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Myron Medcalf, ESPN Staff Writer
WACO, Texas — On the day his school’s $212 million basketball arena opened, Mack Rhoades was worried about rain. The Baylor athletic director didn’t want the weather to restrict how fans could get to the new Foster Pavilion for that night’s game against Cornell. There are the traditional options, like buses and cars. But there is another way to get to Baylor home games: the Brazos River.
“We’ll have fans come to the Foster Pavilion on a boat,” Rhoades said. “You can take recruits down [on the river]. It’s a uniqueness for us that we’ve done a good job emphasizing.”
For Baylor, convincing fans to travel from its alumni hubs in Dallas-Fort Worth (90 minutes away) and Houston (three hours away) required an arena design that would offer more than just basketball.
“We thought a lot about supply and demand,” Rhoades said, about the decision behind shrinking its seating capacity. “And if you’re not here, you feel like you’re left out. And so, it was this idea of creating this demand of, ‘I want to be there.'”
Average attendance for Division I men’s basketball has fallen in the past 15 years, from 5,325 in 2007-08 to 4,354 last season. Baylor’s attendance grew over that stretch, but the school still followed national trends in addressing the concerns of getting fans into seats. Foster Pavilion opened in January and has 3,000 fewer seats than its former home, the Ferrell Center.
In recent months, multiple schools have visited Baylor as they make plans for their own future facilities, hoping to address what many college leaders around the country view as a serious attendance problem.
Where are the men’s college basketball fans? It’s difficult to say.
In a season where court storming has been a major storyline, the numbers still show that fans, broadly, aren’t attending games like they used to.
In the top seven men’s college basketball conferences, combined average attendance dropped from 75,818 in 2007-08 to 71,014 in 2012-13, to 66,963 last season. But that’s not the full story. A recent study by Nels Popp, a University of North Carolina professor, showed that 48 schools had a 37% “no-show” rate during their nonconference games last season. Fans bought tickets but didn’t come to the game. Ticket sales account for 15% of revenue in Division I athletics, per the Knight Foundation. Ticket sales also affect parking fees, concessions revenue and merchandise sales.
The attendance problem has compelled school officials to make sweeping changes to in-game experiences, including VIP packages for top spenders, more premium seating at arenas, overhauling older buildings, hiring consultants and for many, building new, smaller venues.
“I don’t think anybody right now is going to build really large arenas anymore,” said Gerald Harrison, athletic director at Austin Peay, which recently opened a new arena. “There are so many other things to put your money into rather than adding seats.”
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE food in Clarksville, Tennessee.
That’s one of the most significant upgrades — along with a kids club and, for the adults, the White Claw Club — Austin Peay fans now enjoy at F&M Bank Arena. The building, which opened this season, has nearly 2,000 fewer seats than the Dunn Center, the team’s former home.
“We had to get our food game on point,” said Harrison, who was previously an athletics administrator at Duke. “People don’t mind spending money in sport venues if you give them something that they can’t get elsewhere or you give them something that excites them.
“It was very important to get some local restaurants in there. You can get your Nashville hot chicken in there. … That’s like a taste of going downtown without having to leave the building. We’ve gotten a lot of compliments.”
While men’s powerhouses such as Kansas and Duke can brag about consecutive years’ worth of sellouts (350 through Feb. 18 for Kansas, 513 through Dec. 29, 2023, for Duke), those kinds of stories in college basketball are less common today than they were a decade ago. For non-Power 5 programs, the challenges are magnified, especially for teams without a winning legacy.
Austin Peay’s new amenities, however, have activated the school’s fan base.
“We’ve quadrupled our season-ticket sales already,” Harrison said. “That is what it was designed to do. And it feels better. We’re better this year than we have been, but I think what we’ve been able to provide has been a huge part of that.”
What a fantastic turn-out for the grand opening of the F&M Bank Arena! pic.twitter.com/jM6Xemu97K
— Montgomery County, TN (@mcgtn) July 15, 2023
Officials at Texas once shared Austin Peay’s concerns. During the 2006-07 season, the Longhorns finished 22nd nationally in attendance (12,969). That season, Kevin Durant led the team to the second round of the NCAA tournament. By 2012-13, however, attendance at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin (capacity 17,900) had dipped to 10,945, ranking 32nd in the country.
The school hired a consultant, who had worked with the Phoenix Suns, to improve the atmosphere and attract fans. One of the recommendations was to add a DJ who played popular songs, but that didn’t boost the numbers.
Contrast this with the $375 million Moody Center, which opened in 2022. The building is a partnership with the school, Oak View Group, Live Nation/C3 Presents and actor Matthew McConaughey, who helped design the suites. It is essentially a concert venue that doubles as a basketball arena: customized partitions block the upper bowl and drop capacity from 15,000 to 10,763 for games. The school has sold out of season tickets for its first two years in the building.
