(07-08-2023 08:38 AM)goofus Wrote:  I did not read the entire 7-part series documenting the decline of the PAC, it did seem to do a good job capturing a decrease in interest in college athletics in term of numbers, so I am going to assume its real.

But the more interesting question is why this is happening to the PAC and is this acontagious trend that could spread to the rest of country. Or is it restricted to the west coast which is so different culturally that the rest of country has nothing to worry about.

I just don't see the problem in the PAC. UCLA will be gone in 2024, so their football attendance inconsistencies will be a concern of the Big Ten. It really comes down to Stanford and Cal getting their act together. The 49ers averaged over 71,000 fans last season, so the Bay Area does like football. The rest of the conference is just fine.

1. UW - The fans in Seattle love football. In 2019, the Seahawks averaged 68,990 fans per game and UW averaged 68,238. They have no concerns. UW averaged about 63,000 last season.
2. Utah has 76 consecutive sellouts. They have a capacity of 51,444 and last season averaged 52,506. They currently have a 14-game home winning streak.
3. Oregon - Has a capacity of 54,000 and averaged 54,950 in 2022. Their spring game had an estimated attendance of 45,000. They are a top ten football recruiting juggernaut.
4. Colorado - Has a capacity of 50,183 at their stadium and averaged 42,847 fans with a 1-11 team in 2022. They had one sellout last season, the Cal game. With Coach Prime this season, they had 47,277 fans at their spring game and their season tickets for 2023 have sold-out.
5. Oregon State - The new $162 million dollar renovated stadium will hold about 36,000 and be full of amenities. A tough place to play. The fans are on top of you.
6. Arizona - The Wildcats averaged 44,209 fans in their 50,800-seat stadium in 2022. They sold out the Oregon game last season. They averaged over 14,000 per game in basketball, they have great fans in Tucson. The Wildcats just picked up a five-star recruit in football. The football recruiting is going well.
7. Arizona State - They averaged 43,081 fans in their 53,599-seat stadium in 2022, down from 49,166 in 2019. The stadium used to hold 70,000, but like Oregon State, renovations have improved the experience at the stadium and lowered capacity.
8. Washington State - They have a capacity of 33,000. The good news is that beer and alcohol sales are now allowed inside Martin Stadium. WSU has been to seven straight bowl games in full seasons.
9. Cal - Averaged 38,595 fans in a 63,000-seat stadium in 2022. In 2004, they averaged 64,019 at home.
10. Stanford - Averaged 29,965 fans in a stadium with a capacity of 50,424 in 2022. In 2013, they averaged 50,727 fans. Every game was a sellout in 2013.

Both Cal and Stanford have made changes that should help offensively, which hopefully make them more entertaining on offense. The Stanford recruiting has gone well this offseason. They are not keeping the top Bay Area talent at home. With the 49ers, Warriors and Giants in the area, Cal and Stanford need to win, and at the very least be entertaining.

(07-08-2023 09:25 PM)Big Frog II Wrote:  Maybe the continued drop in attendance for the PAC parallels TV's drop in their interest to pay.

Plus, PAC 12 fans were not excited when Colorado was added either. Adding schools that lose a lot does tend to drive fanbase away. It have hurt a lot of conferences since 2012. I bet the fan support would have been higher if they invited Boise State instead of Colorado? A lot of TV buzzed around Boise at the time for winning. They do bring the show when they play.

(07-09-2023 01:38 AM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  

(07-08-2023 08:38 AM)goofus Wrote:  I did not read the entire 7-part series documenting the decline of the PAC, it did seem to do a good job capturing a decrease in interest in college athletics in term of numbers, so I am going to assume its real.

But the more interesting question is why this is happening to the PAC and is this acontagious trend that could spread to the rest of country. Or is it restricted to the west coast which is so different culturally that the rest of country has nothing to worry about.

I just don't see the problem in the PAC. UCLA will be gone in 2024, so their football attendance inconsistencies will be a concern of the Big Ten. It really comes down to Stanford and Cal getting their act together. The 49ers averaged over 71,000 fans last season, so the Bay Area does like football. The rest of the conference is just fine.

