First-round attendance

[HomerCecil]

Stolen from the Rebkell board:

Of the 14 (of 16) sites reporting . . .

Top 4:
Waco 8,368
Knoxville 7,948
Stanford 6,515
Storrs 6,418

Followed by:
Spokane 6,000
Columbus 5,658
Shreveport 5,377
College Park 5,258
Durham 4,319
Cincinnati 4,003
Happy Valley 3,997

Bottom 3:
Charlottesville 3,763
Auburn 3,383
Salt Lake City 2,366

I don't think it's a coincidence that the top 4 are also the #1 picks; nor that 2 of the bottom 3 are sites where the host teams didn't make the tourney.

[coasterville95]

Thatr puts things in perspective, there is a problem that needs fixing.

We are a #2 seed, some might arque by AP ranks the top or 2nd #2 seed, and yet our attendance is, while not bargain basement, towards the bottom.

This is with Lousiville brinigng a bargeload of fans. The Lousivilel fans bey us were talking about attendance, and commented that they regularly draw 10k for home women's games. Some Louisville fan sites put the Lousisville delegation Sunday at about 2,000 fans. Considering that outh Dakota State and Vandnderbilt combined might have cocounted for a section or section and a half, that means we drew what, maybe 1,500 to 1,800. That's with our men's team out of action, so no conflicts there, and the game in our own backyward.

Somewhere, the question needs to be raised, "What do we need to do, as a team, to get our attendance up to a respectable level" (Let's start with routinely filling the lower bowl as a goal). Clearly the old adage that Wins Put Fans In Seats isn't working, undefeated at home since 2009? 33-2?

Senior night drew 4,500 but that was also $1 admission night, I suppose giving away the tickets and food is a strategy, but not a very profitable one.

The silver lining is that Tuesday's game IS at 7pm. And Lousiville fans would have to deal with rush hour getting out of Louisville. Let's hope, I know not likely, that they aren't fan enough to potentially leave work early on Tuesday, then not get home till close to midnight on Tuesday. Otherwise, the scenario of being outnumbered in our own arena may very well come to fruition. Quick, somebody, book a high profile auto race into Sparta Speedway starting around 6pm Tuesday night just to totally stymie attempts to get to/from Cintas.

[HomerCecil]

I still maintain that the athletic department does an abysmal job of promoting this team. I follow Xavier athletics on Facebook, and they promote the men's team 5 to 1 over the women's. When the men won the A10 for a fifth straight year, they made a big logo and that traveled all across Facebook very well.

I certainly understand that the men's team is more of a draw than the women's team, but it's pretty obvious by watching what gets posted that the women's team is basically an afterthought. Anything that does get posted for the women is basically a repurposed press release, whereas for the men we get live video of them entering the stadium at Quicken Loans Arena, etc., etc.

I learned that Amber was a Senior CLASS nominee from the Duke women's basketball SID's Twitter feed, for instance.

The sad news is that this is the best team we're going to have any time soon, and if the athletic department hasn't gotten the message by now, they aren't going to get it.

With that said, they do deserve some credit for ponying up the money to host the first/second rounds these past two years, because they certainly are losing a lot of money in doing so.

[coasterville95]

I wouldn't say it quite that drastically -

They have had $1 nights, free nights, two for ones on womesn's season tickets during Musketeer Madness. Some neat perks for women's season ticket holders (they all get Joseph Club on select nights, as an example), being able to buy seats on press row. They had the whole "Refuse to be ordinary" and "Advantage X!" campaigns.

They had a jersey auction, and while not promoted as big as the men's team, I'll give you that, have had some attention paid to them, which is better than the no attention they got before social networking.

Deep down, I think somebody in Athletics will point to these types of initiatives and say "We tried" Which is a shame, because the women's team puts a fantastic product on the floor.

I do have to agree that, if they didn't catch lightning this year, and they don't catch lightning in the pre season hype for next year, its not happening.

[HomerCecil]

Agreed that abysmal is probably a bit over the top, but I would argue that most of the perks you listed are for season-ticket holders who are already in place. Other than the discounts, none of those things are aimed at gaining new fans (and during the dollar night, didn't people mention that the lines were so long at the concession stands that you'd miss half the game standing in line?). In today's market, you've really got to grab people and give them a reason to attend something.

