Why NCAA lax attendance sucks

Inside Lacrosse tosses 14 strands of damp spaghetti against the wall to see how many stick in explaining why just 28,224 attended (or at least paid for tix) for Monday's title game. It's been shrinking for six straight years now. See 14 Factors for Lagging Final Four Attendance by our own, ex-ECAC commissioner Phil Buttafuoco. (Also a companion story After Sixth Straight Attendance Decline, What's Next for the Final Four?)

He mentions the economy tanked in 2009 (except now in 2013 the Dow is at a record 15,000), gas costs a lot (except maybe you get used to the prices), the lax season ends before HS lax ends (as it did when attendance climbed in the earlier 2000s). He argues that "The NCAA has enhanced and grown the stature of the quarterfinals to the point that these two events now have become some fans' championship weekend" ... except didn't the attendance kind of suck the week before? The semifinal at Maryland drew 3939, the Indianapolis semifinal (3 hours from Notre Dame) drew 7749. He does mention that youth involvement in lax is up by about a third since attendance started sinking and at least some of those families / teams could potentially attend.

A couple of the 14 points make sense.

He says the NCAA got greedy (not his words; he writes, "The NCAA was operating under the belief that attendance would continue to escalate and that it would sell out an NFL venue." ) With success through 2008, the NCAA upped the guarantees to the site, forcing up ticket prices." A single game ticket in Philadephia was $50 (closer to $60 with the convenience fees), parking was $20, and refreshments were priced like the NFL stadium it is.

High quality playoff TV with a dozen camera locations makes the game even better to watch. (Buttafuoco also suggests the number or regular season games may have had an impact because in the past, "Before ESPNU and CBS Sports, lacrosse fans planned to watch the best teams during championship weekend." ) The too-good TV on final four weekend make sense; but you could also argue that seeing teams on TV in the RS builds an appetite for the real thing in the playoffs.

You need "Syracuse, Cornell, Johns Hopkins [to] draw large crowds." Well, of course. Except this year only Hopkins didn't get to the Final Four.

I think the problems are: distant schools like Denver getting to the FF and they will only fly out a relative handful of fans; the ticket prices as a barrier; and TV as an inducement for marginal fans to not attend. Memorial Day could be a problem, so do you have a two week gap until until the final four as with hockey?

Buttafucco says there's talk of bringing the events back to college campuses and/or moving it into June (back at least one week). Maybe it's worth trying Giants/Jets stadium in the Meadlowlands, once the NCAA gets over NJ allowing gambling on sports in Atlantic City. That's closest to the biggest population center for lacrosse. I think the NCAA will balk at that [returning to midsize college staqdiums] because they just don't know if 50,000 might show up for a FF game and it's no big deal to keep the upper bowl empty and / or do tricks like stack more fans on the side away from the TV cameras. (At a Princeton QF game ~5 years ago, *everyone* was made to sit opposite the cameras.)

But if you move the game away from Memorial Day weekend, what do you do: Play Friday-Sunday (nobody comes Friday) or Saturday-Sunday and risk injuries to tired players? A team with a shorer bench (Cornell) is going to be affected by this.

All this is important because the NCAA will award the next batch of four years, 2015-2018, by the end of 2013. I believe the rotation will again mean one New England venue. What about Yale Bowl if not Foxborough? [edit add:] I'd be surprised to see a lax final four in the midwest because of the chance no team nearby will be in it. Except for years when the NCAA basketball title game is played in a domed football stadium, D1 lacrosse draws the largest crowd of any NCAA single title game. Plus you're looking at a potential $2.5 million gate.

Lax Final Four 2013 attendance:
79,179 total (none worse since 2002)
28,224 Saturday,
22,511 Sunday
28,444 Monday

Record 123,225, Baltimore 2007 (Cornell, Delaware, Duke, Hopkins)

Interesting question:

4 years ago Philly would have seemed like a good choice. A reasonable distance from the a lot of the big names in college Lax including Maryland, Princeton, Navy, and Hopkins. So, I suspect that the actual final 4 which did not include any of the locals made a difference.

