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Regionals attendance
- Thread starter billmich88888
- Start date
beaverhockeyfan
Well-known member
Re: Regionals attendance
Once you make the NCAA Tournament, the NCAA either charters a bus for you (less than 400 miles?) or charters you a jet (more than 400 miles?) to get to the regional. Grand Forks has the airport to handle this.
The 400 mile part is what I have heard is the criteria as to which mode of transportation you get.
Once you make the NCAA Tournament, the NCAA either charters a bus for you (less than 400 miles?) or charters you a jet (more than 400 miles?) to get to the regional. Grand Forks has the airport to handle this.
The 400 mile part is what I have heard is the criteria as to which mode of transportation you get.
PrezdeJohnson09
Proud supporter of Osmirwich hockey
I believe it's actually 500 miles or Atleast that's the rule in Division III
WeAreNDHockey
\../ \../
Re: Regionals attendance
400 miles is the threshold. And they don't charter you a jet. If you are far enough away that travel will be by air the NCAA travel agency makes the arrangements and it may very well be commercial. Teams may also choose to get themselves there too, if they want to fly but the NCAA is only paying for ground transport.
400 miles is the threshold. And they don't charter you a jet. If you are far enough away that travel will be by air the NCAA travel agency makes the arrangements and it may very well be commercial. Teams may also choose to get themselves there too, if they want to fly but the NCAA is only paying for ground transport.
This is the reason attendance was low. The $47.50 price tag scared away everyone I know. The week before at the Garden I went with a group of 11 on Friday and a group of 12 for the Saturday game. For the game Saturday in Worcester only two of us went and Sunday in Worcester only three of us went. Everyone said they were definitely going to Worcester until they found out what the ticket prices were.
PrezdeJohnson09
Proud supporter of Osmirwich hockey
The Zlax45
Registered User
Re: Regionals attendance
I paid 37 for lower bowl seat from PC for one game....Paid 65 for the three games total at the Regionals in Bridgeport. So it was basically the same price point for me.
I paid 37 for lower bowl seat from PC for one game....Paid 65 for the three games total at the Regionals in Bridgeport. So it was basically the same price point for me.
P
Priceless
Guest
Re: Regionals attendance
Bridgeport
6529/ 8525
6655/ 8525
13184/ 17050 77.3%
Cincinnati
5390/14453
5721/14453
11111/ 28906 38.4%
Worcester
6522/14800
5474/14800
11996 /29600 40.5%
St Paul
9232/18568
8893/18568
18125/ 37136 48.8%
Totals
54416 /112692 48.3%
I hear the same four complaints on Twitter constantly:
1) Stop having regionals in huge arenas that don't warrant it. Look at Bridgeport. The only arena with a capacity under 14,000 and they were the only facility that even filled half the seats.
2) Drop the ticket prices. We've been harping on this for years. Look at Cincinnati. A college hockey wasteland. Every school that was there had to fly. They still drew over 5300 fans/day because they had a reasonably priced ticket ($40) and made the games attactive for locals and for fans of the teams who had to travel. How many people would have made the trek from Madison or Grand Forks if ticket prices were the usual rate?
3) Allow tiered pricing and substantial student discounts to promote student turnout and encourage locals. The average student can't nearly afford seats at the regionals. Why are seats in the front row the same price as nosebleeds? Drop the price of the upper deck seats, put the students up there and let them go crazy.
4) I don't drink alcohol, but this seems to be a biggie for fans: SELL BEER. The NCAA can't possibly be opposed to the beer companies, considering how much advertising they allow during basketball games. When I was watching the orangeball tournament on CBS, TBS, TNT I didn't just see beer ads, there were ads for a lot harder liquor than that. They have no moral leg to stand on with this demand. Open the taps and let the profits flow.
Of course, I expect the NCAA and event organizers to adopt exactly none of these policies.
Bridgeport
6529/ 8525
6655/ 8525
13184/ 17050 77.3%
Cincinnati
5390/14453
5721/14453
11111/ 28906 38.4%
Worcester
6522/14800
5474/14800
11996 /29600 40.5%
St Paul
9232/18568
8893/18568
18125/ 37136 48.8%
Totals
54416 /112692 48.3%
I hear the same four complaints on Twitter constantly:
1) Stop having regionals in huge arenas that don't warrant it. Look at Bridgeport. The only arena with a capacity under 14,000 and they were the only facility that even filled half the seats.
