Attendance Concerns?

[TUBballJunkie]

I think we're stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle that could be painful to break in the short term.

I was talking mid-level P5 but Rice and Tulane have some pretty high majors on their slates. Granted Rice has NRG stadium to lure LSU but the others are playing at their regular on-campus stadium...

 

[Tuloma]

Rice has some money road games but look how nice this home non-conference looks over the next few years. Home and homes with Stanford, LSU (2020 and 2024 is the new contract), Wake, Northwestern, Boise.
http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa/conf-usa/rice-owls.php

Tulane has lopsided 2016-17 opponents but then they've got Georgia Tech, Ole Miss, Miss State, OU coming in.
http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa/aac/tulane-green-wave.php

There can be a happy medium.

The Rice schedule is amazing. It must be the recruiting lure in the Houston area that allows them to do that. Most of the Tulane games are 2 for 1 and TU can easily do that if they want to.

 

[Tuloma]

I think we're stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle that could be painful to break in the short term.

I was talking mid-level P5 but Rice and Tulane have some pretty high majors on their slates. Granted Rice has NRG stadium to lure LSU but the others are playing at their regular on-campus stadium...

I am doubtful that mid-level P5 will schedule TU home and home. If they do, there is the revenue problem that I mentioned, because of the smaller stadium.

 

[TulsaGrad07]

We do sell out when OU and OSU come here to play. That's largely because they have a latent fan base in the surrounding area and would rather pay to see them play in Tulsa than stillwater or norman if they live in town and hate traveling. I think we could sell out if we played better teams from p5 conferences. We had a near sellout last time we played Houston; fans came to see a top 25 team at 11th and Harvard and at least 1,500 Houston fans came up to support their team. I don't recall what the attendance was for the Iowa State game, but I bet it was one of the higher attended games of that season. This has been real informative in terms of the economics of scheduling teams, so thanks for that! I'd like to see us schedule reciprocal games in the future since it'll be a wash and we'll get more butts in the seats at Skelly.

 

[TUBballJunkie]

For Tulane, the GA Tech was supposed to be 2 home/2 away, Miss State was supposed to be a 4/3, Wake is a home and home. Ole Miss played at the Superdome in 2010 and 2012 already, it was basically a home-home-2 neutral.

 

[noble cane]

The administration will keep scheduling NCAT types as long as they can get $45 a head from 15000 people that buy season tix, as long as they keep getting the outrageous $ for the tix in the club level.. Etc..

It will be interesting to see if club level sales fall off as the beer becomes a staple in the stadium.

 

[Barlass]

We do sell out when OU and OSU come here to play. That's largely because they have a latent fan base in the surrounding area and would rather pay to see them play in Tulsa than stillwater or norman if they live in town and hate traveling. I think we could sell out if we played better teams from p5 conferences. We had a near sellout last time we played Houston; fans came to see a top 25 team at 11th and Harvard and at least 1,500 Houston fans came up to support their team. I don't recall what the attendance was for the Iowa State game, but I bet it was one of the higher attended games of that season. This has been real informative in terms of the economics of scheduling teams, so thanks for that! I'd like to see us schedule reciprocal games in the future since it'll be a wash and we'll get more butts in the seats at Skelly.

The Houston game last year was the second lowest attended of the season. You may be referring to the 2011 Houston game (Keenum's senior season) which did draw 29k.

The Iowa State game drew 20k fans in 2013, 2k less than the season opener against Colorado State.

 

[TulsaGrad07]

The administration will keep scheduling NCAT types as long as they can get $45 a head from 15000 people that buy season tix, as long as they keep getting the outrageous $ for the tix in the club level.. Etc..

It will be interesting to see if club level sales fall off as the beer becomes a staple in the stadium.

How much do tix cost up in that club level area Noble? I don't even know how to purchase a ticket up in that place...

 

[TUBballJunkie]

The suites are like 10 year contracts. Sold out with waiting lists.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Just announced: All tickets except Gold level are $5 for the A&T game. Available for the next 2 hour only.

 

[TU_BLA]

How much do tix cost up in that club level area Noble? I don't even know how to purchase a ticket up in that place...

