Illinois will not be playing home games next fall at Carver Arena

[tornado]

John Supinie says that the FIVE early season games Illinois is playing in the Springfield Prairie Capital Convention Center are far from sellouts..
The arena only seats 7700 and supposedly at least 3000 seats are still available for all the games there...but they are hopeful the games will sell out.

actually it is nice to see John Supinie is still doing a good job covering sports - especially Illini sports for the Illinois Rivals site...although it appears he is no longer working for the newspaper. he's now in a different field!

As some may recall- Supinie was a long time, award-winning sports journalist with the Gatehouse Media. He now covers the Illini for Rivals sports.

https://illinois.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1812018

[tornado]

reportedly still slow ticket sales for the games in Springfield.
Illinois now advertising discount ticket deals and they have a FAMILY PACK with big discounts, similar to Bradley's.

http://www.fightingillini.com/news/2015/10/29/MBB_1029152608.aspx?path=mbball

[tornado]

....the FIVE early season games Illinois is playing in the Springfield Prairie Capital Convention Center are far from sellouts..
The arena only seats 7700 and supposedly at least 3000 seats are still available for all the games there...but they are hopeful the games will sell out.

that was a month ago - and so they only sold maybe another 1000 tickets in that interval...
the announced attendance for yesterday's Illini game in Springfield was 5833 - almost 2,000 fewer than capacity..
I am sure the Illini hope the regular season games coming up draw a lot better.

I think they made a big mistake - had they set a couple of these games in the Chicago area and a couple here in Peoria and Bloomington - I have to think they'd have drawn way more than the doubtful 5833 they claimed..
BTW- check out these pictures - a lot of empty seats visible

http://www.pjstar.com/storyimage/IP/20151108/SPORTS/151109411/AR/0/AR-151109411.jpg&MaxW=650

http://www.fightingillini.com/common/controls/image_handler.aspx?thumb_prefix=rp_primary&image_path=/images/2015/11/8/IMG_8972.jpg

[tornado]

Illinois shifted all FIVE of their early non-conference games to the Springfield Prairie Capital Center...
and they horribly misjudged how few Illini fans would make the trek or show up there in Springfield.

In the end - all five contests drew only around 5000 (with plenty of empties) with virtually non-existent local & walk-up business - at least 2000 LESS than they had predicted and hoped for.

NOW the figures are in and have been made public...
they lost BIG TIME --
The arena lost over $200,000 hosting the games, and U of I lost plenty as well...having to discount their share by $285,000!

http://www.wgil.com/2016/03/13/springfield-facility-loses-200296-hosting-illini-games/

Bloomington or Peoria probably would have been a better venue...and same if they'd have put a game or two up near Chicago.
Bloomington because it is such a shorter and easier trip for the majority of Champaign-Urbana fans...
and Peoria because it routinely does lots better drawing for college basketball than Springfield.