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What will make attendance better?

Stevezall said:
I think an on campus arena brings the Heart and sole of its students together! If we are losing $ at Carver Arena, and students find it difficult to come, the on campus arena would serve the purpose of bringing everyone together in a cozy tight knit environment which gives the fans a great experience and the home team a greater home court advantage! Let's do more games on campus in the future!
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I am not against doing just that for occasional games, but if Bradley ditches downtown and moves all the games to Ren-Col
as Joanne & Mike Cross had intended to do, then we can say goodbye to good DI basketball in Peoria. Maybe even drop to DIII.
Bradley might struggle to stay DI for a while but recruiting would take a big hit and there's plenty of fans
that would not go to Ren-Col. And we'd get less consideration for network TV games.
Even when we do play on campus, the students still don't come, that's the truly sad part.
They even tried FREE FOOD once to get students there & nobody came

tornado said:
...giving the students free food & a bowl of bacon surprisingly didn't get more than a dozen students at those games.
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With the construction makeover of Main & University, plus the logjam getting in and out of the deck & ban
on side-street parking, most fans (like myself) have developed a definite distaste for going to games up there.
Dedicated fans will still go but the older mom & pops, the families with smaller kids and the folks that are unfamiliar
with the area might not go.
The one game we had there this year drew just 2500. A good opponent would draw more but it would still be just 3000-3500.
Are we prepared to drop to the level of what Valpo or Evansville draw?
 
I think there are multiple factors to the lack of attendance at the Civic Center, but it will likely necessitate Bradley playing in a DIII environment in a few years. I do not believe that just relocating to Ren-Col will attract more students to attend. However, it may be beneficial in that Bradley can receive money from parking and concessions. It was nice to see a near sellout at the ISU game last Saturday night.
On another note, I have cousins in Chicago and they never watch college sports on tv or attend their games (even when Ohio State or Michigan play at Northwestern). Its Bulls, Blackhawks, Bears, and Cubs. There are way more choices to spend your time and money in a big city.
 
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The current attendance for BU is the new norm for the program. The school is in competition for the public’s hard earned entertainment dollar. A winning team won’t do it alone. People need to feel entertained at games. In my opinion the deterioration of the MVC is a major cause. No matter how good BU was, there was a time when fans would go to a game and see teams like Louisville, Cincinnati, St.Louis, Memphis, Tulsa, Wichita and Creighton. The schools that have replaced those departed schools aren’t schools that generate season ticket or individual game ticket sales. If Illinois State and SIU leave the MVC for football reasons, and they probably will, attendance will only get worse. The only way BU home attendance will improve is if the quality of all other programs improves drastically on a consistent basis.
 
Bradley is the only MVC school with average attendance over 6,000 and the only one with occasional
crowds of 10K, near-sellouts & sellouts. Maintaining attendance will always be a concern, but it is a much greater concern
for ten other MVC schools - especially schools with 22,000+ enrollment that play in a modern on-campus arena built exclusively for basketball that still draws just 3000 for some games and has large blocks of empty seats as well.
 
yoda said:
Bradley is the only MVC school with average attendance over 6,000 and the only one with occasional
crowds of 10K, near-sellouts & sellouts. Maintaining attendance will always be a concern, but it is a much greater concern
for ten other MVC schools - especially schools with 22,000+ enrollment that play right smack in the middle of campus
in a modern on=campus arena built exclusively for basketball that still draws just 3000 for some games and has large blocks
of empty seats as well.
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Agree
 
The schools in the Valley that have half the attendance of Bradley, aren’t quality enough to compete for the entertainment dollar. Otherwise, more people would be going to their games. Many high school games in the Peoria area and most in the Chicago suburbs draw more fans than many Valley games. The Valley and Bradley are in a very tough spot. If Bradley would look to leave the Valley and go to a better conference, their options are limited because they don’t play football. If Illinois State or SIU were to leave the Valley, it would be next to impossible to add teams that would be equal to or better than those schools.
 
This is really a serious question? BU attendance is super year after year pretty much since the Geno scorch trials.
I am always amazed when I visit Carver 1x a year and see all the BU faithful.

The only downer I see is lack of interest from the student body. That's gotta get better!
 
Bradley is on pace to have the highest season average in 14 years, right?

a big crowd today will get home average to around 6,000
 
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Stay at Carver. Grow the fanbase and future fanbase (young kids). Work on growing student interest (that will take several years). Other MVC programs are envious of our game environment and fan support. Build on that. I really don’t see any point in having any games at RenCo unless it’s an exhibition game.
 
Bradley's Final Conference attendance was 6,248 - best in more than a decade...

ISU's attendance was 4922, 4617 overall- they were right there equal to us a few years back
 
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If we have a team that plays at a fast pace with some exciting players to watch attendance might rise a little. One thing that brings the ave. down is weak non conf. games.
 
I like the idea of more games on campus, but BU can't leave the Civic Center... RenCo isn't big enough. I'd like to see a couple of the mid-week early season games there... When crowds are not big at Carver, you might be able to fill RenCo up
 
21counter said:
I like the idea of more games on campus, but BU can't leave the Civic Center... RenCo isn't big enough. I'd like to see a couple of the mid-week early season games there... When crowds are not big at Carver, you might be able to fill RenCo up
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The season ticket holders that are big donors are against us having games at the RC. I think as long as we are getting an ave. of 6,000 fans it is a bad idea. They only did a game this season for the students and once again they did not show up in numbers.
 
I think more local players that have success at BU would raise the attendance a bit.

I'm not complaining about the lack of such players, or that there are such players even to go after, I just think that more of them would help.

IF Richardson and Zobrist take off and start having a bigger impact on games, attendance may jump.

Might get more casual fans of the player rather than fans of the team, those guys may become fans of the team tho.
 
There are a dozen or more people from Metamora who have season tickets this year because of Matthew Zobrist. They are all friends and relatives of the Zobrist family, including his parents, Aaron and Amy.
 
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