And then there is the choice of weekend. I live in the Boston area. If it had ever happened I would have been at the 2 games at Gillette. I debated going to Philly but came to the conclusion that driving there was out of the question on Memorial Day Weekend.

I am a fan. I love watching a good Lax game and bleed RED through and through but the real question is how much of Memorial Day do I want to give up if the RED are in the mix. I think that the Memorial Day choice is limiting attendance. Perhaps we should just extend the season 1 week and have the final game on its own weekend. I could see buying a ticket to fly to anywhere on within about 800 miles to see a championship game. That would be easy but to give up a 3 day weekend is a big thing to ask for.

Lax is by far my favorite sport to watch. It is growing by leaps and bounds but it may take another generation before it fills an 80k+ stadium. When it does watch out!

Of course if you want to fill a stadium hold the thing at the Carrier Dome and make sure Syracuse is playing. Cornell would be their ideal opponent.

billhoward

He mentions the economy tanked in 2009 (except now in 2013 the Dow is at a record 15,000)

The stock market is not "the economy." Unemployment and LFPR are still not great and a lot of people are underemployed or hanging on to jobs they'd otherwise have left.

gas costs a lot (except maybe you get used to the prices)

You get used to the high price of gas by driving less. If you drive to work, you keep doing that. If you don't have to drive to Maryland, you probably don't. Unless you are the sort of person who prefers eating less.

The rest of the analysis was good, but in an effort to shit all over the article you threw in a couple of unnecessary digs. High-priced, remotely-located niche entertainment that is shown live on TV is exactly the kind of event that will suffer in a weak economy.

ugarte

billhoward

He mentions the economy tanked in 2009 (except now in 2013 the Dow is at a record 15,000)

The stock market is not "the economy." Unemployment and LFPR are still not great and a lot of people are underemployed or hanging on to jobs they'd otherwise have left.

gas costs a lot (except maybe you get used to the prices)

You get used to the high price of gas by driving less. If you drive to work, you keep doing that. If you don't have to drive to Maryland, you probably don't. Unless you are the sort of person who prefers eating less.

The rest of the analysis was good, but in an effort to shit all over the article you threw in a couple of unnecessary digs. High-priced, remotely-located niche entertainment that is shown live on TV is exactly the kind of event that will suffer in a weak economy.

Just to be argumentative, wouldn't a high-priced, niche sport be an activity where the stock market has more of an impact on attendance than the overall economy?In the upper middle class world the soaring Dow creates at least an illusion of wealth, which probably translates to more willingness to spend.

I may be biased here by my limited exposure to lacrosse as a kid in NYC. In '80s NY at least lacrosse was exclusively a private school activity, where the kids (and families) playing it mostly didn't have to worry about money.

KeithK

ugarte

billhoward

He mentions the economy tanked in 2009 (except now in 2013 the Dow is at a record 15,000)

The stock market is not "the economy." Unemployment and LFPR are still not great and a lot of people are underemployed or hanging on to jobs they'd otherwise have left.

gas costs a lot (except maybe you get used to the prices)

You get used to the high price of gas by driving less. If you drive to work, you keep doing that. If you don't have to drive to Maryland, you probably don't. Unless you are the sort of person who prefers eating less.

The rest of the analysis was good, but in an effort to shit all over the article you threw in a couple of unnecessary digs. High-priced, remotely-located niche entertainment that is shown live on TV is exactly the kind of event that will suffer in a weak economy.

Just to be argumentative, wouldn't a high-priced, niche sport be an activity where the stock market has more of an impact on attendance than the overall economy?In the upper middle class world the soaring Dow creates at least an illusion of wealth, which probably translates to more willingness to spend.

I may be biased here by my limited exposure to lacrosse as a kid in NYC. In '80s NY at least lacrosse was exclusively a private school activity, where the kids (and families) playing it mostly didn't have to worry about money.

