the solution to our attendance woes: sell less tickets

[NickZepp]

We just don't have as loyal a fanbase in general as we'd like to think.
Even our football fans, while they fill the stadium, kinda suck as fans.

I don't think you give them credit. Outside the stadium you have tailgating everywhere during football. You have the Sooner Gameday Party stuff going on around the stadium. There's probably well over 100k people around the stadium during game day. In the late 90s it was pretty bad for a lot of games. I remember going to games where there was 50-60k in the stadium but the area was basically dead.

OU basketball will never be the experience OU football is game in and game out. There's only 6 or 7 home games a year. There's about 18-20 for Basketball. But you can still have a fun environment.

 

[Sawyer]

Selling less tickets is not the answer, it's all about the athletic department accomodating season ticket holder's tendencies. If people are not showing up to the games, make it easier for them to distribute those seats to other people.

Lowering prices may help a little, but given the product on the floor it probably won't matter too much.

It's a big issue for Mizzou, as well. Lots of corporate seats or high rollers who just don't show up for more than a few games per year, and it looks awful on TV (and to make it worse, those seats also have access to a private lounge area tucked away inside the arena... they're often back there watching on TVs and drinking alcohol with their high dollar friends, which they can't do in the actual arena).

This year MU started offering donors a few options to help distribute unused tickets. We moved to a barcode/scanner style ticket this year from the old style, so now it's possible to email tickets to other people and they just print them off (never actually done that, but heard it's very simple). We can also just donate them back to the AD who credits our donor accounts for donations equal to the face value of the tickets and then gives those tickets away to local charities.

Still have some attendance issues at MU games, but it does seem like things have improved a bit. I don't know what OU has, but it's not that difficult to take out the step of physically handing the ticket to someone else, and it does seem to make an impact.

 

[seniorsooner]

It's a big issue for Mizzou, as well. Lots of corporate seats or high rollers who just don't show up for more than a few games per year, and it looks awful on TV (and to make it worse, those seats also have access to a private lounge area tucked away inside the arena... they're often back there watching on TVs and drinking alcohol with their high dollar friends, which they can't do in the actual arena).

This year MU started offering donors a few options to help distribute unused tickets. We moved to a barcode/scanner style ticket this year from the old style, so now it's possible to email tickets to other people and they just print them off (never actually done that, but heard it's very simple). We can also just donate them back to the AD who credits our donor accounts for donations equal to the face value of the tickets and then gives those tickets away to local charities.

Still have some attendance issues at MU games, but it does seem like things have improved a bit. I don't know what OU has, but it's not that difficult to take out the step of physically handing the ticket to someone else, and it does seem to make an impact.

OU does this also, and it is very easy to use.

 

[StoopsBros]

Silly question because I'm not in Oklahoma, does OU advertise basketball? If so, what? Billboards? TV spots? Newspapers?

 

[NickZepp]

Silly question because I'm not in Oklahoma, does OU advertise basketball? If so, what? Billboards? TV spots? Newspapers?

Yeah there's a lot of advertising. I don't think that's a real problem. It's just that the team isn't that good and the environment is pretty dead.