Attendance trending downward

#1
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bballnut90

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#1
Hadn't seen this discussed on here in much detail so I thought it was worth mentioning. Here are the attendance figures from 2008-present. Every year from 2000-2008 had attendance between 12,000 and 16,000 on average:
2008: 15,796...coming off a National Championship and it was the last year with arguably the best class in school history (Parker/Hornbuckle/Anosike/Bobbitt/Auguste)

2009: 13,999...Ended up being the worst season of Pat's career, but attendance stayed strong coming off another National Championship and the incoming #1 class.

2010: 12,896....attendance dropped after disappointing season previously. Still far and away #1 in country.

2011: 12,599...attendance remained steady, slight dip.

2012: 14,414....boost in attendance with the probability that it was going to be Pat's last year coaching. Team also has loaded senior class.

2013: 11,390...officially the start of the Warlick area. No surprise that attendance is down with Pat no longer on the bench and losing a lot to graduation.

2014: 11,038...attendance dips a bit after Tennessee put together a better than expected 2013 season and managed to get a 1 seed in the tournament in 2014.

2015: 10,375....noticeable drop off from 2014. Not sure of the reason why other than guessing it's due to Final Four drought and mediocre quality of play despite having good results

2016: 10,412...attendance holds well. Guessing much of this is due to the addition of Diamond Deshields and the anticipation of having a good season. Season ends up being a disaster.

2017: 9,184....noticeable drop in attendance after a dreadful 2016 season. Results are still disappointing.

2018: 8,778...another dip despite having hype of strong freshman class and 2 very good seniors on the roster.


Since Holly's first season, attendance is down 23% and steadily declining. This year, Holly has, on paper, her weakest roster ever and the program is coming off its 3rd straight disappointing season...how low will attendance drop and how far does the program need to sink before anyone in the AD does anything?
 
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#3
#3
Agree with a lot of this, but...have you looked at the cost of tickets, parking, donations required? Someone may have exact data, but I believe all are much higher than when Pat was here and the team was very successful. Even factoring in inflation. The “quality”/success has definitely gone down, but UT expects fans to increase dollars. That is generally not a good idea. We have always considered ourselves die hard fans, but with the costs increasing, services decreasing (don’t mean play, services), and UT’s attitude towards fans and alumni we are considering watching them at home after this year. Maybe with Phil it will get back to more the old feel, would be nice, but doubt it happens. Another thing, Pat worked valiantly to build the fan base, encouraging families, youth teams etc. to attend. That is not done now, and I hate to say it, but a fan base ages. New fans need to keep coming in or nature finally completes its process of attrition. Tennessee does not seem to particularly care one way or the other.
 
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#4
#4
bballnut90 said:
Hadn't seen this discussed on here in much detail so I thought it was worth mentioning. Here are the attendance figures from 2008-present. Every year from 2000-2008 had attendance between 12,000 and 16,000 on average:
2008: 15,796...coming off a National Championship and it was the last year with arguably the best class in school history (Parker/Hornbuckle/Anosike/Bobbitt/Auguste)

2009: 13,999...Ended up being the worst season of Pat's career, but attendance stayed strong coming off another National Championship and the incoming #1 class.

2010: 12,896....attendance dropped after disappointing season previously. Still far and away #1 in country.

2011: 12,599...attendance remained steady, slight dip.

2012: 14,414....boost in attendance with the probability that it was going to be Pat's last year coaching. Team also has loaded senior class.

2013: 11,390...officially the start of the Warlick area. No surprise that attendance is down with Pat no longer on the bench and losing a lot to graduation.

2014: 11,038...attendance dips a bit after Tennessee put together a better than expected 2013 season and managed to get a 1 seed in the tournament in 2014.

2015: 10,375....noticeable drop off from 2014. Not sure of the reason why other than guessing it's due to Final Four drought and mediocre quality of play despite having good results

2016: 10,412...attendance holds well. Guessing much of this is due to the addition of Diamond Deshields and the anticipation of having a good season. Season ends up being a disaster.