1. UW - The fans in Seattle love football. In 2019, the Seahawks averaged 68,990 fans per game and UW averaged 68,238. They have no concerns. UW averaged about 63,000 last season.
2. Utah has 76 consecutive sellouts. They have a capacity of 51,444 and last season averaged 52,506. They currently have a 14-game home winning streak.
3. Oregon - Has a capacity of 54,000 and averaged 54,950 in 2022. Their spring game had an estimated attendance of 45,000. They are a top ten football recruiting juggernaut.
4. Colorado - Has a capacity of 50,183 at their stadium and averaged 42,847 fans with a 1-11 team in 2022. They had one sellout last season, the Cal game. With Coach Prime this season, they had 47,277 fans at their spring game and their season tickets for 2023 have sold-out.
5. Oregon State - The new $162 million dollar renovated stadium will hold about 36,000 and be full of amenities. A tough place to play. The fans are on top of you.
6. Arizona - The Wildcats averaged 44,209 fans in their 50,800-seat stadium in 2022. They sold out the Oregon game last season. They averaged over 14,000 per game in basketball, they have great fans in Tucson. The Wildcats just picked up a five-star recruit in football. The football recruiting is going well.
7. Arizona State - They averaged 43,081 fans in their 53,599-seat stadium in 2022, down from 49,166 in 2019. The stadium used to hold 70,000, but like Oregon State, renovations have improved the experience at the stadium and lowered capacity.
8. Washington State - They have a capacity of 33,000. The good news is that beer and alcohol sales are now allowed inside Martin Stadium. WSU has been to seven straight bowl games in full seasons.
9. Cal - Averaged 38,595 fans in a 63,000-seat stadium in 2022. In 2004, they averaged 64,019 at home.
10. Stanford - Averaged 29,965 fans in a stadium with a capacity of 50,424 in 2022. In 2013, they averaged 50,727 fans. Every game was a sellout in 2013.

Both Cal and Stanford have made changes that should help offensively, which hopefully make them more entertaining on offense. The Stanford recruiting has gone well this offseason. They are not keeping the top Bay Area talent at home. With the 49ers, Warriors and Giants in the area, Cal and Stanford need to win, and at the very least be entertaining.

Perhaps Stanford's issue is that they hate fun. Cal? They have enough students that they should be able to get 63k at every game most seasons, they're the State Flagship and need to start acting like it, or they risk getting further-relegated.

(07-08-2023 05:20 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(07-08-2023 04:58 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  

(07-08-2023 01:46 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(07-08-2023 09:17 AM)jrj84105 Wrote:  

(07-08-2023 08:38 AM)goofus Wrote:  I did not read the entire 7-part series documenting the decline of the PAC, it did seem to do a good job capturing a decrease in interest in college athletics in term of numbers, so I am going to assume its real.

But the more interesting question is why this is happening to the PAC and is this acontagious trend that could spread to the rest of country. Or is it restricted to the west coast which is so different culturally that the rest of country has nothing to worry about.

College football fandom is a multigenerational affair and is inversely related to the proportion of recent migrants in a population. The Midwest and Deep South have the lowest rates of migration into their regions which means less disruption to the social continuity that’s required to support college sports.

There’s a certain critical mass where CFB fandom for a local team is a default part of the culture. Once enough people move into an area with their alternate interests, that critical mass is lost. If a migrant is a sports fan, the sports inclined migrants tend to affiliate with pro-teams because there isn’t the same gatekeeping around pro sports fandom as with college sports (there’s no looking down on profession T-shirt fans).

The larger migrant-rich metropolitan areas in the South are experiencing similar declines (Virginia, GT, Miami) in local interest.

For college football that’s great for the rust belt and Deep South. In a broader sense though, the lack of economic opportunity that drives domestic migration and underlies these trends suggests that intense local college sports fandom isn’t a great economic indicator.

That's a good point. Although I will add that Texas, Georgia and Florida all have huge migrant populations. Your point is reflected with metro schools like Houston, Georgia Tech and Miami, but not so much with Texas, Texas A&M, Georgia, Florida and Florida St.

Those big state schools have to maintain immense followings outside the urban areas with highest transient populations in order to maintain that critical mass.

This is why I am not bullish on the BigXII. If UT, OU, and A&M soak up all the T shirt fans and bring their undivided attention over to the SEC, then the remaining Texas demographic starts to look a lot like California in being very transplant heavy.

Losing critical mass of CFB fandom in the demographic heart of the PAC (CA) was baked in. Losing critical mass to support non-SEC football in Texas is not currently baked into the B12 perception.

You've never seen a Texas High School Friday Night. There are too many rabid fans here for just A&M, UT, and OU in the DFW/North Texas area. Texas Tech and Baylor are both important state wide, TCU a bit less so but also up there, then you have schools like UH in Houston and UTSA in San Antonio that do very well in their regional markets. The only reason the SEC added A&M then OUT was that the value for one more just wasn't there relative to those 3, but take any of the #3-7 schools in the state and they still have a very large and enthusiastic following.

