Re: Women's Hockey Attedance
I think the attendance proeblem has a wide variety of factors that combine to make people less likely to attend a Womens Hockey game.
1. If you schedule an afternoon womens game for Saturday or Sunday, then you are competiting with the NFL and college football for viewers. Even if Minnesota, people would rather sit at home and watch the NFL than go see an afternnon game.
2. Saturday and Sunday afternoons are primarily when familes are either out having fun or doing chores around the house. People may have more important things to do, leading to limited or no attendance at a womens game. Students might also be working or studying, leaving no time to attend a game, even if it is free.
3. People (especially in a recession) have limited resources, they don't have unlimited ammounts of cash to throw around, so they have to spend wisely. Even during a non recession year, people still have fixed budgets.
When you have only limited cash in the bank, you have to pick which game tickets you will buy. People are being given the choice between a variety of sports, forcing them to prioritize.
4. Lets face the reality, and the reality is that people prefer football, basketball and other sports to womens hockey and they likewise prefer mens hockey to womens hockey. They may like womens hockey, but when asked which game they would rather watch, they likely picked mens hockey.
If both mens and womens hockey tickets cost the same price, but you only have the funding to buy one ticket, which would you pick? Would you rather spend your hard earned money watching mens or womens hockey?
The only way for womens hockey to get good attendance to change people's preferences. If they have limited time and money, they will prioritize, and currently that ends with them selecting mens hockey over womens.
5. Talent and recruiting
Hard to grow womens hockey when all the Division 1 Champions have come from the same conference. Bulldogs, Badgers and Gophers account for all the Division titles in womens hockey. UMD has been to the title game like 5 times and the Frozen four almost every year. When its the same teams every year, no one really gets that excited unless they happen to be a fan of those three teams.
More teams and more talent distribution would help enable the other conferences to add more competition to the mix.
Talent wise, UMD is loaded. UMD is by no means a big budget school, they run the athletics department on a shoe string budget, but for the womens team they go all out. They go all out largely because MN state law requires them to spend equal $$$ ammounts on mens and women athletics, so recruiting players from all over the place helps them come up with spending excuses to satisfy state law. UMD womens hockey recruits players from all over the United States, Canada and Europe. They have had several European players on the roster.
Current UMD roster:
8 Canadians
2 Finns
1 German
7 Minnesotans
2 from other states
How many other small town schools could say they recruited 3 Europeans and 8 Canadians? The UMD mens team in comparrison has a rather limited recruiting range and it shows in the talent they bring in.
5. Like other posters have said, make the womens game more similar to the mens game to increase fan interest and make them more likely to spend their money on womens hockey. Scheduling the games at a different time might help as well, like have the womens team play at night, whenever possible, to maximize attendance.
6. Further, Given that fans (as I stated before) have limited incomes, any additional money they spend on womens hockey means they will be spending less on mens hockey or other sports, so you could end up causing funding shortages for other teams while attempting to help out the womens teams.
Any economic model therefore, must focus on growing the sport by adding new fans, instead of shifting existing fans or funding around.
7. NCAA Division 1 Womens Hockey has been around a decade, you can't expect radically growth in the sport after only a brief period of time. It takes time to grow the fan/ viewer base. You have to start with the younger fans and grow them into the sport. You get the parents interested, and hope they hook their kids on the sport.
This is what the NBA did, they got the WW2 generation interested in the sport, and then they passed on the interest to the baby boomers, and so on.
8. Lastly, tweak Title IX.
Title IX has some flaws that need to be fixed. While the law was put in for good reasons, it has come to a point where it needs to be tweaked to stay relevant. UMD is a perfect example of this.
A. Equal funding should be sport based, rather then department based, to make it a little easier on athletic departments. That way they are spending money to improve their programs, not to satisfy a legal requirement. Or if you do make it department based, then set it at 45% instead of 50%/
In Minnesota for instance, schools have to spend equal funding on womens teams by law. For every dollar they spend the on the mens team, they have to spend a dollar on the womens teams, forcing them in some cases to find excuses to spend oney.
Case in point is footbal. If the football team needs $100, then you have to come up with $200. $100 for the football team and then an additional $100 for womens athletics. This imposes a financial hardship upon the smaller schools (and economic inefficiency) who don't have endless funding.
B. I would also adjust the ratio of female to male athletes to be sport based as well, to accomodate the fact womens athletics doesn't have a football team. Football takes up 100 roster spots, and schools have to offset that by adding multiple teams for womens athletics to reach 100 female roster spots.
. The Winter Classic game is a great idea and good see the NCAA womens teams participating.