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FAU Football near bottom in attendance

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owlsdad said

Imagine hitting up a middle-aged guy who didn’t go to FAU but has a daughter there and 2 others at a different college asking the same thing (season tickets, donations, etc.).  I do get e-mails every once in awhile, but I get calls, e-mails, and stuff in the mail at a significantly higher rate from FSU (where my other daughters are).  This isn’t a question about the people getting the requests, it is more about what can the school and football program do to be more visible and put something in place to try and attract more fans.

I still get more calls and e-mails from UCF dating back to when I bought tickets to the FAU game in Orlando than I do from FAU.

Great stadium and location, pretty successful recent seasons, on a second consecutive head coach with name recognition - those things should add up to more excitement and bigger crowds.  Not asking over and over and putting out lots of marketing material because you think people might say no is not a good plan.
Posted On: Apr 18th 2021, 10:12 AM #401754

Little of a chicken and an egg situation.

UCF's budget is over double ours.

I am sure White would love to drop 20 billboards between Miami and Orlando and a ten-person team making 1,000 cold calls a day.

The funds are not there.

Heck, we lost our DC to another G5 school.

Now is there some free/cheap stuff they can be doing more social media-wise? I think so.

I have had this conversation with Walty ( who is successful), and I have asked if you were put in charge of FAU's ticket/marketing tomorrow and were asked to increase the season ticket base by 100% in two years; what would you do?

The answer much harder than I thought when trying to come up with specifics.




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No doubt it is a tough question to answer.  But it seems totally unrealistic for people to even think about moving conferences until it gets figured out.  My alma mater is an FCS school and they routinely have 10-12k at conference games (pre-COVID) in a 14k seat stadium with even less budget at a smaller school (roughly 11k students versus FAU’s 30k+).

I keep hearing about the blockers, but I am suggesting opening up practices, adding a bunch of interns from the business and sports management programs to work the phones and emails and do gameday contests, come up with a slogan and program touting how FAU is “Boca’s team” (Football in Paradise is a cool slogan but push that somehow).  Come up with more ways to include the students in the gameday experience - not just the little in-game contests, but encourage participation through the video board and even some kind of partnership with the Greek societies.

I am trying to make some observations but also some recommendations.  Anybody else have anything other than “this is hard?”  UCF didn’t always have the budget they have now.  Any way you try and cut it, FAU winning conference championships and bowl games and being in the bottom 10-percent of attendance just doesn’t seem right.

As one of the other posters said I am not expecting standing room only and a need to expand the stadium, and some relatively smaller things that are more about effort and planning than they are significant spending could make a difference in averaging 20k rather than 15k.  That would at least be a move in the right direction. 

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I don't know all the issues – my guess is it's partly a South Florida thing, partly FAU is still considered largely a commuter school and there is still not a lot of FAU "spirit" in the community (just so new of a program and even university). I know the times I have gone to the stadium the experience wasn't the greatest, but understand there have been improvements.

Watching that Boca Bowl against SMU on ABC and seeing that crowd sort of put things in perspective for me as an (out of state) alumni and fan – with all the momentum, good press, Lane Train etc., we just aren't quite there yet, and we also need one of those big signature wins and carrying the momentum – a win that year against UCF in that stadium I think would have been a huge momentum factor, and it obviously wasn't a good look.
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d-owl said

I don't know all the issues – my guess is it's partly a South Florida thing, partly FAU is still considered largely a commuter school and there is still not a lot of FAU "spirit" in the community (just so new of a program and even university). I know the times I have gone to the stadium the experience wasn't the greatest, but understand there have been improvements.

Watching that Boca Bowl against SMU on ABC and seeing that crowd sort of put things in perspective for me as an (out of state) alumni and fan – with all the momentum, good press, Lane Train etc., we just aren't quite there yet, and we also need one of those big signature wins and carrying the momentum – a win that year against UCF in that stadium I think would have been a huge momentum factor, and it obviously wasn't a good look.
Posted On: Apr 18th 2021, 11:50 AM #401758

The Boca Bowl crowd I though was pretty good considering it was raining.

