For the record I think 7100 is fine. FC is a nice arena with a great atmosphere. Like someone said above, there are more pressing construction projects concerning athletics at the moment and it sounds like it would require major construction to expand the arena much anyway. But, I think if we ever get to that point, it would mean that enough fans/alumni are devoted to the program that UH would have little trouble raising funds for an expansion.
I would never increase capacity. Raise the prices to increase revenue. If the product is as good as itās been, people will pay it. I think our arena is awesome.
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Conversations with Lauren Sampson said that the current numbers centered around the market they wanted to cater to:
The students living on campus. We have more on campus beds (8k) than seats in the Fertitta Center. And if a UH student lives on campus, theyāre generally more desiring of college experience than one that doesnāt. Total of 13k including the apartments that sit on or next to campus.
Yet UH still hasnāt fixed the ticket system, when theyāve been āworking on itā for ages.
Can it expand? I believe so, I remember seeing SOMETHING saying expansion is possible. But it was probably hidden on some website.
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How many sellouts did we have last year, 3 or 4?
Virginia, SMU and possibly Memphis. I think 3
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If you want the arena to expand, why do you want that? Keep prices down for your own tickets?
Iām legitimately curious.
what the school representsā¦ we are the cities team and should always be accessible to everyday people in the city and i believe thatā¦ our profits should be from dollars from the masses, not thousands from few rich
context: it is impossible to get duke tickets without a minimum a few grand of donations to the school and then on top the ticket price being a couple grand itselfā¦where we could be headed
and from a pride perspectiveā¦ every major public school in the nation (p5/be) has a bigger capacity than we do. the idea that houston cant sustain more than 7k (which is The smallest) is an insult to our capability, which seems to be one of the big justification for the 7kā¦someone saw us in our down years and said we will never be moreā¦selling out every game for the next 20 years we still wouldnt be top 70 in national attendance
not saying we need a massive 18k arena, but 9-10kā¦ and not saying we need it now, but im confident we can grow into a program that can sustain that number .
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You can always get tickets on stubhub, very cheap like $6 for most games
that is now, there is no hard justification for needing to expand todayā¦ but the fanbase is rapidly growing on its own (without context of conference), and then we are joining an extremely regional conference where fans are known to heavily travelā¦
a fun story from 3 weeks ago is tcu denying tickets to certain games because their fans werent getting themā¦ because traveling fans were claiming all of them
https://twitter.com/FOS/status/1549810870405869568
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I sort of get the former point, but that seems really far and theoretical.
We could get to a point in a few years where season tickets are kind of expensive and thereās a decent slate of games that are a bit pricey. But we are a long, long way from getting to a point where the average person who wants to attend a few games against lesser opponents is priced out.
As for the pride, thatās what I suspect most care about, but I donāt really care. If we have a good team, with a good game atmosphere, thatās all Iām really worried about. Thereās a big difference watching a football game in a full 70k stadium vs. 40k but I donāt think itās that different for basketball having a full 7k arena vs. 9k. And having 5k in a 7k arena is a much better atmosphere than 5k in a 9k arena. Even though our arena is a lot smaller, the general trend with arenas is downsizing.
The other part you are leaving out is that its not written in stone we are automatically going to be a top 25 team every year in perpetuity.
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We exceeded official capacity 7 times last year - Texas State, ECU, Tulane, Memphis, SMU, Cincy, and Temple. We were within 250 tickets of sellouts in all but 2 games.
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Good to know.
Temple, a sellout. Lol
The game was at 6pm.
Brutal start time for Senior Night.
I know its tickets sold. But actual attendance for weekday games gotta be 4-5K maybe
Was at Texas State and ECU and that stadium wasnāt even a quarter full at tipoff.
Heck, hereās the Wichita Game, in which a sellout was announced, AT TIPOFF: Wichita (<-- Click that)
Iām not going to argue about the definition of āsellout,ā since thatās pretty well-established, and that was the question asked.
Wichita State isnāt one that shows as having sold 7100 tickets, and āfull at tipoffā isnāt really an indicator of a āsellout,ā anyway.
Yāall can take this discussion back down the black hole of lamenting about empty seats if you want. Donāt care. All tickets sold. Out.
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If weāre claiming sellout, this fits it.
If weāre claiming exceeding capacity/butts showed up and we had amazing attendance, no.
Here we go again
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I donāt have an issue with anyone hypothesizing into the future about whether we can expand if/when the time is right or debating whether more seats could/should have been included in initial construction. Itās a message board and not less productive than most stuff on here.
But itās absolutely nuts to think a project to expand is anywhere remotely close to something that should be considered presently.
Look at this way. If we added 1,500 seats and could sell them all, the current price to buy those seats would be around $200/seat if we can even sell all of them, so thatās an extra $300k in revenue for the year. Thatās probably not going to be close to enough to service the debt for a project like that.
If it could even be done, Iām guessing (mostly out of my rear) that we would need to get to a point where we have absolutely no worries about selling the extra ~1,500 seats every season for around at least $1,000/seat before the project starts making any sense. We are a good ways from that right now.
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The FC is fine and has a great home court atmosphere. You donāt have to have 15K to be loud, Cameron Fieldhouse only has 9100 and its legendary. We will be fine where we are.
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FC expansion will be a joke. Get ppl on the stands, create the atmosphere with Students and fans and then be blessed and happy that we have an amazing place
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