2) Drop the ticket prices. We've been harping on this for years. Look at Cincinnati. A college hockey wasteland. Every school that was there had to fly. They still drew over 5300 fans/day because they had a reasonably priced ticket ($40) and made the games attactive for locals and for fans of the teams who had to travel. How many people would have made the trek from Madison or Grand Forks if ticket prices were the usual rate?
3) Allow tiered pricing and substantial student discounts to promote student turnout and encourage locals. The average student can't nearly afford seats at the regionals. Why are seats in the front row the same price as nosebleeds? Drop the price of the upper deck seats, put the students up there and let them go crazy.
4) I don't drink alcohol, but this seems to be a biggie for fans: SELL BEER. The NCAA can't possibly be opposed to the beer companies, considering how much advertising they allow during basketball games. When I was watching the orangeball tournament on CBS, TBS, TNT I didn't just see beer ads, there were ads for a lot harder liquor than that. They have no moral leg to stand on with this demand. Open the taps and let the profits flow.
Of course, I expect the NCAA and event organizers to adopt exactly none of these policies.
$12.50 for students. There were different price points also. $47.50 is kinda high for the cheapest ticket.
TERRIERFANinLA
Registered User
Re: Regionals attendance
completely agree with your proposals and your expectation.
the NCAA logic is just amazing.
that all said, I wonder what happens to the NorthWestern Football players who have now been adjudicated "employees" and can therefore unionize. I suppose they will lose their scholarships because the NCAA does not allow scholarship athletes to hold jobs.
completely agree with your proposals and your expectation.
the NCAA logic is just amazing.
that all said, I wonder what happens to the NorthWestern Football players who have now been adjudicated "employees" and can therefore unionize. I suppose they will lose their scholarships because the NCAA does not allow scholarship athletes to hold jobs.
Re: Regionals attendance
Agree, but unfortunately appropriately sized rinks may be hard to find. Actually, I think Worcester did a reasonable job of disguising the empty seats. The black curtains are unsightly, but it made the building seem a lot more full than it actually was.
Emphasis added. Happy to be wrong on this one. I used to think that dropping the ticket prices wouldn't help much because the disinterested locals wouldn't come at any price and the die hards who bought tickets would pay the higher price. I hope Cincinnati was financially successful -- that the higher volume and the concessions made up for the lower price per ticket, and this is a model for future regionals.
FF has gotten away from single tier pricing, and no reason the Regionals can't also. Of course with smaller arenas (or effectively smaller ones, like Worcester) there are fewer "nosebleeds" so the pricing tiers can't be too different. Offering substantial discounts for the seats adjacent the (official) student section also makes a lot of sense. Pittsburgh showed that there are some risks sitting near the student sections, so if you might want to avoid these discounted seats if you're coming with your arthritic mother or your six-year old, but if you behave that way yourself or you don't mind it if people around you do, have a ball.
Don't know about this one. I certainly would like to have a beer or two especially since there's no readmission, but if you change the ticket pricing strategy to encourage more students to attend, selling beer may be asking for trouble. The FF is different, because the crowd isn't student dominated, and the NHL arenas typically have a security staff that's adequate to police the crowd.
Happy
Registered User
Re: Regionals attendance
Completely agree. Used to love going there when UVM was in ECAC.
Completely agree. Used to love going there when UVM was in ECAC.
Re: Regionals attendance
I'm of the opinion that regionals are always going to be a bit of a losing battle unless you happen to get a marquee matchup between locals, say just as an example BC-Harvard. My humble opinion on this is it makes sense to put these in neutral arenas, to the extent possible but they ought to be smaller facilities. Bridgeport is a good example, 8500 seats+-. I would try to keep facilities in the 6500-10000 seat range. You aren't probably going to have a sellout any night, in part because fans of the 1st game don't hang around for game 2 and vice-versa. I'd also play 8 teams at each of 2 sites. Play 4 games Thursday, 4 Friday then the Thursday winners play Saturday and the Friday winners play Sunday. Bringing 8 sets of fans will help with attendance to some degree. But the real problem is going to be the same...unless its close to home 9and this is a bigger problem in the west than the east) and reasonably priced people make a choice. go to the regionals or the Frozen Four. Unless you are A. a huge fan of college hockey who wants to see the FF regardless of who's there, or B. a fan of a team with little or no chance to get past the first/second round, you might well risk it and skip the regionals for the Frozen Four. It happens in every sport for what its worth. UConn-St joe's was a great, close exciting college basketball game in Buffalo. But by the 2nd half there were maybe 7000 fans. By the final 2 minutes, despite the game being still in doubt, there were maybe 5000 left in the building all of whom were either UConn or St Joe's fans. Zero of the first game fans stayed around. I don't know official attendance but except for the overlap, roughly the 2nd half of game 1 and first half of game 2, the arena was pretty empty.
