Women's D1 Attendance

[Skate79]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

Skate79, thanks for your post. Yes, in looking at individual game attendance for all the Hockey East teams I usually came across one or two games a season which had much large crowds than normal for most of the teams. I assume that those were heavily promoted games, but then attendance drops back down. The question is how much do the promotions affect long term attendance, if at all?

The good news is that attendance at Hockey East schools is up since the league started (and BU and Vermont joined) at 6 of the 8. Only New Hampshire (-50%) and Connecticut (-25%) have seen declines, while BC (+312%) , NU (+138%) and UVM (+164%) have seen huge increases, with the other 3 having modest increases. So despite the more recent attendance issues since 2012-13, the long-term trend has been positive. Hopefully the recent setbacks were temporary and attendance will once again increase over the coming seasons.

I'm considering researching ECAC and WCHA home attendance as I have done for Hockey East, but I'm not sure its worth my time as there seems to be limited interest in the subject.

Sean

No problem Sean. Thanks for doing this. It would be interesting to see if there are spikes in attendance after an Olympic year. We saw a big jump in attendance after the '98 Olympics in part because AJ Mlezcko got a lot of attention during those Olympics and people wanted to see her play when she returned to school. Since then, attendance has fluctuated with boosts for certain games (Cornell, Dartmouth, BC or BU) and declines for others (Union, Brown, RPI).

 

[pokechecker]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

And on a side note do you have any idea how you sound when you write stuff like "A couple of women may have inherited their daddy's money "?

got any idea what you sound like when you rant about players mothers?
or players who transfer?
or players on opposing teams you don't like?

 

[pokechecker]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

Here is the comparison I keep an eye on, a competitively hugely successful Minnesota DIII team separated by about 15 miles and/or about 20 minutes of easy four lane highway driving from a DI team not doing very well by any competitive measure:

14th in DIII: Gustavus Adolphus, 10 home dates, total attendance 2,006, average attendance 201.

32nd in DI: Minnesota State, Mankato, 18 home dates, total attendance 3,185, average attendance 177.

that's what you'd expect the number of friends and family of players to be. Perhaps the DIII school draws a little more because a higher percentage of the players families live close. You are not gonna get a lot of people flying in from British Columbia and Ontario.

 

[ritBLKnORGsuit]

I took a look to see how the other 4 WCHA teams did this season and they came in 12th (489 avg), 15th (422 avg), 28th (232 avg) and 32nd (177 avg) in average attendance this season. So well the top WCHA teams have done well, the bottom teams are still having trouble drawing fans. If you want to discuss growing the sport you really need to discuss how to increase attendance across the board, not just at the top. In this regard both Merrimack, which had a solid first season attendance wise, and RIT, which has been in the top 7 in attendance since joining DI, are programs that should be looked at to see what they are doing.

................ RIT
2015-16..... 698 ..... 7th
2014-15..... 873 ..... 5th
2013-14..... 699 ..... 7th
2012-13..... 650 ..... 7th

Sean

For RIT they use a lot of promotions. We have our Tiger Den events which give free swag to students who attend a specific game. This done for all our athletic teams. They also do a lot of special jerseys this year was Do For Darin (DFD) but the year before they did military jerseys and testicular cancer ones (one of the student managers was a survivior of it). They also make sure to host a home series the weekend of the Fire & Ice tournament which is a huge youth women's hockey tournament hosted in Rochester where they give discounted tickets to teams that participate in the tournament. It's stuff to consider for the other schools.

 

[FireKnight]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

For RIT they use a lot of promotions. We have our Tiger Den events which give free swag to students who attend a specific game. This done for all our athletic teams. They also do a lot of special jerseys this year was Do For Darin (DFD) but the year before they did military jerseys and testicular cancer ones (one of the student managers was a survivior of it). They also make sure to host a home series the weekend of the Fire & Ice tournament which is a huge youth women's hockey tournament hosted in Rochester where they give discounted tickets to teams that participate in the tournament. It's stuff to consider for the other schools.

It's really nice that RIT does this but those aren't exactly revenue generating attendance figures then. Students, I would guess, get in for free and you're spending money on swag, so it would be a net loss. I guess you could get the swag through student activities and even transfer the cost of the "free" student admission from student activities to athletics to bring more money into the program, but you're really just playing a shell game.

