Article on Fanbase Sizes

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Pretty interesting info, definitely shows why the BIG/SEC are where they are.

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we still have a lot of work to do

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The only bogus thing about that slide show is that they group ND with the ACC when it is in fact a football independent.

As for the B1G slide, it is correct. The B1G is top heavy. Its biggest brand programs draw mega-support. But as I’ve said, they have a large number of “sucky” football brands in the bottom half. That’s why they’ll never admit Kansas. They have enough sucky football brands. They don’t need another one.

Take ND out of the ACC (it’s a football independent), and every ACC school except Syracuse has BELOW AVERAGE fan support.

As for the Big 12, yeah…we and Cincy need to up our fan support.

Maybe once we start playing in the Big 12, we’ll see a rise in support.

I guess the good news for the future Big 12 is that it will still have MORE THAN TWICE the fan support of any G5 conference, which makes it highly UNlikely that it will lose P5 status anytime soon, or at least, it certainly won’t lose P5 status on that basis.

The gap between the “new” Big 12 and the G5 is significant. It’s probably enough to ensure that the new Big 12 will NOT be AAC 2.0.

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I wonder what methodology they used. The chronicle did a study a few years back that showed UH had the 3rd largest following in the state.

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If we could just get that following to come to games. A lot of our casual fans are fair weather to say the least

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Future MWC greater than AAC.

I have complete faith that our athletic department will screw up season ticket sales next year by jacking up season ticket prices to the point we will lose season ticket holders.

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This would help to explain why the Big12 should schedule OU & UT to play road games at each of the 4 new schools to increase the perception of their fan base size going into the new Big12 media negotiations.

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Yeah, I agree. Can we tell Pez not to raise prices for a while until sellouts or close.

Fan support is only sustainable when you have good competition to play against and you are halfway decent. We draw interest when the opponent is big and we’re not playing 11AM games in September.

Basketball has been a decent draw the last few years but not where it needs to be when our opponents aren’t Memphis or Virginia. Fertitta Center will be a sellout every conference game in the Big12.

I would say this looks reasonably accurate. For Texas, I question if TT really has that many more fans than us and if Texas State really has that few fans.

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I don’t think this is that accurate. I think they’re going based off of viewership and people in stands. With as big of a city as Houston is we’d be in the top 3

We will have the smallest fanbase in the Big 12. We better win win win or we will be out numbered by opposing fans at times.
Basketball we will be fine but all other sports are questionable

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I think we average 35k or higher in the big12 with some sellouts. We averaged 25k with covid in the aac. We will be ok. I’d much rather watch UH play a big 12 slate and be recognized as being in a power conf and losing some games bc the competition is better. It will be an event to be at our games vs before in the aac. It’s why texas is leaving bc they’d rather lose some to sec teams vs big12.It will be the same for us only I think we win more here than Texas will. It really sucked before bc we’d lose some to aac teams with no knowledge of getting into a p5 so it was depressing when we lost. Now we’re set and each game is a big time event regardless of outcome. It will be different this time around unlike the old swc. Expect 35k or more average bc the big 12 brings way more fans per game to opposing stadiums.We prob talk expanding the stadium after a few yrs in the big12.

Plus in a big city a lot of big12 fans or casual fans will be more interested in ours games at home that already live here. It will help the hotels here more. I was excited to have Kansas here before I knew we were big 12 now that game will be huge and the most exciting home game and it’s just Kansas.

If I was a casual fan, I’d go to see UH play at home vs big12 teams bc it’s now an event which is respected by people if you say your going where as before in the aac, it wasn’t because they’d say what conf are y’all in and who are you playing and you’d say East Carolina then they say oh ok.

Not this again. Looked at the pdf and most of the graphs were based on the NYT 2011 and 2014 “analyses.”

Disregarding that the data is old, these “studies” used the most flawed statistical methods I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen article after article refuting these, especially the 2011 one, but they keep coming back.

How flawed are they? Consider this, the 2011 study said Rice’s fanbase was 26% bigger than ours

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Agree with those that say it is flawed. I think the major brands are probably reasonably on top. The rest is very determined by how the got the info. Does it only consider a fan’s favorite team or also ones they also root for or tune in to. Plus I am not sure TV ratings back up what they are showing a number of fans.

I also scrolled to the bottom, and it is basically an advertisement for a consulting firm to help market your business/team. Wonder if any schools that seem unusually low are ones they are trying to get as clients.

It was so much worse than that. One study was partially based on searching Google for the phrase “college foitball” by zip code. Don’t know about you, but when I want to find out about the Coog football team i Google “college football.”

Then they apportioned that zip code based off a sports map project where people who visited a site could choose their fave team. We all know that’s scientific. Not getting political, but putting the same poll on Fox News site vs MSNBC will likely give you different results. We’ve seen schools flood poll sites. Our fan base has done it. Thats the kind of data that was used.

Then the 2014 study tried to use something less stupid, but still bad. One thing they used was Facebook likes for a school. One poblem was they only looked at one FB page. For example I think they used the main athletic department page. Nevermind you might get 100k likes on one school’s football page that are ignored and only 10k on the main page, while another school might not have had a separate football page so all likes went to the department page.

So much more wrong with these studies, but these are some of the biggest, obvious items

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It’s hard to keep fans engaged when you’re playing against schools like Tulsa, ECU, & Temple. I’m sorry, i like the AAC and their effort to make us a P6, but having schools like that in our schedule is just not getting anyone out of the bed. It’s not interesting unless we’re going undefeated or a 1 loss school.

But playing local rivals like Tech, Baylor, & TCU? That draws interest if not for the geographical location & rivalries alone. That doesn’t include BYU who I can see become a rival as well.

Playing Those schools will make fans more engaged and follow the team as a whole. Once we start winning consistently, it’ll skyrocket.

It’s like going from division 2 in European Soccer to the First Division. It’s huge

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