With a city as large as Houston, you have to have a team that wins to draw fans. This is not college town USA where the university is the only game in town. There is competition for the entertainment dollar. Even when UH was winning in the AAC there lacked the rivalry aspect that brings fans to games.
While we sometimes view this through a UH lense, Houston fans are the same with their professional sports. They won’t show up to see a losing team. Start winning and they will come out.
The city should only let high ROI citizens move into Houston.
Last year the season ticket numbers had thousands of people buying tickets to sell. Most of those won’t be returning this year due to no $$$ game… It will help because the average fan will be able to get somewhat decent albeit upperdeck seats for reasonable from the ticket office direct, the ticket office will have more seats to run promos on, and there will not be thousands of empty sold seats like we had at every game but UT and TCU last year.
Also this will be the second season in a row where we don’t have midday games in September it looks like so hopefully we can start building back our casual core.
I think getting UT at home last year was terrible for our season ticket base because it created a demand that was not real, people that did not buy early got to overpay for bad seats.
Attendance is going to suck again, but hopefully it can start rebuilding in a sustainable way. Oh and also if that one guy who repeated he was going to stop going to the game unless we fire Dana comes back we will have 20,001 at our games.
Houston new migration policy:
All new and future Houstonians must be high net worth donors to the city.
Houstonians unable to donate will be relegated to Waco or Lubbock.
Perhaps Waco and Lubbock goes to Private Equity or gets an Allstate Insurance sponsorship to catchup to the Greater Houston area?
Well done!!
Someone did get fired over it. His name was Pez.
I did not renew my season tickets. Fight me.
I’ll stick with BBall until a see something worth spending my money on.
On principle, I could not renew higher priced season tickets coming off a 4-8 season. I had no problem renewing my seats for basketball. I’ll go to some individual football games, and will be hoping for Coach Fritz & Co. to exceed expectations. But renewing my seats for 2024 was 100% out of the question.
You forgot the big ones:
Opponent not a draw
Offence is not electric
Atmosphere is boring
and the kicker, my kids have a soccer game!
Kids futbol game > UH football, until UH gets better, 7 years of meh
And…
Beer prices are too high.
Need escalators to reach seats
Skimming back through this thread and one thing came to mind - the chicken or the egg.
“fans” wont buy season tickets until the team is winning, but the good players wont come until there are fans in the stands.
Coaches, players, administrators come and go all the time.
The fans need to be there regardless of who is on the headset, the field, the court, in office, etc.
Ever since I graduated in 2012, I went through 4 head coaches and about to start on my 5th.
I remember driving to the WVU game last year talking to my wife on the phone. She said I didn’t sound excited to go. I told her I had no desire, but with as few fans as we have I don’t like to miss games. I didn’t cheer one time until the hail mary. Probably wouldn’t have made a peep then either if not for the WVU fans taunting us when it looked like they had it wrapped up.
I would have put an old couch in their section to see their reaction lol.
We deserve to be here because we were originally in the SWC. However, not being able to fill 40,000 seats in our city is unacceptable. We need a packed house every game… it’s good for income, recruiting, home-field advantage, and looks on TV. But I always say, attendance is a result of the product on the field.
No, we were originally in other conferences, then independent.
They will if you offer them the highest NIL. The school needs to overcome the lack of fans by overpaying in NIL. That is why fundraising is so critical.
We have never had great attendance, but we’ve had some pretty great teams and players that came here. A couple of years we have had good attendance, but since I have been a Coog, we have never had a year when every football game was sold out and often games listed as sold out had empty spots in the stadium
I’m one of those old-timer fans who have been buying season football tickets, donating to athletics, and actually attending almost every home game for over 50 years. [I’m not asking for any gratitude by disclosing that.] During that time, I’ve experienced some great seasons that turned into great memories but also some bad (and really bad) seasons that I’d rather just forget. In other words, win or lose, I’ve supported UH football, Why? I’m very loyal to the University of Houston because I am grateful that it offered me a chance to obtain a great educational experience that has enriched my life in so many ways.
Yet how can I now be expected to not only continue my already fairly high level of support and also contribute to pay NIL to football players who are not motivated by loyalty to the University of Houston, but instead are essentially temporary seasonal employees?
I am not stuck in the past or naive, and I understand that the collegiate athletics business model has changed. The “name of the game” is no longer sports, it’s money. Whoever spends the most money on players is going to win (except for the Aggies, who seem to always find a way to lose in spite of the big piles of cash that they coat everything with). And I recognize that’s it has always been that way in the past at least for rich schools.
Three things come to mind from what I’ve described above. One is that I don’t have to like this “new way of doing things” or participate in it. Another is, butts in the seats looks great on TV and helps greatly with revenue from athletics, but it won’t guaranty a consistent winner. It’s now semi-professional athletics and money will buy winners. The third is the people who don’t renew their season tickets. not because they can’t actually afford to, but because they feel they need some extra motivation to support UH football (like winning alot) won’t contribute to NIL either.
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