I also forgot to mention that Ta'Shia Phillips was the centerpiece story on ESPN.com's women's basketball page for quite some time, and unless I missed it, there was never any reference to that on Xavier's Facebook page. I even took a screenshot of it and posted it to their wall — nothing. And things like that don't cost money and take about 30 seconds to accomplish. A casual men's fan would definitely take notice to a photo of a Xavier player being the centerpiece on ESPN.com.

Again, they do support them financially. I just hate that we've had perhaps the most talented basketball team — men's or women's — that we might ever have and that we couldn't even fill the lower half of the arena for them.

[HomerCecil]

Also, I should add in that my comments that they've done poorly should be taken with a grain of salt. I live in DC and have been to George Washington and Georgetown games. Especially with Georgetown, you wouldn't know the school sponsored women's basketball and they're a top 20 team. So the selection show party and what Xavier has done is definitely much better than what most team gets. The department at X is just so top-notch that I've come to expect more, I guess!

[xu_fan]

I will be embarrased if Louisville brings more fans than us to the game tomm night. I am begging people to come! I wish some of these dang mens basketball fans would come... If 10,000 people can watch a womens game in Louisville and be entertained than why can't 10,000 people in cincy... Its not that much of a bigger city is it? Granted, we have the bengals and reds but they're both not issues right now... Idk I find it upsetting..

[RoseyMuskie]

I'm not a huge Xavier women's supporter, and don't know much about them besides the players on the team. I can tell you though that I spoke with a pretty avid fan the other night. She mentioned to me how she had a full season ticket package for the ladies, but when she went to buy NCAA games they were putting her in the upper deck. She refused to buy the tickets then. I wonder if this affected others also and brought down attendance by a couple hundred or so.

[coasterville95]

There were several great lower deck seats as recently as a week ago. I heard the story is the upper deck seats were sold as part of that deeply discounted holiday promotion. Remember, you get what you pay for.

I can tell you there could not have been 25 in the upper deck stands on the even side.

I bought my seats as part of the MENs season ticketholder presale and am in section 109 row N. The brochure also said the womens season ticket holders were given highest priority.

All that aside, I just saw a tweet/facebook posting that hinted that Louisville may have sold more tickets than us. We have to do something about that!

[xu_fan]

There were several great lower deck seats as recently as a week ago. I heard the story is the upper deck seats were sold as part of that deeply discounted holiday promotion. Remember, you get what you pay for.

I can tell you there could not have been 25 in the upper deck stands on the even side.

I bought my seats as part of the MENs season ticketholder presale and am in section 109 row N. The brochure also said the womens season ticket holders were given highest priority.

All that aside, I just saw a tweet/facebook posting that hinted that Louisville may have sold more tickets than us. We have to do something about that!

That would not surprise me with how much red I saw on Sunday. Plus, they were so much louder than us and more energetic! I might bring a mehaphone! Lol

[XU-PA]

There were several great lower deck seats as recently as a week ago. I heard the story is the upper deck seats were sold as part of that deeply discounted holiday promotion. Remember, you get what you pay for.

I can tell you there could not have been 25 in the upper deck stands on the even side.

I bought my seats as part of the MENs season ticketholder presale and am in section 109 row N. The brochure also said the womens season ticket holders were given highest priority.


I got some of those upper deck tickets last year, yes they were on a discounted basis. I'm not a season ticket holder, but ordered my tickets for this weeks games as soon as they were announced. and I got one row in front of Coasterville! There were certainly available seats in the lower bowl for the games sunday, 4000 is much less than the number of lower level seats.

As far as overall attendance. having been connected with the team years ago, they have put a lot of effort into the womens program, billboard campaigns have been going on for quite some time, as well as TV. Not sure if they have been doing anything on the radio or not. I really think the news biz in Cinti has let the womens game down. ou've got a top 5 program, 2 all american, wooden watch candidates, a team that hasn't lost at home all year long and they get not 10% of the coverage that wither UC or XU's mens program.
It's been evident to me for a number of years that the local news outlets just don't give a dam. The excuse is that they won't cover it till fans turn out, but the news business on the local level, if print and electronic want to stay in business, is changing. Why would a local outlet spend all their time on national sports stories. We can get that anywhere, and we do. It's the local story that is going to sell papers now.
Just ask your friends, neighbors, co workers, nobody has heard about it!
They really need to wake up, it's a new milenium.