Nosebleed/cloud level seat in OU Gaylord/Sell our Souls Stadium goes for $85 face value. Boone Pickens Earthquake Stadium is not much less. Our issue is a small alumni base (and even fewer that remain in Tulsa) and current students who don't turn out en masse, meaning we rely on the general Tulsa area to fill out the stadium. While it's great and fine and dandy to roll out the one city, one team TUnited campaign every year...it's old and doesn't work. There need to be more incentives to get the general Tulsa public on board with coming to a game. This was even more apparent to me in 2010 when a week after beating Notre Dame the team returned to a half full stadium. If that game and the way TU won it didn't get people fired up, I don't have any answers.Obviously TU's student marketing intern in charge of the campaign doesn't have any answers either.

 

[mcane]

Rice (when the stadium is not covered in the end zones) has a 75,000 stadium where a Super Bowl was held in the early 70s. TU downsized from 42 to 27 (30 officially), with no ability to add extra seating (well maybe a bleacher near Case). Just not feasible to schedule up. Future home and away series with Wyoming and No. Ill - which also play in small stadiums - pending. OU and OSU play here once during long series as a courtesy to their fans, not for the pay day.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

We do sell out when OU and OSU come here to play.

The last OSU game was nowhere near a sellout, even before the storm hit. The latest OU game was very close to capacity.

 

[astonmartin708]

The last OSU game was nowhere near a sellout, even before the storm hit. The latest OU game was very close to capacity.

OU wasn't really near capacity the east side stands were still 1/4th empty. It was stormy that day though as well.

 

[Tuloma]

.

We do sell out when OU and OSU come here to play. That's largely because they have a latent fan base in the surrounding area and would rather pay to see them play in Tulsa than stillwater or norman if they live in town and hate traveling. I think we could sell out if we played better teams from p5 conferences. We had a near sellout last time we played Houston; fans came to see a top 25 team at 11th and Harvard and at least 1,500 Houston fans came up to support their team. I don't recall what the attendance was for the Iowa State game, but I bet it was one of the higher attended games of that season. This has been real informative in terms of the economics of scheduling teams, so thanks for that! I'd like to see us schedule reciprocal games in the future since it'll be a wash and we'll get more butts in the seats at Skelly.

The 2 for 1 games with OU or OSU are more lucrative for TU than home and home games with other schools. For OU/OSU games they sell out the 25,000 seats. at a price of $90 each. That totals about $2,250,000. Subtract the $400,000 paid the visitors and that leaves about $1,800,000. Then TU buses to Norman or Stillwater and gets $400,000 twice. I would estimate the actual cost somewhat less. So lets add $200,000 from the left over travel money to the $1,800,0000 and you end up with $2,000,000 for three games. Six years or six games would be $4,000,000

Home and home games with teams TU can realistically expect to contract with i.e., Fresno, San Jose, Colorado State, Bowling Green, New Mexico, Arkansas State etc. Lets say they draw 20,000 fans at $25 each for revenue of $500,000 minus visitor travel expenses of $300,000. That leaves $200,000 per game. One game every other year over a three year period (to compare with the 2 for 1 series) that is 1 and 1/2 games or a total of $300,000 compared to $2,000,000 for OU/OSU games.

For six years the home and home games would total $600,000 versus $4,000,000 for OU/OSU series.

Six one and done games would total $6,000,000 minus travel expenses

 

[goldenhurricane2]

Everyone is making good points, but I still just find it sad that a city with a metro area of around 1 million can't put 25-30k people in a D1 football stadium a few times per year. Definitely a bummer :/

 

[TUBballJunkie]

OU wasn't really near capacity the east side stands were still 1/4th empty. It was stormy that day though as well.

We priced ourselves out of a sellout there.

I dropped my season tickets because of it and just went to the games I could with one off tickets.

 

[TUBballJunkie]

In 2005 (exciting team, decent non-conf home slate including Minnesota) we averaged 22,826. Last year we averaged 19,622. The loss of that many fans over the course of 6 games a season at $30 a ticket = $575,000. Over that decade slide, could total $6 million lost. Just in projected ticket sales, not concession $. There's your $6m bodybag games which is really considerably less after expenses.

How many potential sales do we forego the rest of the season from the casual fan who sees a final score that we got crushed in Columbus for that million? And they won't even give us a chance to bounce back.

So far this year, 18,748, so subtract another $200k of that Ohio State payday in exchange for dropping attendance at home. Thank god we can make a few bucks back on beer.

