A lot of good points here.

As fauowl pointed out you get limited interaction when you have giveaways, which seems to be our mainstay tactic for getting people out to the game.

USMCOWL wants people to stay longer than the half, which is a noble idea, but in order for that to happen they have to care about the final outcome. With all due respect to our conference brethren, watching an unranked FAU putz around with 3-and-outs and dropped catches and/or be outright losing to an unranked, say, Southern Miss team, doesn't exactly inspire a sun-and-alcohol tired 20 year old to stay for another 2+ hours after a 20 minute halftime, especially when they can look to their left and see their dorm (with their bed) right there.

And we like to denigrate them for not being more loyal fans but I'm sure everyone on this board has left a game early because of the team's performance, lack of interest in the final outcome, the weather, other obligations, or just other entertainment opportunities. It's not just students.

I've been to several UF games where they're ranked and the team they're playing is ranked, the students watch the game until the outcome is pretty much in hand and then they'll leave in the fourth quarter. You may not see it on TV but they lose at least a good quarter of those people in the fourth quarter, so even there they have the problem of the stands being full until the final score is announced.

I just feel like we stress ourselves out wondering why our fanbase isn't full of people as dedicated as us and endure unrealistic expectations like how come the entire student section doesn't stay for the entire game as if we were at a hospital ICU waiting to see if our grandfather was going to make it through the night.

The best strategy is not only a good opponent but FAU also needs a multi-faceted attendance recruitment strategy and all the players (SG, Program Board, Greeks, Alumni Office, the City of Boca Raton) must be doing their utmost to hold multiple, interesting, new, diverse events to keep things fresh, and it all must not fight with the game for time.

Something like that can be difficult, sure, but it's the job. And it's more feasible for football, which has a handful of home contests a year, and unfortunately (to bring it back around to the subject of the thread) not nearly as feasible for something like baseball which has numerous contests, sometimes multi-day.

I know the SG President will say things like, "we need to get more students out to games" and that's almost a consolation prize if he doesn't say anything else. Yes, at least he's thinking about it, but without ideas or plans or true initiative - which come out when you speak to someone - then the probability of failure, of things falling by the wayside, is much higher.

According to one of my sources, SG is dealing with a lot of internal conflict and it's difficult to get projects and initiatives funded because there's too much self-interest at play. Student Government - like the real government - promotes itself as a united front working on projects for the entire student body but tends to be made up of idealists fighting for dream projects vs purse-tightening politicians who only joined to ensure that their own organizations get money. I observed this for years in SG and though I'm not intimately involved with it now, don't believe that has changed.

The point being that even in the face of all that, you still need some kind of minimum quorum to enact initiatives that would benefit our sports programs and if you can't get that because SG is too far down a hole, that's a major player in the game that's stagnant.

I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

All of these conversations have been said a thousand times on this site.  We need billboards, we need buses wrapped in FAU, we need the SG president to talk with athletics, clubs and student organizations, blah blah blah.  What we need the team to do is win.  Then and only then we will truly know where this program stands.  From there we will have a better chance of identifying how to increase attendance.  UCF had awful attendance last year, not because their fan base went from good/great  to poor/bad, it went down because they had an awful team.

Win and some will start coming.  Then we can figure out how to get more people.  That won't happen before the winning though.  I go no matter what, like most on here.  For the general masses their needs to be more and that starts with consistent winning. 

OCI..the perfect example is the U of Memphis. Four years ago, empty. Last season , I'm going to guess 80% full. Just win baby! I hope we can start putting this theory to test this season.

Local Owl said

OCI..the perfect example is the U of Memphis. Four years ago, empty. Last season , I'm going to guess 80% full. Just win baby! I hope we can start putting this theory to test this season.

Posted On: May 23rd 2016, 6:03 PM #356308

Memphis, decent example, winning is good but winning big and exciting is better!

OC Irritant said

Win and some will start coming.  Then we can figure out how to get more people. 

Posted On: May 23rd 2016, 5:16 PM #356307

Sounds like you don't want to do anything until we win.

Unless we plan to never lose, we need to do other things. Of course we need to win. That is not rocket science. But winning is fleeting.

We need to build a better game day experience and tradition.

I don't think we have a great game day experience. I don't know what it is but it reminds me of when the Dolphins played in the crappy old Orange Bowl (I had season tix) and we got this great Joe Robbie Stadium and the game day experience turned into this corporate sterile environment for years.

I don't have the answer. There are plenty of people on staff who came from big name programs who can figure this out. I did not come from a big name program. I came from FAU.

