Stop playing tournament games in football stadiums

[renault]

Early round games have generally not been profitable.

In the years following 2002 the tournament paid for itself gor a time. Most sports championships do not pay for themselves. Hoops foes. I believe hockey does now. In the event the NCAA priced itself out, saw ticket sales and attendance drop. Vost of stadiums dropped with downsizing.

Locations have to apply. Some years ago the NCAA upped its % of the gate.

In the late 1990s finding a site for the finals became a problem. MD was not interested in continuing to host. The Committee was trying to convince someone to host snd was on the verge of putting 2003 in Cville with Dom’s stepping into the void but Baltimore stepped up snd put in a bid moving the site to Raven ‘s stadium

The NCAA administers 90 Championships in 24 sports, five run in the black. Men's Basketball, Baseball, Hockey, Lacrosse and Wrestling. Football BCS is outside the NCAA. Every other Men's sport and every Womens sport runs in the red. The price of attending the Lacrosse weekend has escalated over the years. A quick look showed tickets from $60 to $160. I wonder if lower prices would result in increased sales to maintain profit. Is that Price Elasticity?, long time since Econ 101.

Wait, are you serious? Is that per ticket or some sort of family package?

[nms]

Early round games have generally not been profitable.

In the years following 2002 the tournament paid for itself gor a time. Most sports championships do not pay for themselves. Hoops foes. I believe hockey does now. In the event the NCAA priced itself out, saw ticket sales and attendance drop. Vost of stadiums dropped with downsizing.

Locations have to apply. Some years ago the NCAA upped its % of the gate.

In the late 1990s finding a site for the finals became a problem. MD was not interested in continuing to host. The Committee was trying to convince someone to host snd was on the verge of putting 2003 in Cville with Dom’s stepping into the void but Baltimore stepped up snd put in a bid moving the site to Raven ‘s stadium

The NCAA administers 90 Championships in 24 sports, five run in the black. Men's Basketball, Baseball, Hockey, Lacrosse and Wrestling. Football BCS is outside the NCAA. Every other Men's sport and every Womens sport runs in the red. The price of attending the Lacrosse weekend has escalated over the years. A quick look showed tickets from $60 to $160. I wonder if lower prices would result in increased sales to maintain profit. Is that Price Elasticity?, long time since Econ 101.

Wait, are you serious? Is that per ticket or some sort of family package?

Cheap seats in Philly in 2013 were $45 for a single game, so I am surprised it is only up to $60 now.

[CU77]

$60 for all sessions (3 days), but that's for what looks to be a pretty bad seat.

https://www.stubhub.com/ncaa-mens-lacro ... 105006873/

[OCanada]

Laxpert. Thx for bringing me up to date.

World Series had its Omaha tix purchased by corporations who then donated or distributed them to employees etc. i guess they still do. There was low level talk of rotating it. Never happened i assume bcs of the revenue stream.

Never thought wrestling would be profitable. Maybe bcs so many programs were discontinued?

[laxpert]

That might have been Ticketmaster secondary market prices for All Sessions (4 games) but I don't think it includes parking at $20 per day.


From XL Center site
Saturday 2 games $26 to $71
Sunday $6
Monday $21 to $51

[CU77]

Never thought wrestling would be profitable.

It's an individual sport, so dozens of schools have a wrestler at the DI championships. Finals are held over 3 days at 20,000 seat arenas.

[Puck Swami]

Denver, Ann Arbor, South Bend, Milwaukee, Jacksonville, lots of great places they could and should do these later May events.


Yeah, if they want an empty stadium.

Denver drew nearly 13,000 despite a rainstorm in the 2015 Q-final.

[Farfromgeneva]

if you're a fan in the mid atlantic region you can literally see high quality lacrosse every weekend and/or weekday from the hs to college level all spring long. The big ten region is absolutely loaded in young athletes who aren't all going to be able to spend fall saturdays in uniform on sidelines in ann arbor, columbus, madison, etc so having these games outside the traditional hotbeds helps elevate the game and it's on those schools and the ncaa to invest in building support. Yes the visuals aren't going to be homewood w/a womens national championship game, but if the sport is going to grow they need to push it out to other regions and I think it's also important to reward the denvers utahs jacksonvilles marquettes etc for going out and supporting the game.

