The root cause of this was discussed almost 30 years ago on The CougarsDen message board.
It all starts and ends with your On-Campus experiences. Students who never attend UH games while attending UH will not magically become Season Ticket buyers and Charitable givers.
Both of my daughters attended Texas Tech. Their experiences there were wonderful and long-lasting. It is why they soon will have 60,000 attending home games. And it is more than being in Lubbock with nothing else to do.
Somehow the students get fired up, and stay that way long after graduation.
Our Administration just does not get students fired up about Athletics. It doesn’t matter what excuses are offered. It doesn’t happen.
Many ideas have been offered. But nothing changes.
I’m not going to entertain an argument that out of our ~250,000 new alumni from the past 25 years or so, our athletic department shouldn’t be expected to find more than 3000 CP members. That’s ridiculous.
SMU made a very concerted effort to reach 5000 MC members by July 1 when they joined the ACC. If they reached 5000, Bryson Dechambeau was going to donate $50K to the golf program. Lots of emails.
I don’t recall our push to reach X thousand but remember our virtual toast.
CP has and will have this decades old involvement problem because a small percentage of the total students live on campus. Most just pass through, get their degrees and move on. It takes a student on campus/close to campus living and entertainment experience to develop passionate alum donors. Just going to class then scattering across Houston won’t do it.
UH was better than I expected actually. Going to be rough jumping out of last, new football stadium and top flight basketball arena and team and it’s not increasing ? Seems almost easier to increase revenue by getting local/Houston big12 home opponents fanbases to come.
So if we have 15,000 football season ticket holders which I am assuming that number we have basically a third that are actual cougar pride members which means every season ticket holder roughly purchases 3 seats per game. I am not taking into account people that probably donate double because they have season tickets for mens basketball as well. It seems with the numbers they are telling us that we have basically no donors other than our season ticket holders in the revenue sports.
UH ignores pretty much every area inside the loop probably not named heights/west u/Bellaire to generate new sales
Look at the staff directory - anyone know their way around 5th ward, pleasantville?
Duce630
(DustinK - Still 76 hostages held by Hamas for over 15 months)
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What are the average student profiles for those decades? Where can I find that information?
Duce630
(DustinK - Still 76 hostages held by Hamas for over 15 months)
50
One thing that doesn’t show up in the numbers is anyone who buys tickets in a group. So person A buys six tickets and friend B and C each get two tickets and reimburse person A. If they bought the tickets separately you’d have 3 members instead of 1 but no net change in the per seat donations.
No. You don’t blame the customers for the choice not to shop. UH has failed to engage students in becoming interested in athletics. For at least 30 years.
I’d love to see what the university as a whole has as far as alumni giving that doesn’t include athletics.
Now, if by “ourselves” you’re talking about the administration, then I agree.
As far as I’m concerned, we, on this message board, are fans despite the administration. The administration has failed to do what was needed over the past 30 years (whatever that may have been) to get more people to join us as athletics fans.
What does it take? They’ve tried to have successful men’s football and basketball programs. Better seats? Discounted bowl and away game packages? Prizes for attending?
TCU and Baylor students get lower level sideline tickets.
What other schools have done is make it easy and basically free to join to bring in new grads and/or current students. Host a tailgate for at least a few games, and include food at one of them (maybe inside the practice facility). Offer up SOMETHING to get these newbies to stay in the fold and increase donations from year to year.
I’ve seen membership drives in the past that were basically for a given year, with little to no follow-through aimed at keeping and building on that base.
This will cost money - I get that. But so does printing up those fancy mail-outs that likely bring little return. And with a little legwork, any tailgates or pregame stuff could likely be funded by sponsors.
Just getting 10% of each graduating class into the fold would make a big difference, and that’s a really lo target.
I like your suggestions and agree the AD office needs a person dedicated to growing
this thing. It will cost money; but as they say, you got to spend money to make money.
Put together discount package deals, like 5% discount for Cougar Pride members at
Downtown Aquarium, Kemah Board Walk, and the Pleasure Pier to get folks to FEEL
like they are getting SOMETHING. Same way with the Houston Zoo, the home of Shasta.
Oh yes, have this AD office person reach out to 10 new grads a day by phone and email
upon graduation.