Looking at just short-term cash is only half the story to writing off long-term success and growth. But even if you do just want to look at the immediate cash infusion, there's another side to consider that could have built equivalent income.

 

[TU Pilot]

Looking at the FBS schedules website- we consistently play the likes of Central Arkansas and Arkansas St (and similar programs) until 2020... I'm sorry, but there are plenty of MWC and mid to low tier P5 schools that are worth playing instead of those teams. And I bet they give us better deals that the 1-3 OU/OSU do. It does nothing to help improve the brand and only drives down the average attendance every year. Even if we win every single game and end up ranked, playing opponents like that doesn't help draw a crowd, make the brand better, or even improve recruiting- "Come play at Tulsa! You can play against pseudo-high schools every year!" I understand every once in a while having a game like that, but NC A&T, Ark St., Central Ark, etc... We can do better and still make money. Just my 2 cents...

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

Big difference between Ark Central and Ark State. We have to give State a return game.

 

[chito_and_leon]

Other schools do variable (surge or demand based) pricing, with face price varying for the opponent.

I'm not sure mid level P5 teams will help. Are lots of people going to show up to see Arizona, Maryland, Georgia Tech, etc? Just don't see why more people would come to see teams like that.

 

[noble cane]

.


The 2 for 1 games with OU or OSU are more lucrative for TU than home and home games with other schools. For OU/OSU games they sell out the 25,000 seats. at a price of $90 each. That totals about $2,250,000. Subtract the $400,000 paid the visitors and that leaves about $1,800,000. Then TU buses to Norman or Stillwater and gets $400,000 twice. I would estimate the actual cost somewhat less. So lets add $200,000 from the left over travel money to the $1,800,0000 and you end up with $2,000,000 for three games. Six years or six games would be $4,000,000

Home and home games with teams TU can realistically expect to contract with i.e., Fresno, San Jose, Colorado State, Bowling Green, New Mexico, Arkansas State etc. Lets say they draw 20,000 fans at $25 each for revenue of $500,000 minus visitor travel expenses of $300,000. That leaves $200,000 per game. One game every other year over a three year period (to compare with the 2 for 1 series) that is 1 and 1/2 games or a total of $300,000 compared to $2,000,000 for OU/OSU games.

For six years the home and home games would total $600,000 versus $4,000,000 for OU/OSU series.

Six one and done games would total $6,000,000 minus travel expenses

Only problem with this is OSU demands a fee to appear in Tulsa equal to or greater than the sum of all paouyts in Stillwater. If they pay us $1.2mm for three games then they demand $1.2mm for one game.

 

[TulsaGrad07]

How can travel costs be 1.2mm to get to Stillwater? Or 1.1mm to fly up to Ohio State? Do they tack on incentive money or something additionally? Surely chartering a plane and putting guys up in a hotel with transportation to and from the airport / game / hotel would NOT cost 1.1mm, so there's gotta be more than just raw travel costs involved in scheduling these games.

 

[Air_Raid918]

I'm not sure mid level P5 teams will help. Are lots of people going to show up to see Arizona, Maryland, Georgia Tech, etc? Just don't see why more people would come to see teams like that.

Yes. Many more people would show up to see a team like Arizona at home.

Not only would more casual fans show, but a team like Arizona would bring fans of their own like Iowa State did few years back. I enjoyed the ISU series.

IMO, we need to schedule big name teams in lower half of their conference, i.e. Kansas, Iowa State, Texas Tech, Indiana, Illinois, Purdue.

Next 3 years home nonconference schedule: LA Lafayette, New Mexico, Central Arkansas, Arkansas St, Oklahoma St, Wyoming.

Not intriguing whatsoever to the casual fan, except OSU of course. Teams like Zona, Maryland, and GT, as you mentioned, would be a huge upgrade over what we have scheduled. If we're going to schedule from the Sun Belt Conference, only Appalachian State would be intriguing.

 

[TU Pilot]

^ This.

 

[Tuloma]

Rice (when the stadium is not covered in the end zones) has a 75,000 stadium where a Super Bowl was held in the early 70s. TU downsized from 42 to 27 (30 officially), with no ability to add extra seating (well maybe a bleacher near Case). Just not feasible to schedule up. Future home and away series with Wyoming and No. Ill - which also play in small stadiums - pending. OU and OSU play here once during long series as a courtesy to their fans, not for the pay day.

