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Post by Retired Coach on Mar 30, 2014 16:26:35 GMT -5
Since WSU will probably never have football and all the expenses that come with it they should therefore have more capital to put into the basketball budget and expect more of their basketball team. As I said before I would give two free paper tickets to every student that wanted them (the "free tickets" would be paid from a portion of the students tuition) and if they don't want to go to the game they can give them away. I would also lower ticket prices to as low as $5 for the upper third of the Nutter and no more than $10 for most of the remaining seats. I would drastically lower concession prices. The lower prices would pack the house, have you ever been to a Reds game and seen the hundreds of people standing in line for an hour for the $1 dog line, it is ridiculous, but it works. People would see the huge crowds and want to come see what all the fuss is about. All of a sudden people are talking all over the country about how WSU is packing 9,000 to 10,000 folks into the Nutter year after year to watch mid-major basketball. WSU followers would be proud to be a part of this growing reputation that WSU fans are rabid and astute, as a result, the good pub and the following continues to build. Most of the people I know don't want to attend WSU games because they think the prices are too high for tickets and concessions. They complain about the parking. They complain about the long concession lines. They complain about the lack of quality half time entertainment. WSU needs to dream big or go home. This constant state of mediocrity and fear of failure drives me nuts. Think big. It's all about marketing, supply and demand. WSU tickets are not in demand. Lower prices to get folks to come. As perception, perceived value, of the product increases, in the future ticket prices can be slowly raised. I won't go into all the marketing strategy that can be employed here, but needless to say, the size of our crowds are pathetic, and something needs to change drastically to push the Raider basketball experience into the right direction. My discussion didn't even touch upon the quality of the basketball on the court which is pretty good, but the overall experience is lacking. I'm going to guess that you weren't a business major in college. When you have a business you have to make enough revenue to cover your costs. This is especially true for a business where you cannot work in the red. Wright State's athletic department cannot just take out loans at the end of the year if we don't make our budget. We have to work in the black. To do any of the things you listed above, you have to greatly increase fan support to cut costs. You want to lower ticket prices and lower concession stand prices. That all comes at a cost. If you cut ticket prices in 1/2, you have to sell twice as many tickets just to equal the same revenue we made last year. If you cut concession stand prices you have to sell more than twice as much at the concession stands to make up for the loss of revenue and the added cost of the additional products you are selling. Our final attendance numbers came out a week or so ago. We ended up averaging a little over 4000 fans a game. If we did what you are asking, we would have to average 8000 fans a game next year just to break even in the deal. We have only averaged that many fans in a single season once. It isn't going to happen. It would be business suicide.
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Post by Wolf on Mar 30, 2014 16:37:29 GMT -5
I agree that we cannot cut ticket prices that drastically, but I do think we should make them more affordable. I would start by giving incentives to becoming a season ticket holder. The whole reason people go shopping at places like Sam's club is that buying in bulk is usually less expensive. They keep coming back because they feel like they are getting a deal. I would start with that philosophy for season ticket sales. We had 16 home games last year counting the exhibition game and we charged season ticket holders full price for all of those games and if you wanted to sit down in the bottom of the arena you also had to add in a donation. Next year if we have 16 home games, I would charge season ticket holders the cost of 12 of those games. We also sold mini packs for fans that wanted to buy tickets for multiple games. I would sell those at a discount too. Let fans buy tickets to 4 games for the price of 3. Both options encourage fans to come to more games and make them feel like they got a bargain.
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Post by wsutommygun on Mar 30, 2014 19:06:39 GMT -5
Big D or someone please clear something up, WSU athletics ( probably part of the basketball budget ) used to rent the Nutter Center for games. Is that still true? Who has say in concession prices ( such as, does basketball get any of the money )? I am under the impression from previous posts that we no longer have groups ( such as maybe some high school band or sports team ) work the concessions for a cut. Does that effect any profit ( such as if the Nutter Center keeps the money is the "rent" lower or do they pay the workers more than the "volunteers" used to get? I like that you can use a credit card but, have to be pretty hungry to get something ( usually not as much as I'd like to get though ).
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Post by uptempo on Mar 30, 2014 19:21:00 GMT -5
Actually I was a business major in college, marketing WSU. As a business major I know that most business ventures don't turn a profit for the first five years or more. Running a business or a college basketball program is not for the timid. Like I said, lower prices in the short run, grow the popularity of your product, and than you can slowly raise prices in the future to generate a little more income. Plus this is not a business, it is a public University, finances are totally different. Right or wrong a successful athletic department is almost more important than academics at selling your university. When my kids were looking at Universities I found it sad that OSU, U.C., and U.D. spent more time talking about their athletic heritage than scholastic achievements during the campus visits. Not sure why you feel that it is okay for this program to keep bleeding, if attendance was once 8,000, even if only for one year, and now you are at 4,000, this is horrible, you should not be content with the status quo. It's all about supply and demand and right now there is not a whole lot of demand.