Here are a few things I think can help.

I think we have a coach now that will do more of the shaking of hands and kissing a babies type thing to get people out. Taggart went to a basketball interacted with students, when I was at the recruiting event in in early 2020, Taggart came around a shook every person's hand and thanked them fro coming.

Those little things matter here.

FAU's athletic social media account are not used enough for sales.

Everyday there should be stories and posts about tickets.

"Swipe up to find out about the young alum discount.''

"Did you know we serves over a dozen craft beers on the Deck?"


Coming doing your interview with Ken and leaving right away does't sell tickets.

One issue and some if this has been out of FAU's control. Every large attended game has been a disaster, from getting your teeth kicked in, lighting delays, and poor gameday experiences.

As far as students, they are fickle and it's hard schools around the country to get consistent support at games.

Most schools they show up late and leaver early and only hold through the big big games.

I will say FAU needs to challenge them and ask,"why should we keep these tailgates going if you do not come into the game?"


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I am trying to make some observations but also some recommendations.  Anybody else have anything other than “this is hard?”  UCF didn’t always have the budget they have now.  Any way you try and cut it, FAU winning conference championships and bowl games and being in the bottom 10-percent of attendance just doesn’t seem right.

Here's what I'll say, we are in an area where people are interested in football.  It's obvious in that we have had 2 "big" games at home against UCF and Miami.  Both were sold out.  This is the thing that's frustrating, we don't need Alabama to come here to sell out…we just need relevant programs.  However, for the foreseeable future we are going to have to figure out how to put people in seats against bottom 20 D1 programs.

The part that is "hard" is the only way I see us filling 25k seats for Furman, UTEP, Ga Southern, MTSU…you have to build an emotional connection with Palm Beach County as a whole.  People have to identify with FAU and care about their general success.

That is not easy to accomplish and there are a lot of different approaches to take.  

In my mind, it starts with places like Jupiter, West Palm, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Boynton Beach, etc (towns greater than 100k in palm beach) having FAU insignia up in the businesses (restaurants, gas stations, bars, etc).  You can literally go to Atlantic Ave where there are thousands of people visiting on a weekend and not know you are anywhere near FAU…that's a problem.

MTSU in Rutherford county had better attendance.  Population of Rutherford 340k people.  Palm Beach County population 1.5m.

LOTS of work to be done on this front.

Another thought that makes me nervous on these attendance stats, currently we have a President that is all in on football.  What makes me extremely uncomfortable is...(and I dont want him to ever leave) but what happens when PK is replaced by a President who thinks "we spend how many millions of dollars to get 5k fans to games even when we are winning?"

Teambeer is the most knowledgeable FAU sports fan I know, way smarter than me.
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walty12 said

I am trying to make some observations but also some recommendations.  Anybody else have anything other than “this is hard?”  UCF didn’t always have the budget they have now.  Any way you try and cut it, FAU winning conference championships and bowl games and being in the bottom 10-percent of attendance just doesn’t seem right.

Here's what I'll say, we are in an area where people are interested in football.  It's obvious in that we have had 2 "big" games at home against UCF and Miami.  Both were sold out.  This is the thing that's frustrating, we don't need Alabama to come here to sell out…we just need relevant programs.  However, for the foreseeable future we are going to have to figure out how to put people in seats against bottom 20 D1 programs.

The part that is "hard" is the only way I see us filling 25k seats for Furman, UTEP, Ga Southern, MTSU…you have to build an emotional connection with Palm Beach County as a whole.  People have to identify with FAU and care about their general success.

That is not easy to accomplish and there are a lot of different approaches to take.  

In my mind, it starts with places like Jupiter, West Palm, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Boynton Beach, etc (towns greater than 100k in palm beach) having FAU insignia up in the businesses (restaurants, gas stations, bars, etc).  You can literally go to Atlantic Ave where there are thousands of people visiting on a weekend and not know you are anywhere near FAU…that's a problem.

