I don’t propose to solve the entire attendance issue. But I do have a few solutions that can help.
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Maybe the “pink popped-collar boat shoes” AD could do some surveys at the games and address the biggest issues?
Oh wait. The disappointed ones aren’t attending…
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Adjusting ticket, parking and concession prices is low-hanging fruit, imo. Should have been done the minute they realized how poor season ticket sales were.
But we need more. We need to build a sustainable base of students who come to all of the games while in school and look for reasons to keep doing it afterwards.
Start by talking to the students who came to some games but have ditched the last two and find out why. Dig into why the game wasn’t important or interesting enough to go. And talk to the students who are showing up to find out what brings them back.
Do the same thing with other groups (5/10/15 years out of school) if you can, but the students are a captive audience - just put in the work and take meaningful action. I haven’t seen an AD do both of those yet, and it shows.
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The parking discount for showing up early is a good idea. The AD in general needs to realize that in College Football, game day is the full day.
I think the concern with offering the unsold seats at notably cheap prices is that there are some portion of fans currently paying for their seats who would move into cheaper seats if available. In that way, lowering the price of those sections could realistically cost the school money, if it fails to attract sufficient new fans.
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We simply do not have any generational traditions.
We’ve always had bad attendance, but the 20+ years of being a G5 school along with poor academic rankings resulted in a generation or two of alums who simply did not care / do not care about athletics unless they are legitimately elite like basketball.
We are still a school that struggled with school spirit because we are still the school that people don’t want to go to but end up enrolling because they didn’t get accepted into UT. The other large issue is that kids come here to save money, get a degree, and get it over with. I’m not saying they’re wrong for this, because there’s no obligation at any school to support athletics.
We simply do not have generational tradition. It will take multiple years of success for fans to consistently come out and support UH.
The other issue is just bad marketing. HTownTakeover was one of the greatest marketing campaigns we ever had, and we haven’t been able to capture it since.
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It will also take keeping “traditions” for more than a season or two. I never really knew what was going on with the chain thing that the team and students did back in the Herman seasons, but it definitely engaged the student section and led into the entrance show. Where did that go?
Part of what draws alumni back is experiencing the stuff that they remembered from when they were in school. Right now, our games pretty much just remind them of the traffic, parking and price-gouging.
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#1 issue is the time. Morning games and games on Thursdays don’t work with many people. If you look at Sat games like Colorado and Tech (37k+ and 43k+ fans), Saturday evenings bring the best crowds. I’m not sure how that works if we can change the times.
#2 I think inviting more schools/students and their families can help fill empty seats.
#3 Selling family package deals with food is another way.
#4 $30 parking is steep. Cutting those prices.
#5 UH is working on the student population. The student population is the future for growth in our games. Continue to focus on students. I liked how the student section had free t-shirts this past game.
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I mentioned this in the other thread, we need more bandwagon fans:
I went to the UH vs OU game last season in Norman.
All the OU fans near me never went to OU.
Ohio state, Michigan, all the SEC schools, and especially UT get a lot support from people who never attended these Universities…
I knew a cop who went to Tyler community college and was a huge UT fan.
That’s where UH struggles, we struggle to get the bandwagon fan.
Need to increase our target market/audience
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Schools do not choose game times. Part of the $$$ from the Big 12 is the networks’ right to choose game times.
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Hoards of people will drive to College Station, spend the time to go to a football game, we have 300K alumni in the area and cant get them to drive across the city for a game lol
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Did it? As a student at the time I remember thinking it was dumb and nobody even knew the words. Pretty sure I have comments to that effect on here from the time, or at least I did on the old Scout board.
$50 park at blue lot, $10 for soda, $20 beer, and the prices go on and on. The ticket prices woudlnt be bad if UH didnt gouge on all the game day prices. Not to mention UH moved the alumni tailgate nowhere near the stadium. Have pay to tailgate near stadium. Have all the intermurial fields that could be used as tailgating be a good sight as drive down Cullen entrance. I mentioned this last week but anytime UH starts tradition like O fortuna as an entrance they can it. We get blah entrance music for team that changes every year. There are Youtube vidoes where football programs make the entrance a tradition like Virginia Tech.
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Offer everything we can that fans can’t get staying at home. Halftime drone shows, firework display after regulation, large pre game venue close to the stadium with live music and cheap food and drinks free entry for anyone with a game ticket…
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I wasn’t in the student section, but whatever they were doing generated a lot of participation among a group of students that doesn’t even show up until kickoff now. So it did something right.
That’s unfortunate. We sat next to the student section and talked with some of the students. Many of them partied Friday Halloween night. A majority of the students, except the ones up front, were are sitting down. Not an excuse but the reality of these games in Houston, where there’s so many things to do.
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We have probably 20k true diehards? All UH does is milk that 20k. Keep making us pay. Eventually we’ll reach the breaking point.
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What was different during the Tom Herman days? The stadium was filled up and UH wasn’t even in a Power Conference. The next two coaches Applewhite & Holgorsen sucked the life out of the fan base and still haven’t recovered. The Athletic department needs to think real hard this offseason how to re-gain the momentum back…
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Colorado was on a Friday evening but the point remains the same
We didn’t fill up the stadium in 2015 until the Memphis game which was mid-November.
Herman had to go on a rant about this.
This is the answer. Although I personally kinda hate drone shows and think they’re a poor substitute for fireworks.
UH’s administration doesn’t seem to understand that they’re competing with staying at home and watching the game on TV. We need to figure out a way to make attending the game worth fans’ money and more importantly their effort.
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