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Post by uptempo on Mar 30, 2014 19:27:08 GMT -5
Big D or someone please clear something up, WSU athletics ( probably part of the basketball budget ) used to rent the Nutter Center for games. Is that still true? Who has say in concession prices ( such as, does basketball get any of the money )? I am under the impression from previous posts that we no longer have groups ( such as maybe some high school band or sports team ) work the concessions for a cut. Does that effect any profit ( such as if the Nutter Center keeps the money is the "rent" lower or do they pay the workers more than the "volunteers" used to get? I like that you can use a credit card but, have to be pretty hungry to get something ( usually not as much as I'd like to get though ). Good question. Back in the early years of the Nutter Center a lot of my friends wives would work the concession stands to support non profit groups, and a lot of the husbands/family that would not normally attend WSU games would come out to support their charity or school. Thus, increased attendance.
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Post by Big D on Mar 30, 2014 19:49:58 GMT -5
Big D or someone please clear something up, WSU athletics ( probably part of the basketball budget ) used to rent the Nutter Center for games. Is that still true? Who has say in concession prices ( such as, does basketball get any of the money )? I am under the impression from previous posts that we no longer have groups ( such as maybe some high school band or sports team ) work the concessions for a cut. Does that effect any profit ( such as if the Nutter Center keeps the money is the "rent" lower or do they pay the workers more than the "volunteers" used to get? I like that you can use a credit card but, have to be pretty hungry to get something ( usually not as much as I'd like to get though ). Tommy, The AD pays rent to the NC out of our budget to help cover the operational costs of the Nutter Center. The concession stands are run in house now instead of through volunteer organizations that get a piece of the pie. All revenue from concession stand sales goes to the NC to cover it's operational costs.
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Post by Big D on Mar 30, 2014 20:04:51 GMT -5
Plus this is not a business, it is a public University, finances are totally different. You are right. University finances are not like those of a private business. You mentioned that most businesses lose money their first 5 years. A public university does not have that option. You have to cover your costs or it comes out of your budget the next year. Not sure why you feel that it is okay for this program to keep bleeding, if attendance was once 8,000, even if only for one year, and now you are at 4,000, this is horrible, you should not be content with the status quo. It's all about supply and demand and right now there is not a whole lot of demand. I don't know how long you have followed WSU hoops, but back when we averaged 8000, probably less than 1/2 of those in attendance paid a dime. We gave away tons of tickets trying to fill the stands hoping those people would return as paying customers in the future. It was a concept that never really worked. It's kind of like the HLN. They thought that if we gave people free access to watch us online it would hook people and they would start attending games. Attendance has not increased since we have been on the HLN. Online viewership is at an all time high, but it isn't helping our attendance or finances. If we have more success on the court and play better competition, fans will come. Even if we drop prices, attendance isn't going to increase enough to make up what we will lose in the price drop if we keep playing the same crappy schedule.
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Post by wsutommygun on Mar 30, 2014 20:11:13 GMT -5
Big D, thanks. I was pretty sure that was the answer. As far as the people that post, I thought it was important to know how it worked and perhaps who or who not to blame for the concessions part. I think I did get a couple of hot dogs the night things were half price...there were a lot of nights I didn't eat until 10 or 11.
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Post by uptempo on Mar 30, 2014 23:39:46 GMT -5
I've been going to Wright State games since Marcus Jackson was coach. When I attended WSU I used my "Free Tickets" to go to the games. After I graduated I became a season ticket holder and started to pay for tickets. Big D, according to your argument back when we had 8,000 fans only half paid for the tickets, leaving 4,000 paying customers, isn't that where we are today? I would bet that many of the fans with free tickets consumed food at the concession stands and told their friends about going to the WSU games. Word of mouth is still an excellent form of advertisement. Now we have 4,000 fans in a 10,000 plus seat arena, it looks like 2,000 fans, especially in comparison to other places that have a full house at 13,000 plus. My son goes to WSU games whenever he is home and he attends OSU. He goes to WSU games because he was raised to be a Raider fan. In order to get the fan base to grow you need to draw in the students and then they will hopefully become season ticket holders after graduation. A winning program that goes to the NCAA tourney every 3 to 5 years and occasionally knocks off a big school would also help. When we were Division II we played the big schools tougher than we do now. We are just so average it almost makes you want to give up, but I can't because WSU is my team come rain or come shine.