I think a lot of the problem with women's hockey in the east is indeed marketing and sometimes scheduling. If I were up in Potsdam marketing the women's team, I'd be out marketing it in scout troops, youth hockey groups, schools, and family groups. The problem with scheduling though is that half of Clarkson's women's home games are on weekends the men's team is also around, so they get pushed to the early start. It's kind of hard to do a Clarkson Women's Hockey "Scout Day" when the kids get out of school at 3pm and have to get together with their leaders (if they can get off of work) and make the trip to Cheel and be there by 4pm.

Army's men's program has been relatively successful marketing their hockey program as a community team, despite few ties with the community and a difficult trip in bad weather. They typically have the arena 2/3 full and have had several sellouts. However, marketing and scheduling are still issues. The Friday night games are, without fail, lower attended than Saturday (except Air Farce), probably a result of families having to rush after school to get to a Friday game. Also, when games don't get marketing promotion like the AHA first round playoffs, attendance drops significantly. They averaged 1943 per game in the regular season (2500 is a sellout) but only 446 per game for the 3 game playoff series.

 

[Eeyore]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

It's really nice that RIT does this but those aren't exactly revenue generating attendance figures then.

Gopher sports marketing has been pretty up front that, at this point, revenue generation is not a major g factor in their decision making for women's hockey. It's all about generating attendance with, I assume, potential revenue generation a long term prospect. Youth hockey associations can sign up and then their kids (at least those under 15) can get in free, so there is a veritable hoard of girls in their jerseys at most games, sometimes to the detriment of my sight lines. They have been steadily increasing the number of games at which there is some sort of promo for students, and we actually started having something that resembles a student section this season. A couple of years ago, the price of season tickets was cut in half, to $5 a game.

I really think that generating interest among youth programs is something more schools need to start pushing. I have a friend who is the coach of the girls' JV team at a Boston area prep school, and he says that most of his players are almost unaware of NCAA women's hockey. I find that a little hard to believe, but, if true, it's an indictment of the marketing programs in the area.

Minnesota probably benefits from Big 10 revenues, allowing it to lose even more money through this marketing, but if you want to increase attendance, this is what it's going to take.

 

[pokechecker]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

The Friday night games are, without fail, lower attended than Saturday

this is true in MN as well

the NCAA 1/4 final game gives some insight, the crowd was different than normal, girls hockey was over, there were a lot more HS aged girls there, when girls hockey is in season, almost NO HS girls attend except occasionally a group from a team

despite the fact that university students get in free, almost no students, except the band, attend

IMO, it is a two pronged problem, image (lesser sport), and the market is saturated, there just aren't enough hockey fans to go around

what the uninformed have to understand, it is a superior sport, speed and skill rule, unlike in men's hockey where some goon can neutralize far more skilled players

 

[ritBLKnORGsuit]

It's really nice that RIT does this but those aren't exactly revenue generating attendance figures then. Students, I would guess, get in for free and you're spending money on swag, so it would be a net loss. I guess you could get the swag through student activities and even transfer the cost of the "free" student admission from student activities to athletics to bring more money into the program, but you're really just playing a shell game.

I think a lot of the problem with women's hockey in the east is indeed marketing and sometimes scheduling. If I were up in Potsdam marketing the women's team, I'd be out marketing it in scout troops, youth hockey groups, schools, and family groups. The problem with scheduling though is that half of Clarkson's women's home games are on weekends the men's team is also around, so they get pushed to the early start. It's kind of hard to do a Clarkson Women's Hockey "Scout Day" when the kids get out of school at 3pm and have to get together with their leaders (if they can get off of work) and make the trip to Cheel and be there by 4pm.

Army's men's program has been relatively successful marketing their hockey program as a community team, despite few ties with the community and a difficult trip in bad weather. They typically have the arena 2/3 full and have had several sellouts. However, marketing and scheduling are still issues. The Friday night games are, without fail, lower attended than Saturday (except Air Farce), probably a result of families having to rush after school to get to a Friday game. Also, when games don't get marketing promotion like the AHA first round playoffs, attendance drops significantly. They averaged 1943 per game in the regular season (2500 is a sellout) but only 446 per game for the 3 game playoff series.