And yet, youth and HS kids aren't showing up in strength in these low fan base areas. Many have games to play in themselves.

The NCAA isn't going to ever "invest in building support"...just not in their DNA.

Again, I'm 100% in favor of getting games, clusters of teams, into these areas...just do it when the fans are hungriest to see a game or two or three...

But when you say "big ten region" I assume you mean midwest, because you must not mean Maryland (UMD, Hopkins) or NJ (Rutgers)...do you mean rural PA and west? Ohio, Michigan...and onward?

Sure, lots of players, big area...but is there the density of interest if you don't have a particular team in the hunt?

Have the new A10 and ASUN do a weekend at coastal Carolina in March and stuff like that.

UMass-Utah
RoMo-Richmond
Jax-St Joes
Air Force-HPU
Bart-Mercer

CAA and Big East in Denver

GTown-SBU
Denver-Del
Nova-Towson
Marquette-Hofstra
St Johns-Drexel

[jrn19]

If we really want to “grow the game”, probably should look at the fact that the current status quo of doing so isn’t working. They did a QF at the Colts stadium in Indy way back in *2013*. It did not spectacular attendance, but more than OSU this weekend. They’ve since been to OSU in 2016, ND in 2021, OSU in 2022. That’s four MW QFs in about 8 years. There weren’t a new wave of fans over the last 10 years showing up to these games. Youth lacrosse participation among boys has plateaued, including in the MW. This stuff isn’t growing the game. Attendance for the F4 peaked back in 2007. The sports growth has plateaued.

As MDlaxfan says, if you really wanna grow the game, go somewhere you aren’t. Go to the Pacific Northwest. There’s tons of players coming from Oregon as we here routinely on tv. California has had a game or two for a time, always does a pretty good crowd, try and go out there for some sort of event or maybe a QF, albeit they have to want to host which is always an issue.

But these events in particular are not spawning growth. The locations they’re using have been oversaturated. It’s probably time to either move them to home locations like the women do or as has been stated, put em in areas that are easy to travel to for most teams fans.

[Houndfan73]

Who cares about “bad looks”. Dumb. I couldn’t give two f$&ks about what someone in Idaho thinks about empty seats at a lacrosse game. You know what I give a f$&k about?….being able to buy a decent seat for NCAA lacrosse tournament games. Small stadiums = much harder to sit between the 30s

[Houndfan73]

Yep, it must of been the football stadium's fault.

Or select multiple other contributors:

(A) Ability to watch on TV
(B) Graduation weekend or Graduation already happened and the students are all gone
(C) A majority of teams with fan bases that do not travel well
(D) Still have impact from that COVID thing many forget about
(E) $5/gallon, 8.3% inflation, etc.
(F) It's lacrosse

Lots of factors to point at. Would of thought RU & UD fanbases would of represented better, maybe they did represent well given the above factors.

OSU had 60,0007 at the their spring football game. So if they want to come out, they will.

You forgot one:

(G) 95 degrees and no cloud cover on Long Island. Surprised we didn’t lose a couple kids. Literally

[Kikin]

Not an expert on sports marketing, but I can tell you that division 1 wrestling sells out its arenas for the NCAA 3 day tournament each March with an average attendance of around 17,000. This is basically sold out for 6 total sessions (rounds) at the venues they use and the atmosphere is insane. I would think division 1 lacrosse could and should do the same. It feels really big time with the full arena, the noise, the excitement. Similar to attending a NHL game. It just looks sad on television when you see the big empty stadiums for lacrosse and it really takes away from the environment when you attend. There are plenty of "mid sized" stadiums that are not little bity 3,000 seaters but not a 80,000 seat cavern and I think a mid size would be the way to go.

[ICGrad]

try and go out there for some sort of event or maybe a QF, albeit they have to want to host which is always an issue.

But these events in particular are not spawning growth. The locations they’re using have been oversaturated. It’s probably time to either move them to home locations like the women do or as has been stated, put em in areas that are easy to travel to for most teams fans.

