Student season ticket sales

[andyw2100]

I have great memories (mid eighties) of spending a few Friday nights sleeping in Lynah, waiting for the early Saturday morning sale of the tickets. Unlike Trotsky, I never slept out more than a single night per sale.

I attended the MSG game last week with an old college friend who I slept out with one year, and we talked about something funny that happened that night that we both vividly remembered.

And from the "not funny then, but funny after the fact file" - "El-Mowww." (Who else here was there that year?

[imafrshmn]

In retrospect it's a wonder that we were game to do a one night camp-out for tickets in the mid-late 2000s. But back then, Lynah Faithful was like being in an anarchic student org... an outlet for teenage angst and collective spirit that felt intrinsically good and enlivening. But of course we were drinking from a well that was already depleted.

[BearLover]

Eh, I missed the boat by a few years on the overnight campouts, but I don't really buy that it should be so difficult to fill a 4,000-person rink (maybe 1,500 of which are student seats?). College football and hoops sell out giant arenas to the same kids who are evidently obsessed with their cell phones and staying in. I think it's doable for Cornell hockey to sell 1/25 as many tickets as Clemson football, given both schools have the same number of students.

[andyw2100]

Eh, I missed the boat by a few years on the overnight campouts, but I don't really buy that it should be so difficult to fill a 4,000-person rink (maybe 1,500 of which are student seats?). College football and hoops sell out giant arenas to the same kids who are evidently obsessed with their cell phones and staying in. I think it's doable for Cornell hockey to sell 1/25 as many tickets as Clemson football, given both schools have the same number of students.

Not to mention the fact that tickets are incredibly inexpensive when compared to athletic event tickets elsewhere.

[ugarte]

biggest difference is clemson is mostly a regional school with people who have been football and maybe clemson fans their whole lives. i wish students cared more about hockey but group activity in a physical place is dying everywhere.

[Trotsky]

But of course we were drinking from a well that was already depleted.

The well is infinite.  But to quote Tom Lehrer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

[Trotsky]

group activity in a physical place is dying everywhere.

It's a phase that will pass.  The anesthesia of this moment is just a particularly nasty cul de sac of History. But culture is human activity, and culture is miles deep while the petty idiocy of commerce is just paint on it.

Humanity will survive late stage capitalism.  People will dance and sing and fuck again.  Our species is resilient.

Marx was wrong.  Economics is just mankind stopping to catch his breath and pick his nose.  The real business of humans is joy.  Well, and murder.  We're also really into murder.

[stereax]

I mean, I can put the game on and watch it at home.

That's also a factor.

[BearLover]

I mean, I can put the game on and watch it at home.

That's also a factor.

It's a factor, but I suspect more for the townies. You're one of the few student super-fans (which I say as a compliment). I bet for most students ESPN+ viewership is nil.

[stereax]

I mean, I can put the game on and watch it at home.

That's also a factor.

It's a factor, but I suspect more for the townies. You're one of the few student super-fans (which I say as a compliment). I bet for most students ESPN+ viewership is nil.

Au contraire, actually. I know several fans who will just pirate the game if they're not up to buying tickets and making the trek up to Lynah. I suspect the number is far greater than just my anecdotal evidence.

Hell, even I missed this weekend's women's games due to a case of the Stomach Pains. Not that I missed much, though...

[BearLover]

I mean, I can put the game on and watch it at home.

That's also a factor.

It's a factor, but I suspect more for the townies. You're one of the few student super-fans (which I say as a compliment). I bet for most students ESPN+ viewership is nil.

Au contraire, actually. I know several fans who will just pirate the game if they're not up to buying tickets and making the trek up to Lynah. I suspect the number is far greater than just my anecdotal evidence.

Hell, even I missed this weekend's women's games due to a case of the Stomach Pains. Not that I missed much, though...

You could watch the games online (I think for free?) when I was in school. The stream quality was horrible, granted, but none of the students seemed remotely interested. Nobody watched or followed the away games either, even though those often were higher quality. So I'm definitely skeptical that the ability to watch on your computer is affecting attendance much at all. The reality is that few students care about Cornell hockey, most just want to attend and fun and exciting event. I'd be very surprised almost anyone cares enough to follow online.

[VIEWfromK]

Hell, even I missed this weekend's women's games due to a case of the Stomach Pains.

I thought you swore off the Taco Bell?

[abmarks]

Eh, I missed the boat by a few years on the overnight campouts, but I don't really buy that it should be so difficult to fill a 4,000-person rink (maybe 1,500 of which are student seats?). College football and hoops sell out giant arenas to the same kids who are evidently obsessed with their cell phones and staying in. I think it's doable for Cornell hockey to sell 1/25 as many tickets as Clemson football, given both schools have the same number of students.

Again you make a statistical comparison error by comparing sellouts of clemson hoop and football to cornell.

Here are the Cornell mens's hoop home game attendance figures for the last 3 years. That's what you ought to compare to the Hockey attendance.

Code Select Expand

Year        Home Games      avg attendance
24-25          14             983
23-24          11           1,129
22-23          13             822

Attendance figures make it clear:
-almost nobody cares about sports at Cornell, period.   
-more people seem to care about hockey than basketball.

