As we have seen in this discussion, the City of Chicago has spent $146 million, most of it taxpayer's money, to build the new 10,000 seat Wintrust Arena on Chicago's south side with the primary tenant being DePaul basketball. The City of Chicago, and Rahm Emanuel sold this project with the projection that it would result in a huge surge in attendance at DePaul basketball games, plus thousands more students were projected to attend games. They claimed it would result in a boost of their average attendance to 9,500 per game, despite the fact that their attendance last season, their final season at the All-State Arena in Rosemont, averaged only about 1,800 per game.
Well, yesterday, DePaul played their first game in the new Wintrust Arena, an exhibition game against NAIA Indiana University-Northwest. DePaul clobbered them 121-65. The announced attendance was 4,751, but DePaul counts tickets issued, and they are known to hand out thousands of free tickets to sponsors and big wigs in Chicago, plus they hold out a couple thousands student tickets and count those as tickets sold, even when the students don't come (see article below)!
The actual attendance at yesterday's game was a few hundred at the most, with almost no students showing up. Here is a screen-shot from their highlight video showing how few people were in the stands, and the sections pictured are the best seats, so as seen in the video, there are not a lot of people elsewhere in the arena. The arena also has an upper bowl, that was essentially empty.
Video-
http://www.depaulbluedemons.com/sports/m-baskbl/recaps/110517aaa.html
Screen-shot-
Again, here is an article from last spring from Crain's Chicago Business that has the numbers-
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/arti...l-attendance-sinking-as-depaul-heads-downtown
The Blue Demons would have to draw more than five times their current average attendance at newly-named Wintrust Arena on the McCormick Place campus to meet the lofty attendance projections laid out for the building by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the agency known as McPier that operates the convention center.
A 2013 feasibility study prepared by Mineola, N.Y.-based hospitality consulting firm HVS and commissioned by McPier estimated that the venue would need to draw an average of 9,500 fans at 16 DePaul men's basketball games to achieve its goal of breaking even on operating costs. The report suggested that DePaul games would account for more than 40 percent of the expected annual attendance of 370,000 across all events, including concerts, shows and conventions.
But that calculation appeared to be based on ticket sales numbers—known as paid attendance—not the actual number of people that go to games.
Paid attendance has totaled 75,316 so far this year, or an average of 5,380 people per game. That figure includes free tickets given to charities and at least a couple thousand seats the school buys to block out space for students, regardless of whether they actually go.
But the actual number of people who walked through the Allstate Arena turnstiles was a third of that total, arena ticket records show.
WHY BUTTS IN SEATS MATTER
If those low attendance figures continue when DePaul moves to its new home next season, it would diminish the arena's operating revenue from things like concessions and undermine the venue's primary purpose of spurring an entertainment district on the Near South Side. The smaller the crowds, the harder it will be for McPier to lure new businesses into McCormick Square, the name it gave to the area around the convention center campus last year.
DePaul officials expect attendance to improve at the new arena because it is much closer to its Lincoln Park and downtown campuses than Allstate Arena and is easily reachable via CTA trains.
But the climb ahead is steep for a program that used to pack the old Rosemont Horizon in the venue's early years with hometown stars like Mark Aguirre and Terry Cummings leading the way.
For McPier, a return to such Blue Demon basketball glory days can't come soon enough.
DePaul should draw a bit better with their next game, their official home opener against Notre Dame, but after that, there aren't many home games that appeal to fans. As we predicted here, this will turn out to be a disaster for the taxpayers of Chicago.
