The level of nuance you bring to your posts is very impressive. You played at a high level. That’s my observation. I really admire the specificity.
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Steele said postgame that he had the flu.
Btw, another nice crowd today. Box said 6700+, and while it might not have been quite that, it looked at least as big as the BSU game.
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Can we deduce that Miami fans are not as disinterested as we originally thought but might be much cheaper than imagined?
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Honestly i would have got a sponsor, set up tables in the concourse, and sold BOGO tickets for the two remaining home games between games, at half, and after the game. A chance to see if there is a market between full price and free.
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I think it was mentioned on the Thursday night show that he is sick.
Sick.
Dean and Ipsaro combined for 34 points off the bench and both shot the lights out. We hit 15 out of 26 threes. Doing so many little things right often leads to a lot of open looks.
Mabrey outplayed Elmer yesterday.
Great win againt a fluke “contender”. The Pacers Dunk Team is electric. Way better than those jump rope brats.
Interesting point! I connected with a townie sitting beside my family on Saturday. He and his family were having so much fun. I asked whether they came often to watch the games, and his answer was an emphatic “hell no, way too expensive.” I did the math ( 2 adults x $18 + 2 kids x $11 = $58 in tickets), and yes, that is a lot of money for an average family in Butler County.
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Maybe they have the pricing wrong. What if you could show your drivers license or the like proving you lived in the area and automatically got tickets for a big discount. If we could fill Millett even at substantially discounted tickets we’d have a huge court advantage and likely make more revenue than we do now. Granted, there would be operational costs that come with more people (extra staff needed for concourse, more cleaning needs ect.) I wonder what the barriers are…
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The sad thing is I offered (many times) to analyze attendance data and come up with different data-driven pricing schemes, including looking into things like 1) how much more money we can make selling hotdogs/popcorn and merchandise when the tickets are free vs increased operational costs 2) What about kids never pay? or 3) Buy a ticket and get a slice of pizza (no drinks) free? Etc.
But as others mentioned here, there is no incentive for improvements when students’ fee money and institutional money (i.e., the Crawfords “paying” for tickets) is always a sure thing.
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Given your background, that would be a huge value add. The funny thing is, if all tickets were dirt cheap (2 bucks each, silly low, go with me for a second on this) and we could sell out every game, you’d have other ways to make the money back. More advertisers would want in on the action. More concessions would be sold. You could still charge a modest fee for parking (you would need to with the crowds) and we’d land every recruit we wanted based on the atmosphere. Well, maybe that’s a stretch as OU would be doing better there, but I digress. It’s a very interesting equation.
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Has Miami announced their court storming policy?
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As much as I loved the last two crowds, it feels like fools gold in that I’m not sure the percentage of students in those crowds was any bigger than it has been. Kudos to all those who showed up, and to Miami for offering the free tickets. I would love to see the marketing people, coaches and Student leverage this as a way to call out the students I saw who were busier playing beer pong in their front yards.
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Agree 100%. There is a marketing strategy for driving entertainment revenue, be it amusement parks, concerts, movies, athletics: It’s not what it costs to get into the event, it’s what it cost to get out of the event. When my kids were younger my company had free tickets for fall weekends at Kings Island (corp sponsor perk). We would go, and they had $10 out of me before we even got in - for parking. We would drop close to $100 for a family of 5 on a “free” day, when we didn’t pay the $200 to get in. Snacks/drinks aren’t much cheaper at minor league baseball than the majors, even though tickets are a fraction.
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Maybe they need to explore some innovative ticket options. I became aware of Price Point ticketing at a Minnesota Twins game a few years ago. The ticket office sold me a walk up ticket far cheaper than the posted rate because of anticipated low attendance. Maybe they need special packages for locals and bargain family packages.
On the other hand, there are lots of places where $58 for an outing for four people isn’t prohibitive.
Some friends in Raleigh went to the Hurricanes hockey game Thursday night. Parking was $40 and 100 level tickets were $100 apiece. The game was a near sellout.
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P&G dividend day. I went many times as a young lad.
For the last two home games on a Tuesday ( vs Toledo) and a Friday ( vs Ohio U) I would like the Athletic Department to push heavily to get students there. Emails, promotions for students, etc. Let them know the guys are trying hard to turn this program around and let them know that we have already beaten the #1 and #3 seeds this season and we want to get the #2 and #4 heading up to Cleveland. Mention that Toledo has beaten us 20 times in a row and that we need to break that streak. Mention that we owe OU some pain for what they have done to us in recent years. The last two Saturdays the crowds were built primarily on local families with kids and getting some distant alums to the games. For these two games we need the students.
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Another area that we do not even try to leverage, is a call to all freshman to come and see and support our terrific freshman class. Make the names and faces of the players familiar to all students. The hope is that students will support other students/players when they feel they have a connection to them.
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Some really great discussion here. Important that Miami played well for these ticket promotion games. I do worry about offering too many of these, at risk of upsetting the season ticket base who paid for their tickets.
I don’t see student attendance growing that much until there’s a MAC-leading team to cheer for. Let’s go way back to the 90-91 season. Miami was coming off 4 straight poor seasons; a stretch that bad hadn’t happened in decades. The first home games (Evansville and Fairfield) had attendance of 1,812 and 2,403. Sound familiar? Even a home game with UC only drew 6,914.
Miami went 6-5 non-conference but won at Xavier and Miami(Fla) to pique interest. Then they started 3-1 in MAC play, losing only a road game to favorite EMU (they were loaded back then and would make the 1991 Sweet 16 as a 12-seed). Home games saw 7000ish for BSU and OU, as Miami ran their win streak to 6. Then EMU came to town, with 1st place on the line. A raucous crowd of 8,677 jammed Millett and it was mostly students…in my top 5 best atmosphere games at Millett. Miami won 70-63 and David Scott heaved the ball up into the lighting at the buzzer. Miami struggled down the stretch, but that season was the catalyst for 4 NCAA Tournaments and 3 NITs in the next 8 years.
The vast majority of students and alumni aren’t going to care unless it’s a special season, but winning games where you have a great turnout is a nice step. Knock off a P4 conference team next fall, get off to a good start, and then build some momentum. The students will come, Ray.
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