Agree with the second part strong, disagree with the first. A qf in a place like California would be a pretty significant hardship for a to of lacrosse fans, and, imo, probably wouldn't do a ton to drum up local interest, either.

[ICGrad]

try and go out there for some sort of event or maybe a QF, albeit they have to want to host which is always an issue.

But these events in particular are not spawning growth. The locations they’re using have been oversaturated. It’s probably time to either move them to home locations like the women do or as has been stated, put em in areas that are easy to travel to for most teams fans.

Agree with the second part strongly, disagree with the first. A qf in a place like California would be a pretty significant hardship for a to of lacrosse fans, and, imo, probably wouldn't do a ton to drum up local interest, either.

[Farfromgeneva]

try and go out there for some sort of event or maybe a QF, albeit they have to want to host which is always an issue.

But these events in particular are not spawning growth. The locations they’re using have been oversaturated. It’s probably time to either move them to home locations like the women do or as has been stated, put em in areas that are easy to travel to for most teams fans.

Agree with the second part strongly, disagree with the first. A qf in a place like California would be a pretty significant hardship for a to of lacrosse fans, and, imo, probably wouldn't do a ton to drum up local interest, either.

Doesn’t Butterfield hold like 15k or something when they used to play Cortaca there? Overlooking the Finger Lakes. Airports (not counting Ithacas) within 1hr in Syracuse & Bing w Roch and Albany not horrible trips…

[groundballs44]

While a west coast QF venue wouldn't work for a variety of reasons, a great example of a "grow the game" type event that's being discussed here is the Pacific Coast Shootout. Neutral site game at Orange Coast College not far from LA, has drawn good matchups, and seemingly always gets strong attendance. The website says that in the 7 years from 2014-2020 the event had a total attendance of 45,871, which averages out to an attendance of 6,553 per game (higher than both QF sites this year if I'm not mistaken). Also, the stadium capacity is 7,600, so it's close-ish to selling out, creating a great environment for players and fans.

Not sure why it didn't take place this year, hopefully it returns in the future. This event plus 1-2 more similar events in non-hotbed areas would be great for the game.

[lorin]

While a west coast QF venue wouldn't work for a variety of reasons, a great example of a "grow the game" type event that's being discussed here is the Pacific Coast Shootout. Neutral site game at Orange Coast College not far from LA, has drawn good matchups, and seemingly always gets strong attendance. The website says that in the 7 years from 2014-2020 the event had a total attendance of 45,871, which averages out to an attendance of 6,553 per game (higher than both QF sites this year if I'm not mistaken). Also, the stadium capacity is 7,600, so it's close-ish to selling out, creating a great environment for players and fans.

Not sure why it didn't take place this year, hopefully it returns in the future. This event plus 1-2 more similar events in non-hotbed areas would be great for the game.

The pll final last year at Audi field seems like a good place holds about 20,0000

[Farfromgeneva]

There’s a ton of potential options west of the I95 corridor that aren’t mega football stadiums provided by big ten schools or west coast Pacific NW. Creative brain time.

The concept of too large very legitimate. Many major college BB arenas have reconfigured or built new facilities in the lat 5-10yrs actually shrinking capacity so quarters should be max 20k capacity and 50k for finals I believe.

[Chousnake]

It’s fine to play regular season games in non-traditional locations so fans in the Midwest and West can see live lax, but playing the quarterfinals of the season’s showcase event - the tournament- makes no sense on so many levels. It adds needless travel time and expenses for the teams - often during finals. It is unfair for the families of the players. And it stinks for the true lax fans , the overwhelming majority of whom who still live in the I 95 corridor. Play a showcase in Ohio or California or wherever, but the quarterfinals should be in two locations between New England and North Carolina every season.

[renault]

It’s fine to play regular season games in non-traditional locations so fans in the Midwest and West can see live lax, but playing the quarterfinals of the season’s showcase event - the tournament- makes no sense on so many levels. It adds needless travel time and expenses for the teams - often during finals. It is unfair for the families of the players. And it stinks for the true lax fans , the overwhelming majority of whom who still live in the I 95 corridor. Play a showcase in Ohio or California or wherever, but the quarterfinals should be in two locations between New England and North Carolina every season.

completely agree.