You don’t think that getting into a P5 with the increased recruiting, chance to play in big money bowls, be ranked, and play schools like UCLA, Oregon, be able to play for a natty, etc. would not increase our attendance? Really?
In my humble but strongly held opinion, we need to quit waiting for some event to fix out attendance.
As it stands now and how it has always been, we can draw big crowds when we have a good team and we are playing another good team. If either of those two things are not present we don’t draw. There is no sense debating it, because the facts are the facts. New stadium? did it, didn’t help. Comfort in the stadium? hell we played in the Dome, it didn’t help.
Ok so if we want to consistently draw big crowds we have to figure out what Houston wants and stop wringing our hands and wishing for deliverance that will help our attendance.
Can we get 40,000 Houstonians to come out on a Saturday 6 times a year. Absolutely we can, but just a football game by itself is not going to do it. Unless of course the Coogs are good and the team we are playing is good.
So is there anything in Houston that we can point to where people will show up in large numbers and it isn’t always about the quality of the sporting event? Yep, the Rodeo. I have never given a rat’s rear end about a Rodeo and couldn’t begin to tell you who won or what they won. But 70,000 people show up every night, including weekday nights.
People go to the Rodeo because of everything surrounding the event. Not the event. So we need to do a much better job of beefing up tailgating and making it the most fun for every age so people come out for the event. Tailgating was becoming a “thing” before the IPF. In fact large crowds were outside the stadium during the game when the tailgating was around the stadium. Now it is fragmented and spread out. We need to figure that out.
It can be done, we just haven’t done it. But we need to stop thinking of it as a football game and think of it as an event surrounding a football game.
Heck, more people attended the XFL Houston Roughneck games at TDECU than recent UH home football games. Some argue that desperate FB fans will attend/watch spring football, so it’s like comparing apples to oranges, but I still have a hard time believing we can’t pull a steady 25K to home games.
100% agree with you.
Don’t you all find the following ironic?
Mr. Tillman Fertitta is Mr. entertainment. Can somebody explain to me why there has not been a “joint venture” about creating a better game day experience, a better marketing plan attracting fans and customers. Can somebody explain to me why there has not been a better marketing plan “selling” our sporting events?
Is Mr. Fertitta or Landrys, Inc involved with the above or not? I surely would like to know.
Big thing in our favor is that Oliver won’t want to destroy the big12 by asking UT that already turned them down and to hurt west vir so he likely expands with UH, Tech then maybe New Mexico and one other to gain the tx market and not hurt the big 12.
I don’t think any P5’s are going to expand. That’s not just UH, but UCF, Memphis, Cincy and every other group of 5 program. The only expansion I see on the horizon is playoff expansion.
Take a P5 program with an average attendance of 50k. Then take a conservative average of $20 a ticket for 7 home games. That’s 7 million dollars a year and I’m not even including concessions and luxury suites. Side note: a large group of P5 programs have an average attendance waaaaay higher than 50k and charge a lot more than $20 per ticket.
The point I’m making is that ticket sales is still a HUGE revenue stream for athletic departments. If PAC 12 administrators see empty seats at UH home games, why should they be confident that UH fans will sellout their ticket allotment for PAC 12 road games?