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Post by hhgreen on Mar 31, 2014 7:25:57 GMT -5
+1 uptempo.
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Post by Big D on Mar 31, 2014 9:29:53 GMT -5
I've been going to Wright State games since Marcus Jackson was coach. When I attended WSU I used my "Free Tickets" to go to the games. After I graduated I became a season ticket holder and started to pay for tickets. Big D, according to your argument back when we had 8,000 fans only half paid for the tickets, leaving 4,000 paying customers, isn't that where we are today? I would bet that many of the fans with free tickets consumed food at the concession stands and told their friends about going to the WSU games. Word of mouth is still an excellent form of advertisement. As I already pointed out above, any money made at the concession stands goes to the NC. WSU athletics gets none of that money so that argument holds no water. We tried it your way by trying as many different forms of giveaways as they could come up with for the last 20 years and attendance hasn't improved so your word of mouth argument holds no water either. In order to get the fan base to grow you need to draw in the students and then they will hopefully become season ticket holders after graduation. We do just about everything possible to get students to come to games except give them class credit for attending games. They get free tickets. They can be bused from their dorms to the Nutter Center for free. We regularly do giveaways for students. A winning program that goes to the NCAA tourney every 3 to 5 years and occasionally knocks off a big school would also help. Thanks for repeating what I have already stated. We need to play better competition and have success against that competition. Everything else is just a gimmick that isn't going to work to help attendance.
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Post by Glory Days on Mar 31, 2014 10:22:03 GMT -5
The key to next season is to put together a good schedule and release it early enough that we can market it for season ticket sales. We also need to market our new players in that process. If you haven't seen some of these guys play you are missing out. If we sent a 2 minute youtube highlight of our new guys to all potential season ticket holders I think it would do wonders to get people excited about next year.
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Post by raiders41 on Mar 31, 2014 12:28:10 GMT -5
We do just about everything possible to get students to come to games except give them class credit for attending games. They get free tickets. They can be bused from their dorms to the Nutter Center for free. We regularly do giveaways for students. I very much disagree with this comment, yes we do giveaway tickets for free to the games and usually 1 t-shirt game a year. But with the exception of those 2 things there is a lackluster effort by the university to get students out to the games. To be honest if I didn't have the schedule memorized I would never know when a game was with the exception of the t-shirt games because those are the only ones that they advertise for. The university puts up these dull green signs on gameday that say "Game tonight at 7:00" that practically blend in with the grass, so if there isn't snow on the ground you're probably not going to see it. I've asked fellow students that I get to go to the games "would you have known there was a game tonight if I didn't tell you?" and every time they say no. Students don't know when the games are, some don't even know we are even a DI program, and some don't even know we have sports here at all!
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Post by Hoops Junkie on Mar 31, 2014 13:19:32 GMT -5
I very much disagree with this comment, yes we do giveaway tickets for free to the games and usually 1 t-shirt game a year. But with the exception of those 2 things there is a lackluster effort by the university to get students out to the games. To be honest if I didn't have the schedule memorized I would never know when a game was with the exception of the t-shirt games because those are the only ones that they advertise for. The university puts up these dull green signs on gameday that say "Game tonight at 7:00" that practically blend in with the grass, so if there isn't snow on the ground you're probably not going to see it. I've asked fellow students that I get to go to the games "would you have known there was a game tonight if I didn't tell you?" and every time they say no. Students don't know when the games are, some don't even know we are even a DI program, and some don't even know we have sports here at all! We had 3 T-shirt giveaways this year. The athletic department sent out e-mails to student's WSU e-mail account before the season and before every home game. They have the Raider Up rewards program to get students to share info about the games on facebook and twitter so they can get that info out to their friends. In the past they had giveaways to students that included 1 free quarter's tuition, TVs, gift cards, etc and student attendance hasn't really benefitted. Wright State has increased student housing over the years but in large part we are still a commuter school. Most of our students work in order to attend school. It doesn't matter what incentives we offer them, they aren't interested in attending basketball games.
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Post by raiders93 on Mar 31, 2014 14:06:00 GMT -5
As a student that's been coming to games as long as I can remember, that is the only reason I come to games. The problem with students is lack of history, lack of excitement, lack of real post season success, under achieving and unsuccessful league, LAME home competition, etc... I agree the advertising for games sucks too. Bland plastic signs on game day (Men's Basketball Game tonight, 7pm, Nutter Center). Three emails this year a day in advance of the game when people already have plans. It's awful.
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