At $20 per ticket, and no 18 years old and under kids get a discount, it’s not being cheap. It’s called watching your pennies. Maybe you could afford $120 to take your kids and their friends to a Saturday afternoon game, but not a lot of families will look at that and jump in the car heading to Millett.
Miami needs to put in a $5 ticket for kids 18 years old and under. Build your fan base by not making them broke. Hey sports marketing, here’s your line:
“$5 tickets are now available for all students 18 years old and under for all Miami home basketball games. For those who will attend.”
I didn’t say anything about $20 a seat being a good price point for Butler County, although I’m pretty certain lots of county residents spend far more than that occasionally on Reds and Bengals tickets. But $58 for a family of four didn’t seem like a crushing blow in any metro area. I do agree that Miami could find a solution to attendance woes for most not-premium games by creating some kind of innovative marketing. The more competitive our teams are and the more marquee teams we can attract would certainly improve the draw, regardless of pricing. Maybe three game packages for the price of one would improve the draw. But I wouldn’t discount tickets for under 14 age kids who attend without an adult.
If there are local families willing to come to games at lower price points, then sell a family pack of 4 tickets for $40. Each additional ticket is $10. Throw in a concession voucher for non-premium games.
I also think our season tickets are too high. I believe it’s around $230 each for 15 or 16 games, which comes out to around $15 per ticket. You might convince more people to buy season tickets at $100 price point. Could offer season tickets to a family of 4 for $300.
I think OU does something like this where football season tickets are around $50 and basketball are around $80. The seat locations are non premium areas.
This thread is filled with great, and reasonable, marketing ideas. It would be exciting to see many of them implemented and measure the results. Then I remembered that you’re dealing with an entity that doesn’t care.
How about 50% off the face value of any ticket for Butler County residents. Just have them flash their driver’s license/voter ID card to confirm residency.
Years ago, when large Marge ran the Reds, she had a smart idea: (and I say this while shaking my head as she was no hero) she charged $10 for top 6 seats at Riverfront and you got a hot dog and drink with the ticket for free. My friends and I did that deal a few times. Seats were comically high above the field (old Riverfront seated 55,000) but we always had a good time. And, the seats filled up all while not cannibalizing relationships with fans who paid more for better. She had other ways of ruining fan equity, but that wasn’t one of them.
Totally agree. I think the program missed a big opportunity by not making more of “a thing” out of the five freshmen. It’s something that rarely happens at any school and may never happen again. While some may see having to play so many freshmen as a bad thing, it could have been spun in a way to make the students curious, especially freshmen students.
You’re too kind. I wasn’t a high-level player but I played with and against a number of high-level players and played for some great coaches. And I played every position depending on the level of competition and grade level I was up against so I experienced quite a bit. Then the little bit of coaching I’ve done has put me on that side as well. I only want to see the team improve and play well and I try to approach my comments that way.
Was my first year of coaching this year. I know nothing about hoops but spent my summers in college and grad school teaching tennis so I know how to wrangle kids. I am a total novice but our team was undefeated, our head coach and other assistants were way more knowledgeable, and we won our league. I think mainly because we only had 3 shooters. Rest of the kids played defense well. I learn so much about hoops from the comments on this board. Between the ex coaches, former players, and the like, we have a great board. That’s sorta why I think hoops will be back real soon. Our community wants to see it happen.
That’s great and all but if we want consistently good attendance it has to be driven by students. Largest population with the closest proximity to millett and they don’t have to pay extra for tickets. I guess most students would prefer to watch drunk frat guys attempt to play field hockey instead
I go to a ton of movies. I live 2 blocks from a small one screen theater which charges $6, even for 3D movies. Celina has $6 Tuesdays, otherwise $8. they have 5 screens. Piqua has maybe 8 screens. Matinees are $6,
In Las Vegas The South Point has 16 screens and there are 3 days a week with $4 SR movies. Sam’s Town has 15 screens and they charge $5 for SR movies. any time.
I don’t actually think I have ever paid $12, let alone $15.
I mean that’s exactly what the Brickwall group that’s posted on here has started. We’ve had a much more consistent presence in the student section this year thanks to them, even if not always huge in numbers. We haven’t had a top-half MAC finish since 2010-11, should cut them some slack even if it needs to be much better as the program improves.
Here’s a ticket for you through Fandango to the new Bob Marley movie in Cincinnati next Friday. And Cincy’s certainly not considered an exceptionally pricey metro area. $13.50 for Adults and $9.50 for Seniors and Kids.
I’ve read your post 4 times now and even taken a screen shot to share with a few non degenerate friends of mine plus one who is actually a famous marketer and they all agree with you. Ten people total. (An expert level panel, 2024 style sample size!) Granted: None of them slummed it in the 513, but still. I think you might be right. You’ve gotten me thinking about the notion of exit marketing versus entrance marketing…
We have to be the hardest team to gamble on in college basketball. I have a rule to never bet against Miami sports, but even I didn’t we are an automatic stay away. Just so much variance from game to game.
I feel I owe an apology to Eian Elmer. I declared him our best player and since then it’s back to back goose eggs. He was in foul trouble yesterday, but those are probably too lofty of expectations to put on a freshmen.
Obviously we shot the lights out. That kind of shooting probably isn’t repeatable from game to game, but this may have been the best our guards have played all season. Aggressive, good decision making, picked their spots well, low turnovers. For this team to make a run the trio of Cooper, Ipsaro and Dean have to be scorers. We’re too easy to defend when they’re not.
That was precisely one of my points. The in-game ads could easily go up in price once you have consistently 5K people watching every game. Plus, there are tons of intangible benefits, like community building (whoever runs a fundraising campaign knows the importance of a strong community).
I am not sure it “has” to. Ideally, yes. In practice, I sadly see student attendance as a lost battle. Maybe that is not the case with SLAM students, but other than a few student-athletes, I can’t remember a single student of mine who was even remotely interested in the RedHawks. Again, I don’t have data or any analysis to back me up, but I guess our best crowds were driven by families with kids. If that is indeed the case, I believe this population should be a priority regarding marketing and promotional materials. But we only really know after looking at the data, right? As we say in data science, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”
Right now it seems like we’re catering the experience and marketing to the local community (from a student perspective). Is there lots that can theoretically be done? Absolutely. At the moment I believe our athletic department is operating around even or a slight loss and any lost $ is being supplemented through tuition (not 100% haven’t seen the numbers in a while). Where I’m going with this is our athletic communications and marketing budget is $70k for a year of ticketed sports. We can’t pull out all the stops every week. The question then becomes can you consistently get a good crowd willing to pay more for concessions/merch inside the stadium to justify lowering a price point. No one said students are easy to get to games - believe me I’ve been trying - but there’s 16k undergrads half of which are living in dorms. Get more of them in consistently, you can maximize earnings from concessions/keep the same ticket price for community. And that’s just from an economical standpoint. Phase 2 is engagement. Elite atmospheres have rowdy and engaged students. That’s not to take away from the community, but some people can’t stand a whole game. Also, you aren’t very likely to hear a parent/grandparent yelling the same stuff or at the volume that students do. I just feel with ~ 50 student interns there has to be a better way to appeal to students than put out 2 foot yard signs and send emails which many students don’t check
