What will make attendance better?

[yoda]

Rugaards, too.......

 

[Dubl R 1]

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.

see that's what I mean.....and that's just from him going to BU. If he starts playing well, and impacts the game more, people talk then that dozen becomes 20, then the 20 become 50. Snowball effect. Just interest in familiar players from the area would grow the attendance faster than just team success in my opinion...but they have to do well to see a big number impact.

 

[houstonbrave]

It’s a touchy situation. A local player that fits the system and does well will obviously help interest locally. But recruiting kids just because they are local doesn’t work if they are not the right players. I think Brian has done well with Richardson and Zobrist. We just have to see how they develop. I hope and expect well. But non-local good players also build interest like Bully and Alex-would it be even larger if they were local sure but the locals must be good and I am hopeful we hit the right spot this year.

 

[Mikovio]

Winning sells more tickets than assembling a roster of locals ever could. If our locals are good enough, awesome, but a last place team with locals will have bad attendance.

 

[JMM28]

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.

There are a ton of layers to the Carver Arena relationship and how it helps or hurts Bradley.

Really, the only "help" is that it is a big arena for this conference and has a big time feel when attendance is high.

The hurts: Most fans just blame Bradley for the myriad of issues experienced at the Civic Center.
-Fans pay insanely high prices for concessions - Bradley gets $0.00 of that money.
-Fans pay doubled prices for parking - Bradley gets $0.00 of that money and actually pays various entities for parking passes for the different Braves Club pass lots.
-Can't take a leak without slipping on someone else's piss because the Civic Center is not even close to being adequately staffed on housekeeping during events. The number of times my kids have used a bathroom stall with no toilet paper this year is onto its second hand.
-BU pays A LOT of money to rent the space. That money could easily go towards program improvements or campus infrastructure upgrades.
-BU pays A LOT of money/profit for the various hospitality areas - BSS room, Braves Club area, pregame parties, etc. Again more money that could be kept internally at BU for real improvements and investments into the program.
-BU gets $0 from the new ribbon boards installed as they are all advertisers with the Civic Center. This further denigrates the fan experience because every timeout has to be sold to various promotions to scrape the most possible revenue back to Bradley.

Unfortunately the previous administrations had very little vision when it came to RenCo so a major upgrade would have to be made to make it a viable space for Bradley men's basketball. But when you're spending well into the six figures annually to play in a building where you have very little say, control, and very little consideration given to you in general - maybe it starts to become worth it to blow the roof off RenCo. But with President Shadid...maybe things look a bit different.

 

[yoda]

There are a ton of layers to the Carver Arena relationship and how it helps or hurts Bradley.

Really, the only "help" is that it is a big arena for this conference and has a big time feel when attendance is high.

The hurts: Most fans just blame Bradley for the myriad of issues experienced at the Civic Center.
-Fans pay insanely high prices for concessions - Bradley gets $0.00 of that money.
-Fans pay doubled prices for parking - Bradley gets $0.00 of that money and actually pays various entities for parking passes for the different Braves Club pass lots.
-Can't take a leak without slipping on someone else's piss because the Civic Center is not even close to being adequately staffed on housekeeping during events. The number of times my kids have used a bathroom stall with no toilet paper this year is onto its second hand.
-BU pays A LOT of money to rent the space. That money could easily go towards program improvements or campus infrastructure upgrades.
-BU pays A LOT of money/profit for the various hospitality areas - BSS room, Braves Club area, pregame parties, etc. Again more money that could be kept internally at BU for real improvements and investments into the program.
-BU gets $0 from the new ribbon boards installed as they are all advertisers with the Civic Center. This further denigrates the fan experience because every timeout has to be sold to various promotions to scrape the most possible revenue back to Bradley.

Unfortunately the previous administrations had very little vision when it came to RenCo so a major upgrade would have to be made to make it a viable space for Bradley men's basketball. But when you're spending well into the six figures annually to play in a building where you have very little say, control, and very little consideration given to you in general - maybe it starts to become worth it to blow the roof off RenCo. But with President Shadid...maybe things look a bit different.

you are prob aware that a feasability study was done on expanding Ren-Col and increasing seating capacity to possibly 6,000 or more.
The study was squashed and nobody's seen nor mentioned it in more than a decade. But it was do-able... with large stands all around the big, wide concourse - placed right up to the last row of current seats (leaving ample concourse walkway behind)- and maybe even additions boxes akin to what the Braves Club room is.
Mike Cross even vaguely referenced all this when he did a chat here on Bradleyfans

And a December 4, 2014 column in the PJ Star said:
"Bradley University athletic officials commissioned a feasibility study around 2014 to examine expanding the 4,200-seat Renaissance Coliseum. The study, conducted by engineering students, explored adding approximately 2,000 upper-deck seats (1,000 per side) without disturbing the roof or existing walls, with estimated costs under $1 million"
(btw- the additional revenuse from just 20-25 games would cover the $1 mil cost)

Two other sources also reference this - LINK -- LINK -- LINK

The greater issues might be getting zoning approval, adding parking, and fighting city hall about traffic congestion & infrastructure
as in how many people can flush the toilets up there all at once in that area of the city without exploding the sewer systems.