The issue is not immigrants refusing the local culture and bringing their own sports passion (like soccer) with them, it's that the natives in California, especially Northern California, just don't have the same enthusiasm for football that you see in much of the rest of the country. People come here and they're watching games within a few weeks, then their kids want to fit in and be accepted, football is a great way to do that. In California, that might be football, it might be soccer, it might be an olympic sport, it might be surfing, or skiing, etc etc etc. It's not bad, it's just different.

Or you are both right - the more rabid the existing fanbase is, the more migrants they can absorb and convert. But at some point, a tipping point is reached.

It was reached in many Western states already. It hasn't been reached for Texas, GA etc - YET.

(07-09-2023 01:38 AM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  

(07-08-2023 08:38 AM)goofus Wrote:  I did not read the entire 7-part series documenting the decline of the PAC, it did seem to do a good job capturing a decrease in interest in college athletics in term of numbers, so I am going to assume its real.

But the more interesting question is why this is happening to the PAC and is this acontagious trend that could spread to the rest of country. Or is it restricted to the west coast which is so different culturally that the rest of country has nothing to worry about.

I just don't see the problem in the PAC. UCLA will be gone in 2024, so their football attendance inconsistencies will be a concern of the Big Ten. It really comes down to Stanford and Cal getting their act together. The 49ers averaged over 71,000 fans last season, so the Bay Area does like football. The rest of the conference is just fine.

1. UW - The fans in Seattle love football. In 2019, the Seahawks averaged 68,990 fans per game and UW averaged 68,238. They have no concerns. UW averaged about 63,000 last season.
2. Utah has 76 consecutive sellouts. They have a capacity of 51,444 and last season averaged 52,506. They currently have a 14-game home winning streak.
3. Oregon - Has a capacity of 54,000 and averaged 54,950 in 2022. Their spring game had an estimated attendance of 45,000. They are a top ten football recruiting juggernaut.
4. Colorado - Has a capacity of 50,183 at their stadium and averaged 42,847 fans with a 1-11 team in 2022. They had one sellout last season, the Cal game. With Coach Prime this season, they had 47,277 fans at their spring game and their season tickets for 2023 have sold-out.
5. Oregon State - The new $162 million dollar renovated stadium will hold about 36,000 and be full of amenities. A tough place to play. The fans are on top of you.
6. Arizona - The Wildcats averaged 44,209 fans in their 50,800-seat stadium in 2022. They sold out the Oregon game last season. They averaged over 14,000 per game in basketball, they have great fans in Tucson. The Wildcats just picked up a five-star recruit in football. The football recruiting is going well.
7. Arizona State - They averaged 43,081 fans in their 53,599-seat stadium in 2022, down from 49,166 in 2019. The stadium used to hold 70,000, but like Oregon State, renovations have improved the experience at the stadium and lowered capacity.
8. Washington State - They have a capacity of 33,000. The good news is that beer and alcohol sales are now allowed inside Martin Stadium. WSU has been to seven straight bowl games in full seasons.
9. Cal - Averaged 38,595 fans in a 63,000-seat stadium in 2022. In 2004, they averaged 64,019 at home.
10. Stanford - Averaged 29,965 fans in a stadium with a capacity of 50,424 in 2022. In 2013, they averaged 50,727 fans. Every game was a sellout in 2013.

Both Cal and Stanford have made changes that should help offensively, which hopefully make them more entertaining on offense. The Stanford recruiting has gone well this offseason. They are not keeping the top Bay Area talent at home. With the 49ers, Warriors and Giants in the area, Cal and Stanford need to win, and at the very least be entertaining.

All of these but UW and Utah have been on a downward trend.

(07-10-2023 02:37 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(07-09-2023 01:38 AM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  

(07-08-2023 08:38 AM)goofus Wrote:  I did not read the entire 7-part series documenting the decline of the PAC, it did seem to do a good job capturing a decrease in interest in college athletics in term of numbers, so I am going to assume its real.

But the more interesting question is why this is happening to the PAC and is this acontagious trend that could spread to the rest of country. Or is it restricted to the west coast which is so different culturally that the rest of country has nothing to worry about.

I just don't see the problem in the PAC. UCLA will be gone in 2024, so their football attendance inconsistencies will be a concern of the Big Ten. It really comes down to Stanford and Cal getting their act together. The 49ers averaged over 71,000 fans last season, so the Bay Area does like football. The rest of the conference is just fine.