[1757Williams]

I'm not a huge Xavier women's supporter, and don't know much about them besides the players on the team. I can tell you though that I spoke with a pretty avid fan the other night. She mentioned to me how she had a full season ticket package for the ladies, but when she went to buy NCAA games they were putting her in the upper deck. She refused to buy the tickets then. I wonder if this affected others also and brought down attendance by a couple hundred or so.

My roommate heard of a similar situation. What a shame.

[LadyMuskie]

I'm not a huge Xavier women's supporter, and don't know much about them besides the players on the team. I can tell you though that I spoke with a pretty avid fan the other night. She mentioned to me how she had a full season ticket package for the ladies, but when she went to buy NCAA games they were putting her in the upper deck. She refused to buy the tickets then. I wonder if this affected others also and brought down attendance by a couple hundred or so.

Really? I wonder how that happened, because I bought tickets in the lower bowl five rows from court from goxavier.com. I bought my tix for tomorrow night when we got home from the game last night and I'm only four rows from the court. You should mention to her to check out goxavier.com because she can probably still get lower bowl seats on there.

[HomerCecil]

I really don't think the media not covering the team has that much to do with it, XU-PA. Do you think the students read the Enquirer? They're largely the group that doesn't show up. Also, I'm not saying you're mistaken, but if they run TV ads, I (nor my family, who is still in Cincinnati) have never seen one.

And frankly, the team has gotten more national-level media than they've gotten on the local level, and the school has not done a good job of promoting that national recognition. Tu Holloway has a good game against Richmond, gets ESPN player of the week honors and (very deservedly) Xavier athletics has it all over Facebook. Ta'Shia gets the front-page spot on ESPN.com's women's coverage for the better part of a week and the athletic department does nothing with it.

I feel like billboards are a waste of money unless your product is already established. Yes, Xavier has a women's basketball team. They're good. That's all you're going to take away from a billboard and it's not enough to draw new fans in. You don't know that Amber Harris can dunk from a billboard. You don't know that Ta'Shia Phillips is among the top 10 rebounders in NCAA history from a billboard. You don't know that Amber Gray overcame an aneurysm and basically has had to re-learn how to do everything from a billboard. You don't know the great names that Special Jennings' siblings have from a billboard.

I'm not saying they don't try, but whatever they're doing isn't working very well. Social media is key. Make some YouTube videos, post smart, quick hits of information people will read and take in.

On a basketball note, boy, am I glad we didn't have to play Marist today! Not saying Louisville will be a cake walk at all, but that Marist team was tough.

:logo:

[XU-PA]

Homer I've looked at both the XU athletics site, as well as the University's site on facebook and there are items about the womens team on both of the sites. and I've been seeing them all through the season. In fact the top item on the XU sports site is how students can get their free NCAA tickets

I'm watching the morning news here, flipping channels, wondering which one of the TV stations is aware that a top five basketball team is going for a sweet sixteen berth tonight???

On the Enquirer web site yesterday, one article about the SDSU game, Not a headlining piece with a picture. Today's online version, again not a headline top of the page piece, buried down below in the Xavier section. Headline story for the Enq? Feature artcle about Aroldis Chapman getting an ESPN the Magazine cover story.

Channel 12's website,, nothing, not in news not in sports
Channel 9's webpage? have to navigate to sports, call up poppo's tuesday morning "sports rush" buried about halfway down. Below the reds wrap up, below Bruce Pearl's firing and below Georgia State hiring IUPUI's coach.
Channel 5's webpage? nothing on the main page, in sports there are three headline stories with pictures, then below that an AP story on XU winning over SDSU.

So I ask, with a top 5 team getting prepped today to play for a sweet sixteen berth, where the hell is the coverage??
Womens sports has always taken a back seat, and I realize that is a national issue, but I think the media on the local side is so ingrained in that snub, that they couldn't see a good
story if it jumped up and hit them in the face!

[HomerCecil]

Homer I've looked at both the XU athletics site, as well as the University's site on facebook and there are items about the womens team on both of the sites. and I've been seeing them all through the season. In fact the top item on the XU sports site is how students can get their free NCAA tickets

I'm watching the morning news here, flipping channels, wondering which one of the TV stations is aware that a top five basketball team is going for a sweet sixteen berth tonight???

