MVC First Exhibition Attendance

[Rusty 54]

Maybe we should cut isured a little slack. It's not like their fans get to see any good non conference teams at home.

[BU_EMT128]

Maybe we should cut isured a little slack. It's not like their fans get to see any good non conference teams at home.

Hey now, I bet those fans will flood in to see ISUred play a thrilling matchup versus Nicholls State

[cpacmel]

Looks like cpacmel accomphished his goal of irritating BU fans. But IMO a fan of a team, with a student population much larger than Bradley, which in the past has been lucky to draw 6000 fans to games except when Bradley comes to town, shouldn't talk about BU's lack of attendance at an exibition game.

My thoughts exactly! I believe isu has an enrollment approx. three times greater than Bradley, yet Bradley was able to draw 3,000+ more fans on average last season. Not to mention that was a successful season for the isu team.

Enrollment of students has little to do with overall attendance at games. Bradley doesn't draw more students to their games than ISU does. They draw more folks from Peoria and the area than ISU does from the B-N area. Creighton is the same way. The Jays have something like an enrollment of 7K per year. Their attendance is huge because Omaha is a big metro area.

[shaunguth]

Enrollment of students has little to do with overall attendance at games. Bradley doesn't draw more students to their games than ISU does. They draw more folks from Peoria and the area than ISU does from the B-N area. Creighton is the same way. The Jays have something like an enrollment of 7K per year. Their attendance is huge because Omaha is a big metro area.

The B-N area and the isu student population, accompanied with the success that team had last season, should be enough to ensure more than the 6,500 isu averaged. I'd be terribly disappointed if Bradley was in the same situation.

[cpacmel]

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there upwards of 375K people in the Peoria area compared to around 150K or so for the B-N area.

Plus no beer at Redbird Arena.

[tornado]

375K is quite a stretch, but the extra farmers we have in places like Toulon are irrelevant, because surely you know ISU graduates 5-6 times as many people yearly as Bradley does, and has at least that much greater of a local fan base in and around B-N than BU does in Peoria.

[shaunguth]

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there upwards of 375K people in the Peoria area compared to around 150K or so for the B-N area.

Plus no beer at Redbird Arena.

That's correct.

July 2007 metropolitan area census figures:

371,206 - Peoria

164,209 - B-N

However, I still stand by my previous post: The B-N area and the isu student population, accompanied with the success that team had last season, should be enough to ensure more than the 6,500 isu averaged. I'd be terribly disappointed if Bradley was in the same situation.

[LG281]

Peoria proper had nearly 114k inhabitants in July 2007...
http://www.city-data.com/city/Peoria-Illinois.html

Depending on how you slice up the surrounding area yes the population is in the 370k range.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of...City_of_Peoria

But B/N have over 120k within their city limits.
http://www.city-data.com/city/Normal-Illinois.html

http://www.city-data.com/city/Bloomington-Illinois.html


Say what you want to but if BU had an on campus arena there would be more students in attendance. The fact that ISU has that many SHOULD-BE fans in such a close proximity to their arena and still can't pull in large crowds is very pitiful.

[tornado]

according to the US 2000 census-
Normal, IL - 45,386 (updated in 2005 - 50,519)
Bloomington, IL - 64,808 (updated in 2006 - 74,975)
Peoria, IL - 112,936

OK...now as for the "metropolitan area, that's where it gets tough, because where do you draw the line?? It gets pretty arbitrary.
I know a lot of people who go to Bradley games come from Pekin and Morton, but probably a bunch who are ISU fans come from as far away as El Paso, Lexington, and out towards Champaign.
Hey-- I even know quite a few who drive all the way from Peoria to see every ISU home game, so actually, given the spread out fan base, ISU may actually be drawing from as large a "metropolitan area"?

[SFP]

Say what you want to but if BU had an on campus arena there would be more students in attendance. The fact that ISU has that many SHOULD-BE fans in such a close proximity to their arena and still can't pull in large crowds is very pitiful.