MTSU in Rutherford county had better attendance.  Population of Rutherford 340k people.  Palm Beach County population 1.5m.

LOTS of work to be done on this front.

Another thought that makes me nervous on these attendance stats, currently we have a President that is all in on football.  What makes me extremely uncomfortable is...(and I dont want him to ever leave) but what happens when PK is replaced by a President who thinks "we spend how many millions of dollars to get 5k fans to games even when we are winning?"
Posted On: Apr 19th 2021, 11:59 AM #401771

This is spot on.

As FAU fans we need to stop waiting for an athletics department who has a razor thin budget to become some marketing giant.

We can not just hope we get a P5 in the stadium each week or the American Conference decides they want to add teams- after they just passed on adding anyone.

We need to be the marketing ourselves.

You want a couple local bars to have promotional stuff? Ask athletics how how you can make that happen, they might pass along some stuff. Do it yourself, talk to the manager/owner.

You have a friend who is on the fence about tickets, buy a couple extra yourself and drag them to tailgates and games and show them a good time.

You have a buddy bragging about how much he made in the stock market the last year, pass their information to the Paradise club.

You want an alumni chapter in your city? Ask the alumni department for material and contacts.

I know I am preaching to quire a bit as most in this forum has done all this, but this type of thread has popped up every 6 months since it was founded.

And I always see a lot of "what can the school do?''



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Personally I am little worried about attendance maybe being the worst it has ever been for this upcoming season. I am concerned that people who didn’t attend games last year with Covid will realize even more so that they didn’t really miss going to games and tailgating. A year out of place and out of mind was not good for this program. Hopefully I am wrong, but I think it will be even more important to what Shane said, and dragging friends to games.

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Let's be realistic.
The UM and UCF games were sold out because we had at least 10 to 12k fans from those teams at the stadium. I am sure the games drew more FAU fans but it is not like 80% of the crowd was from FAU.
It will take time to make the jump from 15K to 20K and I believe it will never happen unless we have a quality opponent. Our average attendance is not real, I think we are more in the 11K average. Those numbers are not accurate, look at FIU's numbers. They don't even average 2k fans.
Sorry, I was born in september; I don't sugarcoat anything =)
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When we play fellow Florida programs that are established we do well.

But nobody cares to watch MTSU, WKU, UTEP, UTSA, Old Dominion, Charlotte, even FIU, etc…that's really it.

People in South Florida are spoiled with way too many other "quality" options of things to do.

Even when we had a near Top 25 Team (Kiffin's last season) folks didn't show up aside from a couple games - and those weren't really that filled either.

It has nothing to do with our product, but everything to do with who we bring into the stadium to go up against.

Just see the 2015 Miami game. Bad Team, still filled. Enough said.

Want to fill it up more consistently? Find a way to get out of C-USA and also bring in better non-conference opponents.

Wagner? Fordham? Or any C-USA opponent for that matter? LOL. PUH-lease.

People can just watch the broadcast, drink cheap beer at their own house, not have to deal with parking, and use their own toilet.
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Rick said

When we play fellow Florida programs that are established we do well.

But nobody cares to watch MTSU, WKU, UTEP, UTSA, Old Dominion, Charlotte, even FIU, etc…that's really it.

People in South Florida are spoiled with way too many other "quality" options of things to do.

Even when we had a near Top 25 Team (Kiffin's last season) folks didn't show up aside from a couple games - and those weren't really that filled either.

It has nothing to do with our product, but everything to do with who we bring into the stadium to go up against.

Just see the 2015 Miami game. Bad Team, still filled. Enough said.

Want to fill it up more consistently? Find a way to get out of C-USA and also bring in better non-conference opponents.

Wagner? Fordham? Or any C-USA opponent for that matter? LOL. PUH-lease.

People can just watch the broadcast, drink cheap beer at their own house, not have to deal with parking, and use their own toilet.

Posted On: Apr 19th 2021, 8:56 PM #401775



I will add when we have had the big crowds FAU has not been prepared and it’s a horrible experience had by all. So why would a non die hard want to come back just for a game for fun. 
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