I'm of the opinion that regionals are always going to be a bit of a losing battle unless you happen to get a marquee matchup between locals, say just as an example BC-Harvard. My humble opinion on this is it makes sense to put these in neutral arenas, to the extent possible but they ought to be smaller facilities. Bridgeport is a good example, 8500 seats+-. I would try to keep facilities in the 6500-10000 seat range. You aren't probably going to have a sellout any night, in part because fans of the 1st game don't hang around for game 2 and vice-versa. I'd also play 8 teams at each of 2 sites. Play 4 games Thursday, 4 Friday then the Thursday winners play Saturday and the Friday winners play Sunday. Bringing 8 sets of fans will help with attendance to some degree. But the real problem is going to be the same...unless its close to home 9and this is a bigger problem in the west than the east) and reasonably priced people make a choice. go to the regionals or the Frozen Four. Unless you are A. a huge fan of college hockey who wants to see the FF regardless of who's there, or B. a fan of a team with little or no chance to get past the first/second round, you might well risk it and skip the regionals for the Frozen Four. It happens in every sport for what its worth. UConn-St joe's was a great, close exciting college basketball game in Buffalo. But by the 2nd half there were maybe 7000 fans. By the final 2 minutes, despite the game being still in doubt, there were maybe 5000 left in the building all of whom were either UConn or St Joe's fans. Zero of the first game fans stayed around. I don't know official attendance but except for the overlap, roughly the 2nd half of game 1 and first half of game 2, the arena was pretty empty.
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P
Priceless
Guest
Re: Regionals attendance
I don't know that we'll ever know if it was financially successful, but a telling stat is that attendance increased 6% from the first to second day. I highly doubt the extra fans flew in from Grand Forks or Big Rapids for one game. Those were locals who bought a ticket to see a college game. That should be a wake up call to the NCAA and the other event organizers that lower prices DO work to increase attendance. Even a game matching two local teams doesn't guarantee attendance. Worcester had Lowell and Boston College and dropped a whopping 16% from Saturday to Sunday. To paraphrase Field of Dreams "if you lower the prices they will come."
I don't know that we'll ever know if it was financially successful, but a telling stat is that attendance increased 6% from the first to second day. I highly doubt the extra fans flew in from Grand Forks or Big Rapids for one game. Those were locals who bought a ticket to see a college game. That should be a wake up call to the NCAA and the other event organizers that lower prices DO work to increase attendance. Even a game matching two local teams doesn't guarantee attendance. Worcester had Lowell and Boston College and dropped a whopping 16% from Saturday to Sunday. To paraphrase Field of Dreams "if you lower the prices they will come."
Re: Regionals attendance
Arguing with myself here, but from a crowd behavior standpoint, the NCAA should really look at college athletic events at which beer is sold. I've been to the Hockey East playoffs, the Beanpot, and some college venues at which beer is sold, and I've never witnessed what seemed to be alcohol-related bad behavior.
Regarding Worcester, I’m certain that there were substantially more butts in the seats on Sunday that there were for either game Saturday. If that 5474 for Sunday is correct, I doubt that there were more than 4500 for either game Saturday. That means that roughly 2000 people paid for two games but only watched one. How many more “I only want to see my team” fans could you attract if the first day games were separate admission? Could you devise a pricing strategy so that you could increase the net money in (including gate receipts, concessions, parking etc.) by selling individual game tickets, with perhaps a package deal for the die-hards like me who want to watch both games? I used to think the venues and the NCAA used a “package deal only” strategy because it was good marketing. Now I wonder if it’s just laziness.
Of course a separate admission games format has scheduling ramifications, but for the regionals, games could be scheduled so that there is always a game being played (for TV) but at each regional there’s a gap between games so that the venue could be cleared.
Regarding Cincinnati, kudos to whoever it was – the venue or the NCAA who had the cojones to experiment with an aggressive pricing strategy. It’s clear that it was successful from a numbers standpoint. I just hope it was successful financially, because that could encourage more risk taking with strategies such as separate admission games.