It just maybe a different priority from their students. At Bradley there is a lot of emphasis and social gatherings around our basketball team. Our President attends these games and participates at a high level. We are a private school, our cost are higher and so we have to use our program in order to market our school.

ISU on the other hand is a public school which costs less to attend so the administration does not have to fight to keep a steady enrollment, I'm sure the women at this point out number the men (pure guess), women tend to not follow sports as rabid as men and BN probably does not have as many ISU alumnus as Peoria has Bradley alumnus. Two total different cultures in central Illinois and that is why I'm glad to be on the BU's side of the fence.

[Da Coach]

ISU on the other hand is a public school which costs less to attend so the administration does not have to fight to keep a steady enrollment, I'm sure the women at this point out number the men (pure guess), women tend to not follow sports as rabid as men and BN probably does not have as many ISU alumnus as Peoria has Bradley alumnus. Two total different cultures in central Illinois and that is why I'm glad to be on the BU's side of the fence.

Some of what you say is true, but I would note that Bradley now has more females than male students, too. That was always true at ISU, but has only been true at Bradley for the last few years.
And there are many more ISU grads in the central Illinois area than there are Bradley grads. Most BU students are not from the Peoria area, and thus they are more likely to leave the area after they graduate. But a much larger percentage of ISU students are from the central Illinois area, and coupled with the fact that attendance at ISU is more than 3 times what it is at Bradley, a far larger number of ISU students stay in this area after graduation.

There are probably many other factors that affect attendance. But suffice to say that Bradley gets better fan support than ISU, outdraws them every year, and has a much more loyal fan base. That could change, but as long as Bradley fields a quality team, it isn't likely to.

In general, college sports are seeing a decline in attendance at live events. It has to do with a lot of factors such as the quantity and variety of available sports on TV, other entertainment options available to young fans, the economy, the fact that the population is so much more mobile that it was a generation ago.

[LG281]

It just maybe a different priority from their students. At Bradley there is a lot of emphasis and social gatherings around our basketball team. Our President attends these games and participates at a high level. We are a private school, our cost are higher and so we have to use our program in order to market our school.

ISU on the other hand is a public school which costs less to attend so the administration does not have to fight to keep a steady enrollment, I'm sure the women at this point out number the men (pure guess), women tend to not follow sports as rabid as men and BN probably does not have as many ISU alumnus as Peoria has Bradley alumnus. Two total different cultures in central Illinois and that is why I'm glad to be on the BU's side of the fence.

SFP, I'm glad that I'm on this side of the fence too...but your argument still doesn't hold water for me. I'm willing to wager that ISU has more of those 'rabid" males enrolled than BU has students. Mix in the few female anomolies and the fact that they still can't pull more fans just boggles my mind.

BU asks for considerably more effort from its student fan base than ISU. I'd be interested to know how many students drive themselves or take fan buses down to Carver to see games in comparison with the students that walk across campus to get to Redbird Arena.

You can play devils advocate and make excuses for them SFP...I still think we'd have WAY more fans at an on campus arena.

[DoubleJayAlum]

Setting the attendance discussion aside, I'm still curious why BU didn't include the exhibition among season tix? Does anybody know? Is it just because they never have before?

[Da Coach]

I believe it is simply related to the fact that they have always had 1 exhibition game on campus, and probably will resume that next year. This year, because of the demolition of the Fieldhouse, it was held at the Civic Center. But because of this, it's not feasable to include it in the season-ticket package, since the seat assignments that season-ticket holders have, would not work for the on-campus venue.

[SFP]

Setting the attendance discussion aside, I'm still curious why BU didn't include the exhibition among season tix? Does anybody know? Is it just because they never have before?

My guess and it is only a guess the first exhibition was generally played on an on campus facility. That facility was torn down so they played the game at Carver. Like so many institutions their sales and marketing group did not make the necessary adjustments to take that into affect thus a low attendance. It was also on a Monday night which probably did not help matters.