2017: 9,184....noticeable drop in attendance after a dreadful 2016 season. Results are still disappointing.

2018: 8,778...another dip despite having hype of strong freshman class and 2 very good seniors on the roster.


Since Holly's first season, attendance is down 23% and steadily declining. This year, Holly has, on paper, her weakest roster ever and the program is coming off its 3rd straight disappointing season...how low will attendance drop and how far does the program need to sink before anyone in the AD does anything?
Click to expand...

What is your source for the 2017-2018 attendance figures?
 
#6
#6
Smallvol#1 said:
Agree with a lot of this, but...have you looked at the cost of tickets, parking, donations required? Someone may have exact data, but I believe all are much higher than when Pat was here and the team was very successful. Even factoring in inflation. The “quality”/success has definitely gone down, but UT expects fans to increase dollars. That is generally not a good idea. We have always considered ourselves die hard fans, but with the costs increasing, services decreasing (don’t mean play, services), and UT’s attitude towards fans and alumni we are considering watching them at home after this year. Maybe with Phil it will get back to more the old feel, would be nice, but doubt it happens. Another thing, Pat worked valiantly to build the fan base, encouraging families, youth teams etc. to attend. That is not done now, and I hate to say it, but a fan base ages. New fans need to keep coming in or nature finally completes its process of attrition. Tennessee does not seem to particularly care one way or the other.
Click to expand...

It would be insanity to not factor team performance into the attendance, but I can't underscore how much the factors above play in as well.

Another major factor? Many fans that held season tickets either died off or just got too old to show up. I personally could list you 100 people I know or knew personally that fell into these categories. At the same time, UT quit marketing the games as affordable to young families. It wasn't that long ago that both ends were general admission that made it attractive for families to buy single game tickets and show up early. They cut that out to sell those seats as season tickets (with a required donation) in 2008. The slide above began at the same time.

Short term decisions like that have long term effects and the one here is that as season ticket holders died, there weren't families used to coming to single games to pick up as new season ticket buyers.
 
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#7
#7
Marketing all sports for the young singles and young adult families - similar to Deer Parks example. In Cincinnati the A-level soccer league is attracting far more of those two cohorts than professional baseball. Another marketing ploy would be to attract the next generation of just turning senior fans.

DeerPark how many season ticket holders are there ? and do the number of tickets sold equal attendance or tickets torn at the gates?
 
#9
#9
It seems to go back to utad making poor decisions again. I love watching the Lady Vols and I want to see them bounce back just as much as any other sport.
 
#10
#10
bballnut90 said:
Since Holly's first season, attendance is down 23% and steadily declining. This year, Holly has, on paper, her weakest roster ever and the program is coming off its 3rd straight disappointing season...how low will attendance drop and how far does the program need to sink before anyone in the AD does anything?
Click to expand...



I disagree completely about the roster being weakest. In fact, this is the type of team CHW should have had all along...Run, gun, fun. . . . With...No player that is the "scoring focus"

This team is full of 6 foot plus tall athletes that can play basketball. Coached right, they're a matchup nightmare...They can play: Power, speed, finesse, fast-break, full-court press,,,and they have a few finishers and all 6'+ tall (cept one, but she plays tall).

I am thinking of doing analysis on a post. A breakdown of what I see in each player (S/W's)., the team and the staff....Kinda, ... get the ball rolling.
 
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#12
#12
Coach Jumper said:
I disagree completely about the roster being weakest. In fact, this is the type of team CHW should have had all along...Run, gun, fun. . . . With...No player that is the "scoring focus"

This team is full of 6 foot plus tall athletes that can play basketball. Coached right, they're a matchup nightmare...They can play: Power, speed, finesse, fast-break, full-court press,,,and they have a few finishers and all 6'+ tall (cept one, but she plays tall).