The stadium is absolutely awesome., but the experience of game day is lacking something.

If our plan is that winning will cure everything, we are mistaken.

I love our stadium because it's ours. No matter what we call our home field, it will be one of my favorite spots on Earth. That said, I'd love improved player facilities and a new stadium - in that order, even if not the order required for hosting a regional. I've never seen this so-called listing of criteria required as facilities in order to host, so I don't know the priority levels. My SWAG, though, is that player facilities are of greater importance that fan facilities. But, as for the fan facilities….

The conclusion from one study on NCAA baseball attendance: "However, given the statistically minimal impact of team performance on attendance, ADs should regularly explore how marketing and promotions can impact gate revenue."

ERROR: A link was posted here (url) but it appears to be a broken link.

http://winthropintelligence.com/2012/04/01/college-baseball-attendance-what-motivates-fans-to-fill-the-seats/

fauowl said

OC Irritant said

Win and some will start coming.  Then we can figure out how to get more people. 

Posted On: May 23rd 2016, 5:16 PM #356307

Sounds like you don't want to do anything until we win.

Unless we plan to never lose, we need to do other things. Of course we need to win. That is not rocket science. But winning is fleeting.

We need to build a better game day experience and tradition.

I don't think we have a great game day experience. I don't know what it is but it reminds me of when the Dolphins played in the crappy old Orange Bowl (I had season tix) and we got this great Joe Robbie Stadium and the game day experience turned into this corporate sterile environment for years.

I don't have the answer. There are plenty of people on staff who came from big name programs who can figure this out. I did not come from a big name program. I came from FAU.

The stadium is absolutely awesome., but the experience of game day is lacking something.

If our plan is that winning will cure everything, we are mistaken.

Posted On: May 23rd 2016, 10:01 PM #356310

Very true there. First of all you have the Owl Walk on the north end of the stadium and all the food trucks and other stuff on the south end of the stadium. Localize everything in one place and get the regular fans involve not just the students. Maybe poll fans and students and see what game day traditions outside the stadium they would like to see prior to the game. Personally right before the miami game, they had Owlsy come through the parking lot. That was cool. I like to see more of that.

fauowl said

We need to build a better game day experience and tradition.

I don't think we have a great game day experience. I don't know what it is but it reminds me of when the Dolphins played in the crappy old Orange Bowl (I had season tix) and we got this great Joe Robbie Stadium and the game day experience turned into this corporate sterile environment for years.

Posted On: May 23rd 2016, 10:01 PM #356310

As usual, completely agree with you.

We can build a better gameday by looking at what works in other places or - and I know this is completely un-FAU - consider generating some creative ideas ourselves. Marketing people are creative types, right? Because you don't just get those jobs because you know how to Google "gameday experience ideas", right?

You try out ideas, you keep what works, you add new ones to the pile and repeat. Big gamedays have a lot of things going on at once.

And tradition is obviously difficult when we keep making changes, as we've talked about before.

USMCOWL said

Very true there. First of all you have the Owl Walk on the north end of the stadium and all the food trucks and other stuff on the south end of the stadium. Localize everything in one place and get the regular fans involve not just the students. Maybe poll fans and students and see what game day traditions outside the stadium they would like to see prior to the game. Personally right before the miami game, they had Owlsy come through the parking lot. That was cool. I like to see more of that.

Posted On: May 23rd 2016, 11:02 PM #356312

The Owlsley thing could easily be done again.

Unfortunately I doubt they'll localize everything because they were very clear about making that distinction with the student tailgating and the family tailgating. From what I've seen, the north side has become a larger, more livelier environment and the south side is more of a ghost town. Different strokes for different folks but I never go over to the south side or past the business area; I don't really care about radio station giveaways, massage chair trials, squeeze balls, newspaper subscriptions or whatever they have over there.

I did think the Coors (Budweiser?) igloo before the Miami game was awesome though. More of that would be great.

I would complain about the money we are spending on the carnival games/inflatables in the "family area" before every single game because I don't see many young kids attending the games but maybe we've purchased that equipment now so the only cost is the generators keeping it inflated. I don't know.

My 2 cents on game day at the stadium - pretty low key if not dull. Move the students BACK to the open end of the stadium and have the band and cheer squads do more than march in. Play a quite number of tunes. Have section competitions, drum line show off, stuff like that. Get the band/cheer involved with the kids and the families attending the game.

We need to make it more fun and exciting before the game so just maybe THAT excitement willtransfer INTO the stadium and the game, especially as the team improves.

We have to build the atmosphere and crate it as well!