By high-priced I didn't mean "the cost of having a kid who plays lacrosse," I meant "ticket prices." If you want to fill an NFL stadium you are hoping for more than Hotchkiss families.

       28444  2013 semifinal attendance (dubious "modern," i.e. football-stadium-era, record)
.547 = -----
       52004  2007 semifinal attendance (record)

$50 x .547 = $27.35

You can either sell 50,000 seats for $25 or 25,000 for $50. If it's all about celebrating student athletes, as those damn commercials keep pounding into my head, why not sell 50,000?

For the record, I'm close enough but didn't go. I would've gone for $25. As with the ECACs in Atlantic City, I am sure attendance would've been higher if ticket prices were lower.

I bleed Red, not green.

ugarte

billhoward
He mentions the economy tanked in 2009 (except now in 2013 the Dow is at a record 15,000)

The stock market is not "the economy." Unemployment and LFPR are still not great and a lot of people are underemployed or hanging on to jobs they'd otherwise have left.

"A rising tide lifts all yachts." But the economy is better, the number of kids playing youth lacrosse is up a lot in five years, and if Philadelphia is a bit farther for the traditional southern lax powers, it's closer for the northern schools (and Denver fans will have to be ultra-loyal traveling to any eastern city).

ugarte
The rest of the analysis was good, but in an effort to shit all over the article you threw in a couple of unnecessary digs. High-priced, remotely-located niche entertainment that is shown live on TV is exactly the kind of event that will suffer in a weak economy.

Any FF that has Cornell-Syracuse-Yale-UMass plus Maryland-Virginia-NC type southern schools, for at least half it's going to be remotely located. As for high ticket prices when the game is available on HD, yes, that's it in a nutshell.

I was intrigued that a number of the commentaries on soft attendance by lax analysts who also are on TV urged a summit that included ESPN. I think they recognize TV's capabilities can affect the gate. Maybe TV lax is a good thing if it draws big numbers and spreads lacrosse. When 4? 5? years ago in the QF at Princeton I was miffed that all fans (10,000? 15,000) were pushed to one side of Princeton stadium so the cameras showed a full house while we were crowded, it did make lax look more popular.

Let's see if the NCAA for future years (2015-2018) scales back on guarantees to the stadiums and then offers FF tickets that let you get in for $20 or $25.

Most of all I hope Cornell is there for future final fours.

I've been asked to do two different online surveys about the finals - one my the NCAA and one by TicketShafter. In both of them I expressed that the prices for just about everything were way too high.

The $20 parking really shocked me. I know that the same company only charges $10-$12 for Phillies and Flyers games (at least they did two years ago).

Jeff Hopkins '82
I've been asked to do two different online surveys about the finals - one my the NCAA and one by TicketShafter. In both of them I expressed that the prices for just about everything were way too high.

The $20 parking really shocked me. I know that the same company only charges $10-$12 for Phillies and Flyers games (at least they did two years ago).

Parking was free at Foxborough.

Al DeFlorio

Jeff Hopkins '82
I've been asked to do two different online surveys about the finals - one my the NCAA and one by TicketShafter. In both of them I expressed that the prices for just about everything were way too high.

The $20 parking really shocked me. I know that the same company only charges $10-$12 for Phillies and Flyers games (at least they did two years ago).

Parking was free at Foxborough.

Parking may have been free, but I felt like I was using more than $20 worth of gas waiting in traffic for well over an hour trying to get the hell out of Gillette Stadium in 2009

Plus they charged $40 for oversized vehicles, not sure what they considered to be oversized

phillysportsfan
Plus they charged $40 for oversized vehicles, not sure what they considered to be oversized

Because it's so hard to find a large enough spot for an oversized rig in a near empty lot?

phillysportsfan
Plus they charged $40 for oversized vehicles, not sure what they considered to be oversized

NYC parking garages consider oversized to be just about any SUV even if it's shorter than a sedan. In Philadelphia I thought $40 was for motorhome size, not for an Escalade that still fits in a single parking space.