1. UW - The fans in Seattle love football. In 2019, the Seahawks averaged 68,990 fans per game and UW averaged 68,238. They have no concerns. UW averaged about 63,000 last season.
2. Utah has 76 consecutive sellouts. They have a capacity of 51,444 and last season averaged 52,506. They currently have a 14-game home winning streak.
3. Oregon - Has a capacity of 54,000 and averaged 54,950 in 2022. Their spring game had an estimated attendance of 45,000. They are a top ten football recruiting juggernaut.
4. Colorado - Has a capacity of 50,183 at their stadium and averaged 42,847 fans with a 1-11 team in 2022. They had one sellout last season, the Cal game. With Coach Prime this season, they had 47,277 fans at their spring game and their season tickets for 2023 have sold-out.
5. Oregon State - The new $162 million dollar renovated stadium will hold about 36,000 and be full of amenities. A tough place to play. The fans are on top of you.
6. Arizona - The Wildcats averaged 44,209 fans in their 50,800-seat stadium in 2022. They sold out the Oregon game last season. They averaged over 14,000 per game in basketball, they have great fans in Tucson. The Wildcats just picked up a five-star recruit in football. The football recruiting is going well.
7. Arizona State - They averaged 43,081 fans in their 53,599-seat stadium in 2022, down from 49,166 in 2019. The stadium used to hold 70,000, but like Oregon State, renovations have improved the experience at the stadium and lowered capacity.
8. Washington State - They have a capacity of 33,000. The good news is that beer and alcohol sales are now allowed inside Martin Stadium. WSU has been to seven straight bowl games in full seasons.
9. Cal - Averaged 38,595 fans in a 63,000-seat stadium in 2022. In 2004, they averaged 64,019 at home.
10. Stanford - Averaged 29,965 fans in a stadium with a capacity of 50,424 in 2022. In 2013, they averaged 50,727 fans. Every game was a sellout in 2013.

Both Cal and Stanford have made changes that should help offensively, which hopefully make them more entertaining on offense. The Stanford recruiting has gone well this offseason. They are not keeping the top Bay Area talent at home. With the 49ers, Warriors and Giants in the area, Cal and Stanford need to win, and at the very least be entertaining.

All of these but UW and Utah have been on a downward trend.

Very interested to see what happens with the Arizona schools.

Two years ago UA hit rock bottom, but Jedd Fisch has a lot of excitement brewing in the Old Pueblo.

Many ASU fans I know had given up on Herm, and had stopped going. Dillingham has generated a lot of excitement.

(07-08-2023 01:52 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(07-08-2023 11:38 AM)MattBrownEP Wrote:  Let me give y'all a specific example, just because I happen to have this data handy. Let's pick a school in the ACC, so we're not in the Pac-12/Big 12 wang-measuring contest for a second...and the Big Ten.

I happen to have all of the scanned ticket data for Louisville basketball from 2017-18 through 2019-20. I have this data for...about 70 or so schools right now...smaller data set for football. COVID may have shut down the end of the 2019-2020 season, but it didn't really do anything for regular season attendance.

Based on the scanned ticket data I obtained, I found that Louisville overstated in-game attendance anywhere from 10%-35% in the data it submitted to the NCAA. If they reported in-game attendance of say, '19,250', the actual number was generally around 16,000. The arena was close to capacity exactly once during that three year run (a Feb game in 2019 against Duke). Based on data I've obtained from my ol' alma mater, Ohio State...there are similar gaps. Ohio State overstated attendance in every game over that three-season run, usually by around 10%, but sometimes as high as 22%. The gap between real and reported attendance was more than 2,000 in virtually every single game.

So that's a pretty big error bar, especially for one of the largest arenas in the ACC and Big Ten! Even if UNC, UVA, Pitt, etc weren't overstating tickets by quite that much, that's enough of a swing to meaningfully impact the data! And if Louisville and Ohio State, some of the better staffed athletic departments in the country, have an error bar this high, imagine what it might be for a program that isn't so well equipped.

Is the general trend line here accurate, where Pac-12 in-game attendance has cratered way worse than other leagues? It's possible, maybe even probable given what a dumpster fire Cal and Stanford have become, and UCLA's horrible ticket situation for football. But if the variance in actual in-game numbers is more than 15%, well, you'd have to do more homework to be sure if you want to compare across conferences. The reported data just isn't very good.

Tickets scanned is a different metric than tickets sold. As I recall, the schools can report tickets sold and I think most do.

Also some schools count the players, vendors, security, etc...and some don't. Really hard nowadays to even do a visual estimation due to the number of luxury suites and wide concourses. I've been to games and literally 1000s spend big parts of the game wandering around the concourses.

(07-12-2023 09:47 AM)TexanMark Wrote:  I've been to games and literally 1000s spend big parts of the game wandering around the concourses.

I've looked up from games in REA and wondered where the fans across from me are that were there at puck drop. Then I look into the Club Lounges. They are bars (mosh pits) open to anyone with a ticket.

I come to sit in my seat and watch a game and I am quickly turning into an anachronism.