Question:
The common thread is that successful urban programs treat game day as more than just football — it’s a community event. They invest heavily in the fan experience, accessibility, youth engagement, and consistent storytelling that connects the university’s mission with its city. Question:
What were your plans to make our home games community events?
How can we improve on it for next season? Question:
Our University of Houston football program is not attracting fans despite being 7-2 why do you think that is and how do you plan on righting the ship to have close to a sell out every home game? Question:
You have Tilman Fertitta with Landry’s, the Bauer School of Business Marketing department, the Hilton Hotel Management School, all are geared to catering to potential customers have you tried to get them involved and define a strategy to market our University of Houston football program and attract fans? Question:
How much involvement or partnership is there with local high schools football programs, local grocery stores, local restaurants, other local business, major companies to promote the University of Houston football program? Question:
You have been on the job for about a year and a half. What were your goals and pre conceived thinking that you had for the University of Houston? Question:
I was a big fan of Larry Luchino and how he promoted his sports franchises. Do you plan on bringing new fresh ideas that will change people’s mindset about attending our University of Houston home football games? Question:
From an outsider looking in what do you think the University of Houston campus is missing from attracting more football fans? Please be blunt. Question:
Comparing the greater Houston area with the University of Houston area alumni base and our football attendance this is a monumental failure. What has to change to engage all our alumni in your data base? Question:
Fans complain about the sun in the hot and humid summer days. Do we have plan to add a canopy to the stadium and is it possible? Question:
Often the concessions are not attended properly by the operator. What can you do about it? Question:
We have usually about six home games. What about bringing six University of Houston major sports stars, actors, singers and make it an event? Surely there are tickets promotions that can be combined to it with movies, concerts and goods. Question:
Parlaying it from the previous question. What about combining football tickets with Landry’s restaurants discounts, Hilton hotel discounts, Rockets tickets discounts, major retailers tickets discounts etc… Question:
The University of Miami is somewhat similar to U of H with awful football attendance issues. What about getting together and find some common solutions that could help both Universities with their football attendance besides winning? Question:
What surprised you the most in a positive way, what upset you the most and what are your plans to win over them?
Great having you here Eddie and we all want you to succeed.
To be clear, I attend games. I actually attended a couple of road games so far this year, and I have plans to attend more. But with each passing home game, win or lose, I’m increasingly unclear as to why.
Week to week, I have seen Instagram posts from the official UH account offering pre-game sideline passes to anyone who likes/engages with the post. There are other sports on campus that needed support this Fall, such as Volleyball, Soccer, and Swim&Dive. Why weren’t incentives or giveaways for this Football game offered to students who attended other sports on campus? Most advertisements and giveaway posts aren’t pushed well enough by the algorithm.
The price of concessions have become ridiculous. Rules around things like souvenir cups, where it would be a free refill all season, seemed to have become a thing of the past.
If the goal is to get fans to come out and watch the game, would it be beneficial, at least in a given term, to allow for fans to bring in a ziploc bag of sealed food items similar to that of the Houston Astros?
While it COULD lead to a loss in revenue, is there anything that the department could bite, at least on the concessions end, so fans don’t feel priced out of the game?
Currently, I can go to the UH Young Alumni tailgate, have a meal and unlimited drinks for the price of $15. A drink and a snack in the stadium would beat that price and I couldn’t even hit 10% of my calorie limit for the day (i’m on a cut).
With the abysmal attendance over the past two games, what creative things are being done to try and bring fans to games? For the Texas Tech game, it felt more like an advertisement for a game where everyone wears blue, not a game against an in-state rival with high stakes for the Big 12 conference race. The Gameday Experience didn’t feel like it either, and the crowd felt somewhat quiet, regardless of the sellout. Same for every other game, where’s the push to get STUDENTS out?
Piggybacking off of this, is there any attempt to bring back fans from the 90s and 00s era where there’s a generational gap of fans? Or a way of bringing in classes from many years ago back? If the Football game isn’t supposed to be the event alone, what about showing off the campus?
(and to potential high school students, all while following compliance rules)
What are the sales teams like to bring in new fans? Could a partnership be made with UHAA to ffind these alumni of the past, and have a contest for students in the say, sales program to sell as many tickets as they can to these games?
The basketball program has recently introduced the Coogs in the Cage program. This is probably one of the best ideas to create a consistent student section, at least on the floor for years to come. Is there a plan to introduce something like this for Football, or maybe an overall student atmosphere at the other sporting events, too? An overall student board that can bring ideas to the table, while keeping in mind the athletic budget, the maturity/how appropriate the suggestions are, alignment with the culture of the respective sport (say music for FB/BBK/WBK, heckling at BB/SB) and covering all pockets/trends around campus?
Ryan, feel free to reword or shorten some of these questions since I’m also bouncing around random ideas
Question 1: Can there be a study or even an outreach to what Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburgh and Miami in addition to other similar urban P4 schools do in order to increase attendance and the overall fan experience?
Question 2: Is there anyway to switch security companies or at least train security to handle fans better? There have been too many instances of security giving the few people the show up a hard time over menial things.
Question 3: Are there any plans to organize and improve the tailgating experience? This is one of the main factors that has pushed people away from attending the game.
Question 4: Is it feasible for basic concessions (not the restaurant stuff) to go the Coastal Carolina route and make it all inclusive with the ticket?
Rice has struggled for years with attendance in many of the same ways we are experiencing today. Considering we are rivals and our campuses are only a few miles apart, does Eddie believe the obstacles facing us are mostly unique to us or do we share many of the same challenges as Rice (traffic, weather, etc)
If we have 250,000 alumni in the Houston area, why is it hard to get them to come to the games? We are getting our diehard alumni to the games, but what is the problem to contact the others to come to the games?
If we get more alums to come to the games, it will be packed. I assume UH does not have contact info on them.
We need a really good marketing consultant.
Does a large part of our alumni prefer soccer over American football? These are things we need to know in order to fix the problem.
Prob, soccer is easier to follow and ends quicker…I like both, but def prefer soccer and basketball, another thing is that a lot of UH alumni are family first…those events always take priority, especially if you have a lot of extended family and friends in town lol
This isn’t that hard. Tom Herman, regardless how much he left a bad taste in our guts, was an energetic salesman. He rallied up students and alums. Of course how the team played was part of it. We’ve filled the stands before we can use Herman’s antics and ways as a business case
The tv timeouts after nearly every posession make the flow of the game not enjoyable. 3:05 seconds worth of commercials.
Basketball has them at 16:00, 12:00, 8:00, and 4:00 mark.
That’s 8 per game plus timeouts.
Football has probably 12 per game plus timeouts.
I found NFL games are about 3 hours, college football games are 3 hours 22 minutes, and college basketball games are 2 hours.
MLB put in the pitch count to shorten the game time. College football has done away with the 1st down stoppage of clock unless you are under 2 minutes in either half.
Ask him about finishing out concourses on upper levels, escalator to upper levels. I sit up there any I see elderly people and out of shape people struggling to get up the stairs then have to climb up the stadium, then they have to do it again to go to restroom and concessions. This should be the #1 priority I know for a fact people say they aren’t coming back due to these factors, finish out the stadium and I think people will be more likely to return
Lots of good suggestions, hard to top many of them. I would like to commend him for assigning a go-to CP rep for CP members. Has made a huge difference in communicating when necessary to reach out.