You are right they are not generating money but then again most women's programs are not generating money. I was just showing examples of multiple strategies implemented by RIT to get one of the highest attendance figures out of schools on the east coast. A lot of focus of marketing needs be towards students since they can easily make the earlier start times for women's games as well as youth since they are either the next players or students/fans that will continue to support women's college hockey. You need to grow a sports fan base in order for any teams to generate money.

 

[Sean Pickett]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

For RIT they use a lot of promotions. We have our Tiger Den events which give free swag to students who attend a specific game. This done for all our athletic teams. They also do a lot of special jerseys this year was Do For Darin (DFD) but the year before they did military jerseys and testicular cancer ones (one of the student managers was a survivior of it). They also make sure to host a home series the weekend of the Fire & Ice tournament which is a huge youth women's hockey tournament hosted in Rochester where they give discounted tickets to teams that participate in the tournament. It's stuff to consider for the other schools.

I looked at the game-by-game attendance of RIT and it had one game with attendance of 1,895, but I also noticed that their lowest attendance was still over 400. That got be think that using the median and not the average might be a better way to compare attendance between teams and from season-to-season. Using RITs attendance from this past season the average attendance was 698, while the median was 575, lower, but still what I consider very good. I then updated my Hockey East women's attendance to include the median attendance and I added a sheet with all the median attendances and another sheet showing what percentage lower (or higher) the median is compared to the average. A first look shows that the median attendance for every team this past season was lower than the average, indicating the averages are being skewed by a few games with large turnouts (BU, UConn and Maine were heavily affected by this). This has not always been the case, but is more common than not for Hockey East teams.

No problem Sean. Thanks for doing this. It would be interesting to see if there are spikes in attendance after an Olympic year. We saw a big jump in attendance after the '98 Olympics in part because AJ Mlezcko got a lot of attention during those Olympics and people wanted to see her play when she returned to school. Since then, attendance has fluctuated with boosts for certain games (Cornell, Dartmouth, BC or BU) and declines for others (Union, Brown, RPI).

Hockey East started their women's league the year after the 2002 Olympics and I currently don't have attendance figures for the 2001-02 season. After the 2006 Olympics BC, New Hampshire and Vermont saw nice attendance bumps in average and median attendance for the 2006-07 season. However, BC was unable to hold onto most of that increased attendance as their median and average fell back close to 2005-06 figures in 2007-08. New Hampshire was able to maintain their average attendance, but their median fell back close to 2005-06 figures in 2007-08. Vermont not only held onto their attendance, they increased both their average and median again for the 2007-08 season and they did it again for the 2008-08 season.

After the 2010 Olympics BU saw a nice bump in average, but not median, attendance in 2010-11. However, BU was able to hold onto the average attendance and saw a big increase in the median attendance for the 2011-12 season. BU held onto the average attendance again for the 2012-13 season, but lost about half of the median attendance gain from the previous season. However, no other Hockey East teams saw bumps and UConn took a major drop in both average and median attendance for the 2010-11 season.

After the 2014 Olympics BC, PC, and to a lesser extent Maine, saw solid increases in average and median attendance for the 2014-15 season. BC held onto and slightly increased their average and median attendances for the 2015-16 season, but both Maine and PC lost the gains that they made. So the Olympics can help, but mostly if a teams has returning (or incoming) Olympians. The bumps also only appears to last one or at most two seasons.

Also, it appears that Vermont was able to use the 2012 World Championships to help grow support for their program as they reached peak average and median attendance for the 2013-14 season, but both have fallen off the past two seasons. Still, it seems that hosting the Worlds may well have long lasting benefits for Vermont's program.

Finally, I believe one of the reasons Merrimack had such good attendance is because they are the home of the Islanders youth program and it's boys and girls teams.

Sean

 

[Sean Pickett]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

Since I like statistics I have created a WCHA women's attendance spreadsheet to go along with my Hockey East women's attendance. I have season attendance sheets back to the 1999-00 season, which was the WCHA's first. I have included WCHA and NCAA tournament games, I excluded the occasional 'home' games not played in the home city of the school. I debated whether or not to include special event games, such as the Minnesota outdoor game at TCF Bank Stadium and Wisconsin's Fill the Bowl games, but as they were on campus in the end I included them. They raise the average, but the median corrects for those games. I also believe that they are important in growing the fan base. However, I did include Wisconsin's WCHA playoff games at the Eagle's Nest from 2009 through 2012, even though in 3 of those years they were sold out and likely would have had higher attendance at the Kohl Center.

