The Bobcat Nation

The Weber State Attendance last weekend was 17.6K. A perennial loser with a 1-10 record last year who is picked last this year had 17.6K attend a game against a Division IIIIII team. And we hope the Cats will set a record with an average of 13K this year. That is Pathetic!!!!!!!!!!!!

gtapp wrote:The Weber State Attendance last weekend was 17.6K. A perennial loser with a 1-10 record last year who is picked last this year had 17.6K attend a game against a Division IIIIII team. And we hope the Cats will set a record with an average of 13K this year. That is Pathetic!!!!!!!!!!!!

If we can keep our stadium sold out for 2 years or so and the program continues to be strong I will see a need to add 5-8000 more seats into Bobcat stadium. It sounds like it will be sold out this year for the opener. That is very good news.

We need to get their marketing director!

Here's the marketing effort they put forth to draw the crowd. Looks like there's lots of cheap tickets involved, but still, kudos to them for getting that many bodies into the stands. Having a military display in the middle of Utah, plus post-game fireworks, probably didn't hurt, either:

http://departments.weber.edu/athletics/ ... Opener.htm

I just noticed that a Family Pass there is six tickets for $20 -- I'm guessing there were lots of kids at the game, which is a good thing looking forward for the program. It's not exactly a huge current revenue-raiser, though. That's the trade-off when you are trying to build a following as opposed to trying to use an established following to grow revenue to improve the program.

Weber is doing excellent work. I hope they keep it up. They hire a well known coach who will be able to entice better recruits, and fans know him and I think he is very well liked.
Get people in the stands, even if you have to give tickets away, because not only do teams hate a bunch of empty seats, but so do fans. And with a ton of empty seats you just don't get the crowd into it as much, and even if they are, who's to notice.
It is like giving them some crack to get them hooked, then when you get enough hooked, you can start charging more. I can't speak to the addictiveness of crack personally, but football is pretty addictive and contagious. You get one fanatic, who drags his friends and family to games, then one of them gets addicted, and drags more people, and pretty soon, those who didn't catch football fever soon enough can't even get a ticket.

So Jah, are you saying you think MSU should try to get more crack addicts to go to their games?

Grizlaw wrote:So Jah, are you saying you think MSU should try to get more crack addicts to go to their games?

ha ha ha ha funny nice one....hey wait a minute!!!

we are not hooked on crack *looks for his stash*

aahhh better!!

Grizlaw wrote:So Jah, are you saying you think MSU should try to get more crack addicts to go to their games?

Come on, we all know that crack isn't addictive -- that's just a myth.

Oh wait, wrong drug ... and wrong thread ... and wrong week.

Grizlaw wrote:So Jah, are you saying you think MSU should try to get more crack addicts to go to their games?

I'm sure they have plenty of those...they might try getting more football addicts though.

I wonder if we should be thinking about getting tickets for the Weber game ASAP if we are going down there for that one. (second week in October). Last time we could have our choice of tickets anywhere in the stadium almost.

Wait till Weber loses 3-4 in a row, it'll drop back to the norm.

A couple of thoughts on the attendance topic here:
1) We are now down to something like $150,000 deficit on our athletic budget. In another year we should hopefully have that paid off. Particularly if we continue to garner larger crowds on Saturdays and hope to host a few playoff games this post season.

2) Currently our capacity crowd is something like 13,500. We actually reduced attendance capability when we re-did the North zone a few years back. But, when we get that deficit taken care of, I've heard Fields talk about his hopes and plans for the next 5-10 years and what he'd like to accomplish for the stadium. I think that timeline can be lower with some of the "money" that I've heard talked around.

3) Continued success from the team and the resulting enthusiasm will mean we can keep getting larger and larger crowds and start working toward that 20,000 number.

You don't make money on playoff games.............unless the increased interest sells more tickets & T shirts the next season. The NCAA takes the profits you cover expense. Don't you cats know this stuff?

Maybe Weber's idea was a good one-maybe not.

I've read in other places that once you start giving your product away you're on your way to failure. You alienate those who have paid full price, and the rest get used to getting something for free (or very little). You end creating a big deficit.

This type of thing has happened a lot in now defunct sports leagues in this country.

Once in a while might be okay, but a team or university has to be careful.

jagur1 wrote:You don't make money on playoff games.............unless the increased interest sells more tickets & T shirts the next season. The NCAA takes the profits you cover expense. Don't you cats know this stuff?

Yeah, but the school still gets the merchandise & concession sales. Every little bit helps. Plus then there is that many more people in town, and the helps strengthen the business partnerships in Bozeman- and that is where some big money is!

jag,

I'm pretty sure Hogan & Co. figured out ways to, shall we say, ENHANCE the expense side of the column? I'm pretty confident the University was better off financially following a playoff game.

I agree Quast I'm just saying game day doesn't add a lot of money to the bottom line to pay of debt. Didn't somebody state bozo is doing so well they could care less about out of town football fans.

jagur1 wrote:I agree Quast I'm just saying game day doesn't add a lot of money to the bottom line to pay of debt. Didn't somebody state bozo is doing so well they could care less about out of town football fans.

Um, yeah... you did. I haven't seen anything anywhere that even closely resembled that remark.

Weber is doing a very good job of marketing, but one other thing played into thier hands. The USU/Nichols State game was cancelled and there were some people at the Weber stadium who would have normally been in Logan, watching the Utah State game.

I would have went the tickets were free.

Bozonecat go back to the time when Bronco was boycotting Bozo and several cat fans said the town won't even miss any money the Griz fans bring in.