Interesting read...
For the past several years, college athletics administrators and football coaches have lamented the decline of student attendance.
Everything from a lack of internet access in stadiums to ticket prices to quality of opponents had been posited as reasons even the biggest football schools had seen their attendance decline.
Now those schools will have some answers. A comprehensive report, "Student Attendance at Collegiate Sporting Events," commissioned by the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators (NACMA) and the University of Oregon's Warsaw Sports Marketing Center and released Friday can help schools focus their efforts to engage students.
"It's definitely a huge concern to capture their attention and get them to games while they're in school because once you lose them, it's that much harder to increase that fandom," said lead investigator Andrew Guerra, who received his MBA from Oregon this month.
"You can get fans there but if they're not engaged in the game, not only does it deplete the fan experience but it depletes the home-field advantage that these teams have."
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College administrators have fretted over a decline in student attendance even as football has never been more profitable. Alabama coach Nick Saban opined two years ago that if his players are expected to stay for 60 minutes, so, too, should the fans. Michigan has seen a steep decline in student attendance after raising season-ticket prices.
A report from The Wall Street Journal before the start of the 2014 season found that since 2009 student attendance at college football games decreased 7.1%. The newspaper analyzed turnstile records from about 50 public schools.
Guerra's report was compiled from survey data from 18,876 students at schools in 32 conferences, including all of the Power Five. It was sent out to all students at those schools, not just the ones who attended games, and primarily focused on attendance at football and men's basketball games.
It investigated what influences attendance, such as competing activities, viewing preferences, social media and behavioral monitors, among other things.
Among the key findings:
— Average student affinity was 7.1 out of 10, with 81% of students attending at least one live sporting event.
— Interest in the sport, game time, ticket price, opponent and team record were the most influential in students' determination whether to attend a sporting event.
— Students indicated their favorite parts of the game-day experience were watching live game action (23%), in-stadium atmosphere (17%) and tailgating (15%). Of overall respondents, 28% chose stadium and concession food as the most enjoyable part of attending home games, with that option ranking first among Power Five and FBS schools.
— Of students who follow the team on Facebook, 72% attended three or more home football games. Of those who didn't, 44% attended three or more games. Facebook followers of teams were 63% more likely to attend three or more home games than students who didn't follow the team on Facebook, and that trend held for other social media. Twitter (61%), Snapchat (47%) and Instagram (48%) made students more likely to attend three or more home games.
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— Students who said WiFi connectivity was not important in their decision to attend games did so at a higher rate than students who said it was.
— Although 67% of students agreed watching games is "more comfortable at home," it scored lower than 2.5 on a scale of 5 on how likely it would be to prevent game attendance.
— Personal errands, hanging out with friends and family and using the internet were the biggest competing interests in deciding whether students attended three or more games.
— Nearly a quarter of respondents reported leaving before a game is 75% complete. Potential incentives for them to stay for the entire game included free T-shirts, a sponsored post-game party, loyalty points and concession discounts, in that order. Loyalty points and meet and greets with players yielded the strongest results.
Perhaps most notably, technology presents both a threat and asset to student attendance. The correlation between social media interaction and game attendance was noteworthy, Guerra said.
But so was the experience fans can get from HD televisions that can give students better views than they get in the stadium.
"They have all the access to the game that they need at their fingertips when they're just sitting on the couch," Guerra said. "You have to make the game a better experience than the home viewing experience, and right now if you have to pay for tickets, you have to pay for parking, the seats aren't comfortable, it's easier just to watch the game at home from your couch.
"(Technology is) nothing that's going away soon. You know and I know that it's here to stay, so I don't know if they fight it or if they work in coordination to try to leverage it."
Craig Pintens, Oregon's senior associate athletic director for marketing and public relations, said schools that participated can get a statistical analysis on their own students for a nominal fee.
While this research is something NACMA plans to continue, this report gives a critical first look in how athletic departments can respond, Pintens said.
"I think everything's on the table because you have to figure out what's going to work at your particular school," he said.
"We have to find a way to get them into our stadiums and arenas because we don't want to be standing here 10 to 20 years from now and looking around and wondering where our fans went."
http://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nc.../29132141/
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Study: How to get college students to football games