If you look to the right of the annual average attendance sheet you will see that 6 of the 8 teams have had a growth in average attendance since 1999-00, or 2002-03 for UND, one was flat and one, Ohio State appears to have a decline. However a look at the annual median attendance sheet shows a different picture, with OSU's median attendance figure up over 80% since 1999-00. If you look at the 1999-2016 sheet, which has the individual game attendance for every game from 1999 through 2016 and sort it for OSU's attendance from Z to A you will immediately see that their top 4 all-time attendance were games during their first season in 1999-00 and those four games skewed their average for that season.

Due to the number of sellouts this season at LeBahn Arena Wisconsin's median is also their maximum capacity, a statistical anomaly. However, in looking at both seasonal averages and medians, it appears that Wisconsin may have built LeBahn Arena with a capacity that is too small for their growing fan base.

I have more to say, but I have no time right now.

Sean

 

[Eeyore]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

However, in looking at both seasonal averages and medians, it appears that Wisconsin may have built LeBahn Arena with a capacity that is too small for their growing fan base.

This is definitely true.

 

[Badger Booster]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

Due to the number of sellouts this season at LeBahn Arena Wisconsin's median is also their maximum capacity, a statistical anomaly. However, in looking at both seasonal averages and medians, it appears that Wisconsin may have built LeBahn Arena with a capacity that is too small for their growing fan base.

There is zero doubt it was built too small and the UW knew it. Original plans were for an arena with a capacity of 4,000+, which would have been able to handle the attendance growth and been able to host WCHA Frozen Face-offs and NCAA Frozen Fours. However, the timing/effectiveness of the fund-raising, in addition to the men's program's perceived desparate need for a practice facility seemed to dicate the decision to scale it down.

 

[Gopho Sapiens]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

Again with the nonsense arguments. We are not talking hoops or football, leave them out of it. Those two actually generate money for the NCAA. Yes, at a half dozen schools Mens hockey brings in more than it costs but mens hockey is not a big draw at the national level & makes nothing like the sort of money awarded for post season appearances. Does it make more than womens hockey? For sure but your claim is that the NCAA is just returning money the sport earns. You have yet to defend that and instead have tossed in reed herrings like football & basketball and tried to conflate your political myopia with the disparity the NCAA has created.

You might be surprised by the income of the NCAA.

I don't know about the financial commitments or kickbacks of the current "Playoff Championship", but historically the organization made little or no money off of the football bowl picture. READ THAT LINE AGAIN.

On top of that, MOST of the funds generated by the MBB tournament (at least at one time, anyway) were required to be returned to the participating schools. You can see where the $1.3MM/game payout makes sense when it is part of an ELEVEN BILLION dollar TV contract and it has to be doled out to the schools.
They really did not net that much from the "Big Dance".
There was a point in time, not that many decades ago, that the NIT tournament was MUCH more prestigious than the NCAA tourney.
The HUGE money has only come about in the last twenty years right along side....cable TV.

In fact, If I recall correctly, the single biggest income producer for the NCAA was in fact the men's hockey tournament at one time. The owned and operated it lock, stock and barrel.

I realize that has nothing to do with the women' frozen four other than under the new TV contract many "non-revenue" sports are starting to be recognized.
If it's worth anything, the mens BB national championship was not even broadcast live less than fifty years ago. That may sound like forever ago, but trust me, it wasn't.

http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/finances/revenue

Hopefully, the day will come when we don't have to watch the the women's NC game on the InterWebs.

 

[D2D]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

Hopefully, the day will come when we don't have to watch the the women's NC game on the InterWebs.

Sadly, that day has come and gone.

 

[Sean Pickett]

Re: Women's D1 Attendance

WCHA Postseason Attendance: I’ve added a regular season vs postseason (RS v PS) sheet to the WCHA women's attendance. It compares the WCHA quarterfinals, WCHA Final Face-off, NCAA quarterfinals and NCAA Frozen Four average attendance to a team’s regular season median for each season. I’ve also added a Postseason sheet that shows average league regular season attendance, average quarterfinal attendance and average Final Face-Off attendance.