I am thinking of doing analysis on a post. A breakdown of what I see in each player (S/W's)., the team and the staff....Kinda, ... get the ball rolling.
Click to expand...

Would love to see that post. I hope you’re right, but I just don’t see it. On paper Tennessee has just three players who were top 10 recruits and we have no experience in the post. On the roster as a whole, outside of Meme and Kamera, all players are in their first or 2nd year playing for Holly. Holly has had better rosters the last 4-5 years in terms of balance, experience, and player ranking. I hope this is either the season Holly turns things around or finally gets the boot.
 
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#13
#13
Winning more will increase attendance getting back to 16000 probably won't ever happen. Pat had developed a following and they were caught up in winning every season either a SEC titles, a tourney title, a National Championship. We get back to that attendance will go up not to where it was when she was coach.
 
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#15
#15
stllvf said:
Marketing all sports for the young singles and young adult families - similar to Deer Parks example. In Cincinnati the A-level soccer league is attracting far more of those two cohorts than professional baseball. Another marketing ploy would be to attract the next generation of just turning senior fans.

DeerPark how many season ticket holders are there ? and do the number of tickets sold equal attendance or tickets torn at the gates?
Click to expand...

Last year there were about 8,000 season tickets sold. So that's your baseline number for every game. The SEC (and now NCAA) standard is that all schools report the number of tickets sold (which is actually tickets sold+"event number" which is staff and other people physically in the building), so that's the number you see listed in the box score for every school.
 
#16
#16
Smallvol#1 said:
Agree with a lot of this, but...have you looked at the cost of tickets, parking, donations required? Someone may have exact data, but I believe all are much higher than when Pat was here and the team was very successful. Even factoring in inflation. The “quality”/success has definitely gone down, but UT expects fans to increase dollars. That is generally not a good idea. We have always considered ourselves die hard fans, but with the costs increasing, services decreasing (don’t mean play, services), and UT’s attitude towards fans and alumni we are considering watching them at home after this year. Maybe with Phil it will get back to more the old feel, would be nice, but doubt it happens. Another thing, Pat worked valiantly to build the fan base, encouraging families, youth teams etc. to attend. That is not done now, and I hate to say it, but a fan base ages. New fans need to keep coming in or nature finally completes its process of attrition. Tennessee does not seem to particularly care one way or the other.
Click to expand...

Pls,, say the truth when u sees it. U trying to tell me that over the years that lady vols was #1 in attendance that their tickets that time was $2? even a new born knows it wasn't.
 
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#18
#18
Not surprised. When people lose excitement and feels like there is no chance of winning a title despite how much talent they have, then they are reluctant to shell out a lot of money to go to the games. Heck, most of them are televised. Improve the product, drum up the excitement, people will come.
 
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#20
#20
The only thing to change this i think is to fire Holly Warlick and bring in new blood and ideas at head coach
 
#21
#21
sisaq said:
Pls,, say the truth when u sees it. U trying to tell me that over the years that lady vols was #1 in attendance that their tickets that time was $2? even a new born knows it wasn't.
Click to expand...

When Tennessee has its highest attendance numbers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were a large amount of general admission tickets that could be purchased at a local convenience store chain for $3. So I think we’re saying almost exactly that.
 
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#22
#22
DeerPark12 said:
When Tennessee has its highest attendance numbers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were a large amount of general admission tickets that could be purchased at a local convenience store chain for $3. So I think we’re saying almost exactly that.
Click to expand...

Also, there were walk-up 5$ general admission tickets available for every home game for the past few seasons
 
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#25
#25
Pruitt Will Do It said:
The Tennessee Women's Basketball program has fallen off badly since Holly took over from Pat.
Click to expand...

Speaking of, impossible to impress...RIP Coach PS

Only the "gamesmanship" has suffered.
The talent is still lining up to be a lady vol and the "heart to get better is still evident in the players".

Sometimes, to get control, you have to give control.
Is she empowering those around her,
or
 
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