If sold-out sporting spectacles in the three major men's sports (football, hoop, ice-hockey) are your big thing and you want top-tier academics, then you've got only one choice, and that's Michigan.

But you didn't go to Michigan, mr. bearlover, you went to Cornell.  Nothing short of a generational shift in american culture or Cornell leaving the IVY league for the Big ten is going to change the slow decline in sporting attendance.  So get over it already since the only way you could possibly influence this is if you were to open your wallet and give students a free ticket plus a per-game stipend of something like $50 a head ($75 if they participaite in at least 1 mass cheer per period) to show up and guarantee a sellout.
Kids aren't even having sex at anything near historical rates these days, and you want to get them to a cold arena for a sport they don't give a fuck about?

[BearLover]

Eh, I missed the boat by a few years on the overnight campouts, but I don't really buy that it should be so difficult to fill a 4,000-person rink (maybe 1,500 of which are student seats?). College football and hoops sell out giant arenas to the same kids who are evidently obsessed with their cell phones and staying in. I think it's doable for Cornell hockey to sell 1/25 as many tickets as Clemson football, given both schools have the same number of students.

Again you make a statistical comparison error by comparing sellouts of clemson hoop and football to cornell.

Here are the Cornell mens's hoop home game attendance figures for the last 3 years. That's what you ought to compare to the Hockey attendance.

Code Select Expand

Year        Home Games      avg attendance
24-25          14             983
23-24          11           1,129
22-23          13             822

Attendance figures make it clear:
-almost nobody cares about sports at Cornell, period.   
-more people seem to care about hockey than basketball.

If sold-out sporting spectacles in the three major men's sports (football, hoop, ice-hockey) are your big thing and you want top-tier academics, then you've got only one choice, and that's Michigan.

But you didn't go to Michigan, mr. bearlover, you went to Cornell.  Nothing short of a generational shift in american culture or Cornell leaving the IVY league for the Big ten is going to change the slow decline in sporting attendance.  So get over it already since the only way you could possibly influence this is if you were to open your wallet and give students a free ticket plus a per-game stipend of something like $50 a head ($75 if they participaite in at least 1 mass cheer per period) to show up and guarantee a sellout.
Kids aren't even having sex at anything near historical rates these days, and you want to get them to a cold arena for a sport they don't give a fuck about?

This post totally blows, even by your standards. As usual, you're rude, you don't argue in good faith, and your arguments suck. I usually ignore you but since you decided to insult me right from the jump, you actually succeeded at pulling me in this time. Here is a list a reasons your post blows:
1. The very first word in your post makes it clear this isn't about the current topic but rather about BearLover: "Again you make a statistical comparison error..." The "again" serves no purpose here other than to say "you're stupid." Great way to start a discussion!
2. I don't know if you're actually this obtuse but since I said it right in my post, I'm dumbfounded you missed it: my post is specifically responding to the notion that kids are too addicted to their phones and don't like going out anymore. So no, there's nothing wrong with the "statistical comparison" I used.
I wasn't even doing a "statistical comparison." I was showing that, even in today's age, there are sporting events that kids attend orders of magnitude better attended than Lynah despite similar population size.
3A. This entire thread is premised on the point that Lynah used to be more popular.  So even if I was doing a "statistical comparison," a snapshot in time of Cornell basketball is absolutely not the right one. For Cornell basketball attendance to have any bearing on this conversation, you'd have to show it has decreased commensurately with hockey attendance since the Lynah heyday in 2005ish. Otherwise, it indicates absolutely nothing because you haven't shown it was ever something students cared about.
3B. I want to reiterate this point because it's illustrative. You come out of nowhere to call me stupid (first word), misunderstand the point of my post, and then introduce a "superior" "statistical comparison." But your statistical comparison is rubbish! It totally missed the point! I'm speaking very explicitly about a decline, over years, of Lynah attendance, and then you come in here with figures about Cornell basketball in the last 3 years as though they have some bearing on this conversation???
4. As I've said numerous times (I guess you missed that part too), the bar to clear is much lower in a 4,000 person rink than a 100,000 person football stadium. So even if directionally it IS true that people are less interested (which I have NEVER disputed), the relevant question is whether we can find 500-1000 more people to attend the games across the entire population of Cornell students, Cornell professors, Cornell employees, people who live in Ithaca and the surrounding towns, alumni, etc. My belief is that yes, you can, given the massive population at issue here. Your rude, bad-faith, and stupid post makes a feeble attempt to show few care about Cornell hockey, but it does not even attempt to show that this number is low enough to make selling out Lynah difficult or impossible.

[The Rancor]

I have friends who did not attend a hockey game until the spring of their Senior year. They didn't even know there was hockey at the school or that the atmosphere was so insane (this is 25 years ago). Why? Because they were nerds who study all the time, because Cornell is about academics, which is why they went there, and because they genuinely didn't know anything about sports or care until that exact moment. Of course there are lots of more well rounded kids, and the stands were full full in those days, but I'm telling you that if you care about watching sports and also getting a few classes in, Cornell isn't your school. Or, you're at the frat watching ACC football on Saturday like 98% of the country.