In looking at the Final Face-Off average attendance it is quickly apparent that attendance has suffered the few times it has been moved from Minneapolis, with the exception of 2008 when it was held in Duluth. So the question is should the WCHA continue to move it between schools, or just have it in Minneapolis all the time? Attendance in Minneapolis between 2004 and 2007 was stagnant, with a downward drift until it missed a year. When it returned it received a nice bump that was about 30% higher than Minnesota’s median attendance for the regular season. However, the following two years attendance dropped back down below even 2007. After another year in Duluth it returned in 2013 and received another nice bump, this time about 17% higher than Minnesota’s regular season median. It then went to Bemidji and Grand Forks, both which had lower attendance, before returning to Minneapolis this past season. This time received no bump, but was just above Minnesota’s regular season median. I would suggest holding it in Madison as I think it would do quite well there. While LeBahn Arena may be below the capacity that the WCHA wants, only once, the 2013 championship game (2286), has attendance for a session surpassed the capacity of LeBahn Arena.

However, like almost all other leagues (both men’s and women’s), quarterfinal attendance has been terrible. In the 44 quarterfinal rounds only two (St. Cloud in 2009 and 2010) saw the average for the series that was higher than the regular season median for the host school. Three others were flat and the remaining 39 quarterfinals rounds saw attendance down from the regular season medians, 34 over 20% less and 10 over 50% less. Four were Wisconsin series played at the Eagle’s Nest, but it is likely that they would have still been lower than the regular season medians, just not as bad. So why is it such a problem for fans to attend the quarterfinal series games? When it comes to NCAA quarterfinal games attendance is not an issue, only 3 time out of 20 games was attendance below the host school's regular season median, twice it was flat and the other 15 times it was above the regular season median.

Impact of Olympics on Attendance: The WCHA is a few seasons older than Hockey East, so we can look at the effect of the 2002 Olympics. What we see is mostly positive with increases in average and medians at 5 of the season schools and it looks like UND’s inaugural season may have been helped as well. The two teams not helped were Bemidji and Ohio State, while Minnesota State saw a nice rise in their median. Minnesota-Duluth had a huge rise in average because of hosting the Frozen Four, but only a modest rise in median. St. Cloud saw a big rise in median (over 62%), while Minnesota and Wisconsin saw tremendous rises in median, both up over 150%. In the following Olympic year, the 2005-06 season, all 7 schools (UND excluded) had medians above what they had in 2001-02. However, the 2006 Olympics produced no bumps, as 6 of the 8 schools saw a drop in their medians in 2006-07, with St. Cloud and Bemidji the exceptions. The next Olympic year, the 2009-10 season, Bemidji’s median had dropped over 50%, North Dakota and Wisconsin continued to have solid growth, with Ohio State also having growth and the other 4 flat or relatively small drops. The 2010 Olympics were another mixed bag,, with four teams getting solid bumps , while the other four had small to moderate drops in median. Going into the last Olympic year, the 2013-14 season, five schools had median growth, while 3 had a decline. The following season, 2014-15, saw a rise in median for 4 schools and flat or a decline for 4 schools. So, it appears that the Olympics do help, but not across the board.

Overall: Seven of the eight schools have had solid increases in their median attendance since the 1999-00 season (2002-03 for UND) with Minnesota State, remaining flat, the lone exception. However 6 of the schools' medians for this past season were below their peak medians, which is a concern, with the other 2 reaching new highs this season. Five had season to season increases from 2014-15 to last season, while 5 (not all the same) had increases since the 2012-13 season. Another sign that 6 of the schools are doing well is that 5 of them had at least one game in 2015-16 that made it into their top ten in attendance: Bemidji (2), 6th & 8th; Minnesota (1), 8th; Minnesota-Duluth (2), 7th & 8th; North Dakota (1), 3rd; Ohio State (4), 6th, 8th, 9th & 10th. Wisconsin had none due to the capacity of LeBahn Arena, but it did have 12 of 21 games listed at capacity. The only two not to have a top ten game attendance wise are Minnesota State (48th) and St. Cloud (49th), both which were well off their peak attendance last season.

Sean