
6. Ferris State
7. Minnesota-Duluth
8. Minnesota
9t. Boston University
9t. Maine
11. Denver
12t. UMass-Lowell
12t. Cornell
14t. Western Michigan
15t. Michigan State
16. Air Force -- AHA Champ

Worcester: (29)
1. BC
5. Miami
10. Maine
13. Cornell

Bridgeport: (35)
3. Union
9. BU
11. Denver
12. UML

Green Bay: (37)
2. Michigan
6. Ferris St
14. Western Michigan
15. Michigan St

St. Paul: (35)
4. NoDak
7. Minnesota-Duluth
8. Minnesota
16. Air Force

Overall, it ends up being pretty even regionals, based on overall seeding. However, why don't we just call it glorified conference tournaments part deuce, especially out west. As you can see, we still have virtually 2 regionals from the same conference. You might be able to tinker with the regionals a bit to minimize the conference clusters, but it will still be a lot of familiarity. The thing you have to weigh, is do you want attendance, or seeing teams you don't normally see? One of my favorite parts of the regionals, is you see matchups that you don't typically see in the regular season. You see new teams, different styles of play.

You realistically can't have it both ways 95% of the time.
 
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Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

Updated attendance numbers:

Green Bay
3465 / 8709 40%
3108 / 8709 36%
6573 / 17418 38%

Bridgeport
5090 / 8412 61%
5328 / 8412 63%
10418 / 16824 62%

St Paul
9386 / 18064 52%
10794 / 18064 60%
20180 / 36128 56%

Worcester
5925 / 12239 48%
4470 / 12239 37%
10395 / 24478 42%

47566 / 94848 50%
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

Let's say that the first round was played at the home arenas of the high seeds.

Then, let's say that the prices were halved, or at least set reasonably, since people weren't paying to see two games.

Would 10,000 Minnesota fans pay to see their team play a win-or-die playoff game in Mariucci? Would 12,000 North Dakota fans pay $25 to see their team play Western in a win-or-die game? (Or would UND face a lot of new pressure if their team lost a <b>home playoff game</b> because they refused to change the nickname?) Both those home games match the entire weekend attendance with one game left to play.

It is virtually certain that Yost Ice Arena would have matched the <b>entire attendance of the Green Bay regional</b> in one home game against Cornell. Whatever Ferris drew for its home game (two home games if you count the regional final) would be gravy.

But let's forget about that for a second. Let's just look at one moment of a fantastic weekend of hockey:

Ferris State's second goal, scored on a 2-on-1 immediately subsequent to their killing of a 5-minute major penalty that could easily have ended their season. Easily the most important goal in Ferris State hockey history, right? It was witnessed by 3,000 people, most of whom don't care about Ferris at all.

If they played that game at home (and this is a tiny, three-sided home arena that people would hold up as an object lesson why teams shouldn't host in the NCAA tournament) as they should have played it, the roof would have blown off the building. 2500 Ferris fans, many of them long-suffering and loyal, would have gotten to see their team reach the mountain-top.

If, hypothetically, they had played Michigan on the road (Michigan in this home games scenario hypothetically beating Cornell, for sake of argument) fewer Ferris fans are there--but there is the extra thrill of scoring a killer goal and silencing a hostile building, which many athletes agree is one of the great thrills in all of sports.

Instead, the celebrating Ferris players got to rejoice in front of 5,000 empty seats.

Playing the first two rounds at the home sites of the higher seeds will allow more fans to see the most important games of the season. It will be more fair. It will make more money. It will be closer to drive to.

But, mostly, it will just plain be a lot more enjoyable for every party involved. Unquestionably.
 
Re: More proof that the Regional system is a disaster: Today's attendance at the X is

Caustic Undertow said:
Let's say that the first round was played at the home arenas of the high seeds.

Then, let's say that the prices were halved, or at least set reasonably, since people weren't paying to see two games.

Would 10,000 Minnesota fans pay to see their team play a win-or-die playoff game in Mariucci? Would 12,000 North Dakota fans pay $25 to see their team play Western in a win-or-die game? (Or would UND face a lot of new pressure if their team lost a <b>home playoff game</b> because they refused to change the nickname?) Both those home games match the entire weekend attendance with one game left to play.

It is virtually certain that Yost Ice Arena would have matched the <b>entire attendance of the Green Bay regional</b> in one home game against Cornell. Whatever Ferris drew for its home game (two home games if you count the regional final) would be gravy.

But let's forget about that for a second. Let's just look at one moment of a fantastic weekend of hockey:

Ferris State's second goal, scored on a 2-on-1 immediately subsequent to their killing of a 5-minute major penalty that could easily have ended their season. Easily the most important goal in Ferris State hockey history, right? It was witnessed by 3,000 people, most of whom don't care about Ferris at all.

If they played that game at home (and this is a tiny, three-sided home arena that people would hold up as an object lesson why teams shouldn't host in the NCAA tournament) as they should have played it, the roof would have blown off the building. 2500 Ferris fans, many of them long-suffering and loyal, would have gotten to see their team reach the mountain-top.

If, hypothetically, they had played Michigan on the road (Michigan in this home games scenario hypothetically beating Cornell, for sake of argument) fewer Ferris fans are there--but there is the extra thrill of scoring a killer goal and silencing a hostile building, which many athletes agree is one of the great thrills in all of sports.

Instead, the celebrating Ferris players got to rejoice in front of 5,000 empty seats.

Playing the first two rounds at the home sites of the higher seeds will allow more fans to see the most important games of the season. It will be more fair. It will make more money. It will be closer to drive to.

But, mostly, it will just plain be a lot more enjoyable for every party involved. Unquestionably.
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Except that all of the regional sites were single tickets for both of the semi finals, your examples are breaking the games into two separate tickets, of course you can easily match that attendance.

Plus, the X didn't open the 2nd deck, which means that the games were sold out, or close to sold out, with only ~10,000 tickets available to the general public (the other tickets were the boxes which the owners had to buy, and the allotment for the players friends & families). I'm sure that if they had they would have been able to sell many more tickets to the championship game.

Home ice to the higher seed is great, but it isn't feasible to have EVERY school hold its arena open for two weekends every year for games that most likely won't be played.
 
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