With nearly 8,000 fewer seats than the old facility, Texas officials say they had to make key decisions on new seating arrangements for season-ticket holders. But the increased noise in the building, compared to the levels in its former home, is noticeable. Like Baylor, Austin Peay and a growing number of other programs around the country, Texas has discovered value in downsizing.
“You’re not going to expect 17,000 people for 18, 19 games — over breaks, over weather periods that aren’t favorable — to pack the building every night,” said Drew Martin, executive senior associate athletic director for external affairs at Texas. “The more you spread people out in a building, the more they just kind of kick back and they become spectators. And they’re not really fans.
“We want an energetic building that is tight, that is packed, that is loud, that when the game starts tilting our direction, they’re on their feet and they’re jumping up and down and going wild. It’s just a night-and-day experience from the Erwin Center.”
Kansas State renovated Bramlage Coliseum in 2022 and cut capacity from 12,000 to 10,000. It added premium seats, expanded its student section and restarted beer sales this season. Good music and the energy of second-year head coach Jerome Tang also helps, said Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor.
But he’s searching for ways to make the building — fans have to walk down a long stairway to get to their seats — more accessible and attractive.
“We’re not going to go build a new basketball arena anytime soon,” Taylor said. “But how can we make our current arena a better situation for older fans that don’t want to have to walk all the way down to the bottom or can get down there easier? I mean, we’ve got one elevator. Those kinds of things would make it a little bit easier to manage the crowd flow.”
1:04
Duke’s back-to-back dunks extend lead
Alex O’Connell and RJ Barrett score on back-to-back dunks as Duke extends begins to pull away from Syracuse in the second half.
ON FEB. 23, 2019, Rob Gronkowski took selfies with Syracuse fans at the JMA Wireless Dome before the school’s matchup against a nationally ranked Duke team.
That evening, Syracuse broke college basketball’s attendance record: 35,642 fans watched the Orange lose 75-65 to a talented Blue Devils team featuring future NBA lottery picks R.J. Barrett and Zion Williamson.
Despite the loss, the historic crowd stood the entire game.
“It’s one of our biggest recruiting tools,” said Torrey Ball, Syracuse’s deputy athletic director, about his school’s facility. “It’s a point of pride and nobody else can say that they are doing things as unique as us.”
Currently at 34,616 seats, JMA is America’s largest college basketball venue and frequently sits atop the annual attendance marks in the sport. Last season, Syracuse finished second only to Kentucky with an average attendance of 19,102 — a decline of 1,000 fans from the 2007-08 season, but a less severe drop than what many programs have experienced. Yet, the Orange might never top their current NCAA attendance record.
Expected to be completed by the end of 2024, a renovation project at the formerly named Carrier Dome, which is also the school’s home for football and lacrosse, will remove about 5,000 seats for basketball. Seats on the lower level will be made wider and include armrests. On the 300 level, fans will get chairbacks, an upgrade from the original bleacher seating.
The changes will come with increased ticket prices, as well as a “seat selection” process that will give Syracuse fans priority based on how much they donate to the school. The “Sideline Club” and “Club 44” will offer top spenders a VIP experience. “Donor rank” will dictate the process, per school officials.
“We want to make sure our [core fan base] feels comfortable,” Ball said. “And then, we want to grow our base. Obviously, we want to make more money. In this world of [name, image and likeness], this world of conference realignment, we know, institutionally, we have to make more money. You sit in the room and say, ‘How could this affect the person at the 300 level and how could this affect our largest donor, the No. 1 person on our priority list?’ And then you shift and mold policies and procedures to fit everyone.”
That’s also the goal at Tennessee, Thompson Boling Arena (capacity 24,535) is one of the largest home venues in America — an advantage, according to Alicia Longworth, the school’s executive athletic director of external operations.
“We need different ticketing options,” Longworth said. “It’s about getting those people from different walks of life, different demographics in our building.”
1:48
Cornell Big Red vs. Baylor Bears: Full Highlights
Cornell Big Red vs. Baylor Bears: Full Highlights
FOR THE FIRST GAME at Foster Pavilion, Microsoft founder Bill Gates sat courtside with his partner, Paula Hurd, who donated $7 million toward the construction of the arena. The court is named after her and her late husband, Mark.
Across from them were Paul and Alejandra Foster. The new arena is named after their family, which donated $100 million toward its construction. They were honored at halftime before returning to their seats in the expanded courtside VIP section.
Former players such as Isaiah Austin were present, along with students who returned to campus during winter break to bless the new student section just behind the scorer’s table.
The steep angle of the midlevel seats allows for a great view for every fan. Every spectator is closer to the court, with the worst seat inside Foster Pavilion 54 feet closer to the court than the worst seat at the old Ferrell Center. Stacking the crowd also intensifies the noise.
Baylor wanted a more intimate environment and a chance to fill its building as the future of college basketball attendance seems in flux.
“It’s a nice arena and it gets loud,” Cornell coach Brian Earl said after that first game at Foster Pavilion. “I think it’s what kids dream of when they want to play big-time college basketball. It’s a good environment and they should be proud of what they did here.”