Good points....however, to be completely correct, TU downsized from 40,235 to 25,193.

That is a lot of seats and it does take away some incentive for scheduling up or as you say makes it less feasible.

However, considering the condition of the removed seats it was the only logical thing to do.

 

[Tuloma]

How can travel costs be 1.2mm to get to Stillwater? Or 1.1mm to fly up to Ohio State? Do they tack on incentive money or something additionally? Surely chartering a plane and putting guys up in a hotel with transportation to and from the airport / game / hotel would NOT cost 1.1mm, so there's gotta be more than just raw travel costs involved in scheduling these games.

I believe he is talking about TU playing three games in Stillwater at $400,000 per trip.

The $300,000 or $400,000 the home team pays to the visiting team is just a usual reciprocal contract amount.
It really has very little to do with actual travel expenses.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

We're paying A&T $325,000 for their visit.

 

[TUBballJunkie]

We're paying A&T $325,000 for their visit.

This whole tangled web is some fuzzy damn math.

 

[Li'l Eric Coley]

This whole tangled web is some fuzzy damn math.

Precisely why I don't worry about it.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

I'm afraid that we're going to see more and more FCS opponents on the home schedule as we continue to sign "2 for 1" or "1 and done" contracts. The other option is only scheduling 5 home games, which some of the Sunbelt teams are doing.

Times have changed and it looks like our only viable alternatives for home & home scheduling is with MWC, MAC, CUSA and Sunbelt teams. Mid to lower level P5 teams are a hot scheduling commodity right now. Everybody wants to play them, which gives these teams lots of options schedule wise. If they have to play G5 road games, they are more than likely to choose opponents in their recruiting areas or in more flashy locations.

 

[Novocaine]

I quit worrying about this a long time ago. It's not fixable. Just go, have a good time, bring people with you each week who haven't been before, show them the ropes, and hopefully continue to grow. Word of mouth is a great tool, as is having a positive attitude about the entire day.

If you've been anywhere else for college football, you will quickly realize we've got it pretty darned good as far as the hassle factor goes.

 

[TUBballJunkie]

I will never stop caring. Especially when I believe it's predominantly choices TU is making that are contributing to the decline. That's not good enough.

It's an amazing product. I want more people to consume it and consider it an entertainment option. I want our athletes to have more people cheering them on. I want to have continued athletics success. I want fan support to actually help in recruiting players and keeping coaches.

Accepting the status quo isn't really accepting the status quo. It's accepting that it's just going to get worse.

 

[Novocaine]

We've never sold out the stadium with our own fans in my lifetime, and we've had some really good teams at times. How well did we draw in 1964 and 1965? I know those seasons were the impetus for the field lowering and west side expansion - anyone have a media guide?

 

[NTXCoog]

Rice (when the stadium is not covered in the end zones) has a 75,000 stadium where a Super Bowl was held in the early 70s.

No way that stadium could hold 75k any more.
1) The tarped area in the north end zone now houses the Brian Patterson Sports Performance Center. So those seats are forever gone.
2) The still tarped off areas don't have seats under them. So it's not just a matter of removing the tarps and voila, instant capacity upgrade. It would require a stadium upgrade to get to the expandable max of 58k seating.

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

We've never sold out the stadium with our own fans in my lifetime, and we've had some really good teams at times. How well did we draw in 1964 and 1965? I know those seasons were the impetus for the field lowering and west side expansion - anyone have a media guide?

You can find that information in the Archives section of the Athletics website:

http://sidearm.sites.s3.amazonaws.c...s/2015/6/3/tulsa_football_records.pdf?id=8331

 

[Babe the Blue Ox]

The best home crowd not involving OU or OSU was Montana State in 1990.

 

[Novocaine]

Ah, the "CFA" game.

 

[TUBballJunkie]

Who's asking for a sellout? We're averaging 60% capacity. What equates to 75% in numbers we now should be achievable. 22,500 in a city of a million people. We've averaged that in recent history.

The stakes and expenses have never been higher in our lifetimes either.

 

[4tu2]

Didn't we fill the stadium against Missouri in the mid 90's.