On the Enquirer web site yesterday, one article about the SDSU game, Not a headlining piece with a picture. Today's online version, again not a headline top of the page piece, buried down below in the Xavier section. Headline story for the Enq? Feature artcle about Aroldis Chapman getting an ESPN the Magazine cover story.

Channel 12's website,, nothing, not in news not in sports
Channel 9's webpage? have to navigate to sports, call up poppo's tuesday morning "sports rush" buried about halfway down. Below the reds wrap up, below Bruce Pearl's firing and below Georgia State hiring IUPUI's coach.
Channel 5's webpage? nothing on the main page, in sports there are three headline stories with pictures, then below that an AP story on XU winning over SDSU.

So I ask, with a top 5 team getting prepped today to play for a sweet sixteen berth, where the hell is the coverage??
Womens sports has always taken a back seat, and I realize that is a national issue, but I think the media on the local side is so ingrained in that snub, that they couldn't see a good
story if it jumped up and hit them in the face!

Well of course the women are the top item on the Facebook page now that the men have lost and the game is today! Anyway, we're going to have to agree to disagree. It's game day now anyway, on to that!

[coasterville95]

You don't think hosting the NCAA tourney this year was part of the marketing plan.

I mean, they have put together the finest women's team we ever had, and they just happened to book in the tournament this year. I'm sure they were counting on the tournament in town brining in some new fans who would not go to a normal game, but might go to see them play in the tournament. That may, or may not have worked out for them. Jury is still out. That may also explain some of the visible disapointment when we were not put in the Dayton regional. Imagine the potential of 6 tournament games - 2 in Cincinnati, 2 in Dayton, 2 in Indianapolis, all of which are well within your recruiting/marketing/fanbase area. The whole thing was too good to pass up.

(IIRC, the only reason, we had the tourney last year was somebody else backed out, and they asked us if we would step in, didn't hurt we had a mighty fine team last year to so we could show off then as well)

There may well be a big expense in hosting the tournament, but I'm sure it fill get filed under women's basketball marketing expense.

[HomerCecil]

Absolutely. And I said in one of my earlier posts on this thread that we should be thankful that they are footing the bill for this the past two years.

It's also worth noting that the university received a $50,000 grant from the NCAA for marketing women's basketball last summer. So that certainly helps defray the cost, too. But funding for this team is certainly not a problem; I don't think anyone would raise issue with that, myself included.

Go X!

[XU-PA]

Will agree to disagree Homer, certainly don't want to pick a fight and we have had this duscussion before.

I was in on a few meetings with Coach McGuff years ago and others . As the PA announcer I worked for, and along with the marketing dept. They are the smart ones giving us announcers things to say, they also arrange all those cool halftime event, like frisbee dog, and my favorite, mascot bball! lots of talk in those meetings about how to market the team, how to get out word, and there was lots of talk about the difficulty getting results in cincinnati when there were so many other things begging for cincinnatians entertainment dollar. They were just starting more aggressive ad campaigns, pulling dollars away from mens sports and shifting it to womens, and really looking for ideas. Over the years they have done alot of things, it's starting to feel to me like it's all but a lost cause.
The typical game has lots of players friends and family, a handful of students, a couple groups mostly made up of local sport clubs or elem school teams, and the loyal fans. That loyal fan base is small, but they show up, game after game after game. It just doesn't seem to fly in this town. It's not that hoops is not a big deal, it is at all levels, all I can figure is that the womens game just won't fly, and that's what really hurts. When the local media ignores them, that pisses me off. It's just a dam shame.

I would suggest to those few that read this forum to forward your ideas over to the XU marketing folks. I have a friend in the schools marketing office, they are sort of separate from atheltics, but not completely, sports marketing is 745-3604 or email hicksb@xavier.edu

[xu_fan]

On a positive note I was eating dinner tonight at a restaurant and they had Brad Johanson (sp) from Local 12 live at Cintas Center promoting the game. I couldn't hear what they said because the volume was turned down but nevertheless he was there.

Maybe my e-mails to Channel 5, 9, 12, and 19 paid off... :-)