Arguing with myself here, but from a crowd behavior standpoint, the NCAA should really look at college athletic events at which beer is sold. I've been to the Hockey East playoffs, the Beanpot, and some college venues at which beer is sold, and I've never witnessed what seemed to be alcohol-related bad behavior.
Interesting numbers.
Regarding Worcester, I’m certain that there were substantially more butts in the seats on Sunday that there were for either game Saturday. If that 5474 for Sunday is correct, I doubt that there were more than 4500 for either game Saturday. That means that roughly 2000 people paid for two games but only watched one. How many more “I only want to see my team” fans could you attract if the first day games were separate admission? Could you devise a pricing strategy so that you could increase the net money in (including gate receipts, concessions, parking etc.) by selling individual game tickets, with perhaps a package deal for the die-hards like me who want to watch both games? I used to think the venues and the NCAA used a “package deal only” strategy because it was good marketing. Now I wonder if it’s just laziness.
Of course a separate admission games format has scheduling ramifications, but for the regionals, games could be scheduled so that there is always a game being played (for TV) but at each regional there’s a gap between games so that the venue could be cleared.
Regarding Cincinnati, kudos to whoever it was – the venue or the NCAA who had the cojones to experiment with an aggressive pricing strategy. It’s clear that it was successful from a numbers standpoint. I just hope it was successful financially, because that could encourage more risk taking with strategies such as separate admission games.
WeAreNDHockey
\../ \../
Re: Regionals attendance
We might get a glimpse of whether lessons were learned or not from what Notre Dame does next year. They took a bit of a bath in 2010 in Fort Wayne when there were 8000 empty seats for an MU/UM regional final. They overpriced tickets assuming Notre Dame would make the tournament and Notre Dame ended up sucking that season. Next year they will host in South Bend and we're going to be hugely impacted by graduation and my early prediction is the team will struggle quite a bit next year. For the first time since 2006 I EXPECT a bad season and would be shocked if they made the NCAAs. Will they overprice the tournament again and host three games before mostly empty seats or will they see that a reasonable ticket price might mean you get a few thousand people in the building even without a home team?
We might get a glimpse of whether lessons were learned or not from what Notre Dame does next year. They took a bit of a bath in 2010 in Fort Wayne when there were 8000 empty seats for an MU/UM regional final. They overpriced tickets assuming Notre Dame would make the tournament and Notre Dame ended up sucking that season. Next year they will host in South Bend and we're going to be hugely impacted by graduation and my early prediction is the team will struggle quite a bit next year. For the first time since 2006 I EXPECT a bad season and would be shocked if they made the NCAAs. Will they overprice the tournament again and host three games before mostly empty seats or will they see that a reasonable ticket price might mean you get a few thousand people in the building even without a home team?
mnpokecheck
Drinking the Koolaid
Re: Regionals attendance
I don't know how much you can infer from Midwest numbers the last 2 years since different cities.
Ticket Revenues*
West Regional
2014 St Paul (9000 x $94 package = $846,000)
2013 Grand Rapids (2100 x $65 = $136,500)
2012 St Paul (10100 x $90 package = $909,000)
Midwest Regional
2014 Cincinnati (5500 @ $40 package = $220,000)
2013 Toldeo (2700 @ $75 package = $202,500)
East Regional
2014 Bridgeport (6500 @ $65 package = $422,500)
2013 Providence (5600 @ $77 package = $431,200)
Northeast Regional
2014 Worcester (6000 @ $85 package = $510,000)
2013 Manchester (8200 @ $77 package = $631,400)
*attendance is 2 sessions added together divided by 2 and round down to 100.
I don't know how much you can infer from Midwest numbers the last 2 years since different cities.
Ticket Revenues*
West Regional
2014 St Paul (9000 x $94 package = $846,000)
2013 Grand Rapids (2100 x $65 = $136,500)
2012 St Paul (10100 x $90 package = $909,000)
Midwest Regional
2014 Cincinnati (5500 @ $40 package = $220,000)
2013 Toldeo (2700 @ $75 package = $202,500)
East Regional
2014 Bridgeport (6500 @ $65 package = $422,500)
2013 Providence (5600 @ $77 package = $431,200)
Northeast Regional
2014 Worcester (6000 @ $85 package = $510,000)
2013 Manchester (8200 @ $77 package = $631,400)
*attendance is 2 sessions added together divided by 2 and round down to 100.
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