After spending the fall looking at thousands of empty game-day football seats at TCF Bank Stadium, University of Minnesota officials are wrestling with a slide in season-ticket sales in another high-profile sport -- men's basketball.Non-student season-ticket sales at Williams Arena have fallen from 9,286 in 2007 to 7,136 this year, and student season-ticket sales have also slumped. Student season-ticket sales -- only 1,182 were sold for this season -- are at a six-year low. The Gophers played North Dakota State last week in front of an announced crowd of only 10,472, and at a Sunday night game against Richmond in November, the student section contained scores of empty seats.
Fans and university officials insist attendance will increase once the team begins its Big Ten schedule and support grows for the Gophers (11-1), who have climbed to No. 13 in the Associated Press national poll. Thanks to strong single-game sales, the Gophers' Big Ten home game against No. 6 Indiana is already sold out, and only a few hundred tickets remain for No. 2 Michigan and No. 20 Michigan State, school officials say.
But season-ticket figures show that lowered fan interest now spans multiple years -- coach Tubby Smith is in his sixth year -- and might have been accelerated this year by a new, expanded season-ticket plan that charges fans an additional $400 preferred seating fee for a $627 season ticket.
Average men's basketball attendance in the 14,625-seat Williams Arena, now 84 years old, fell to 11,316 in 2011-12, a drop of more than 2,000 fans per game over the past two years. And school officials acknowledge that a "sellout" occurs when the arena's 13,300 "clear view" seats are sold -- and not when the remaining obstructed-view seats are sold.
"We may have had a little bit, a small amount, of attrition," said Norwood Teague, who became the school's athletic director in June. "I'm confident we can turn this around."
Teague, however, said the school was studying the lack of student support for football and basketball in particular, and acknowledged that "we've had some challenges in that area."
National trend?
Teague also said he was intrigued by the struggles other colleges have had drawing fans. Duke, despite winning a national men's basketball championship in 2010, has had a decline in students attending games. While insisting he was not using it as an excuse, Teague said the phenomenon bears watching.