Re: The New WCHA IV (2013-14): Unlocked and Cocked
:bump this:
aparch, your questions about Soo Greyhounds attendance and what kind of effect that it might have on LSSU games got me to thinking about that in greater terms: what hampers hockey attendance at our 10 schools?
For the UP, it's high school football until November. HS Football is very big up here, not quite Texas legendary, but it's the sport to play outside of Houghton, MQT, or the Soo.
For MQT and Houghton, they then have HS hockey that competes against them until March. As for the Soo, they (from what I've just learned in the LSSU thread) are pretty well saturated with hockey in the winter; I don't quite see Soo Canada being too big of a draw for the Michigan folks. The casual fan may go for a game or two, but it doesn't seem like a big following of Laker fans turned Greyhound live in Michigan.
Marquette has also been the home of an NAHL and a Tier III junior team the last few years. If they've "poached" any former Wildcat fans, it's only because those fans still think NMU should move back to Lakeview Ice Arena to capture the "Glory Days" of 1991. Oh, and because Lakeview sells beer where the Berry Events Center on NMU's campus is dry (except for the donors room when made available). If you want to watch pre-pubescent boys beat the sh*t out of each other and drink $2 beers, you weren't going to be coming to NCAA hockey games.
I use the word "compete" because my experience almost a decade ago is that the local schools don't really put up giant numbers that would take away from the NMU fan base, it's just that there is enough to tap out the disposable income of some casual fans. At NMU, it's $16 each for a ticket... while it may be a median (or slightly below median) in the WCHA, a "family of four" would need to spend $64 just on tickets to attend the game. Dropping a C-Note on tickets, parking, and food for one game isn't top priority for the fans. Not without some return. ((This is where I digress into another topic about cheap/easy promotions that the University could/should be running, many of which I've posted for the last decade on this forum, but this is my feelings on THAT topic...
Typing Frustration .gif ))
I've posted the season records versus average attendance, and there doesn't seem to be a correlation between the two. I think it has more to do with the cost of tickets going up at NMU and the lack of benefits to season ticket holders or promotions for fans to show up.
I'm slightly getting off track, but one more big issue I have with NMU is how the sponsorships are handled. If the hockey department works out a deal to get sponsorship from local businesses (or even regional businesses), the income is then shared with ALL sports at NMU, not just the hockey department. I really think that there needs to be changes where a large portion of the sponsorship goes to the sport that attracts the sponsor, unless that sponsor wants to split their donation across all sports.
TL : DR - High school sports skim off the top of the attendance, but bigger economic issues are at the heart of why attendance is down for the UP schools.
