I know it is early season but the TV views kind of indicated a very sparse crowd. I was kind of surprised with all of last week’s hype.
Crowd Size
- Thread starter MorningCoffee13
- Start date
Not including the Zoo, there were less than 1,000. I expect about double that plus a more packed Zoo on Friday.
As I recall, even when Dixon had a top ten team there were many no-shows for early OOC games.
So, how does this compare to the peak of the Dixon era for early season OOC games vs teams with no name recognition on week night for the average casual fan?
So, how does this compare to the peak of the Dixon era for early season OOC games vs teams with no name recognition on week night for the average casual fan?
If they beat Florida and Baylor, I would expect close to full for Mizz and Clemson. Especially given last years run and the failure of Pitt football, the wagon will fill up quick.
While I was disappointed with the crowd size seeing there is some buzz around the team, I guess some of that is a Monday night non-conference game with a Friday night game coming. Last Monday's game, opener and Zoo not included, was poorly attended. The Friday night game was much better.
I think that is what I was comparing to. I had season tickets back then and, yes, the crowds were not huge but there were still more people in the second tier and way more in the lower bowl. The only time you got moved down to sit in lower bowl was during Christmas out of conference games.
I remember pretty empty zoo crowds early on during my time attending. I wanted to talk about how awesome this new Ronald Ramon kid looked and there was like a 5 foot gap between all the students in the zoo. Maybe like 100 showed for a weekday game. I am very pleased to see how well the Zoo is turning out. It still looks way better on tv.
To have good crowds at non-con games, you need to have strong season ticket sales. People are more likely to go if they already paid for the tickets and feel like they want to “get their money’s worth”.
But since we sucked for 5 years, many people got rid of their season tickets and got used to not having them/paying for them, and now they’ll just buy tickets the few times a year they want to go.
But since we sucked for 5 years, many people got rid of their season tickets and got used to not having them/paying for them, and now they’ll just buy tickets the few times a year they want to go.
Exactly. And if anyone turns on a random game tonight, and then flips around to others, you’ll see a similar thing.
Yeah, last Monday was the season opener, and then you had a Friday night home game. Last night was a natural spot to have a bit of a lull for the Zoo. I’d expect there to be a little more on Friday, but it’ll really be rocking the week after Thanksgiving for Missouri.
I was disappointed in the turnout. The Zoo was maybe 2/3rds, if that, and the rest was very light. Zoo was pretty full last Friday and there were probably 2x to 3x in the rest of the stands.
They only sold about 3000 or 4000 season tickets and no one buys single game tickets for these games. Pitt hasnt marketed this team at all.
Friday will be a sparse crowd with the students all but gone for Thanksgiving break. Maybe another 2,000 if the real diehards from this board all show up.
I wouldn't even say it was light. It was nearly full in fact. But for the game last Friday, they were packed to the max and even overflowed quite a bit into the regular seats.
The Clemson game starts one hour after the start of a home Stiller game. There is no reason to expect the crowd that day to be anything other than "sparse".
I do not understand why that game is not saturday, or at the very least can’t be played at 6 pm or something.
I mean, I know the answer is “TV”. But you’d think TV would want Pitt fans watching the game, too.
Not sure what the ACCN schedule is that day but would a 5PM, 6PM, or 7PM game been totally impossible?
It’s beyond stupid to play Clemson at 2pm on 12/3. Play it anytime on December 2nd or after 5pm on Sunday. 2pm is the absolute worst time you could pick.
Even when almost all the seats were season ticket holders there were a lot of no-shows for OOC mid-week games. I once proposed to the AD that they should reward season ticket holders for fractions of priority points for actually using their tickets, either personnally or by giving or selling them. More fans in attendence helps concession sales, the tv look which helps recruiting which ultimately helps the team get better and make more money for the school. And since priority points cost the school nothing, it would be free for them.
When we sold out of season tickets, there'd be 5K-6K at these games compared to 2K-3K now.
Pitt didnt have to market basketball when the Pete opened and then when season tickets declined, their marketing strategy, stupidly, was to join a waiting list that didnt exist. People weren't big enough fans to go through that trouble so they didnt bother. Then during the Stallings/Capel 1 era/Covid era, they didnt even bother trying to sell tickets because they knew they couldn't sell them. But now, with an NCAAT team, with Duke & UNC at home, you'd think they'd be pulling out all the stops to sell those. $290 for uppers is an absolute steal.
I have always said that Pitt needs to offer some benefits for its season ticket holders. I've been on the floor after the games at Cameron and IU. Why not allow season ticket holders to take pics on the floor after the games like at other places? The Knicks have a FT contest for its season ticket holders. Do that. Or maybe a 3 point contest, 3 on 3, kids tournament, something like that. Need to think outside the box because no one is buying season tickets. I wonder what the plan is for this re-seat? Perhaps they are planning on drastically reducing the cost because a lot of sections are still way overpriced.
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For a conference game the AD probably didn't have any choice. Conference games are scheduled by the conferences.
What doesn't make sense to me is that when they do have a choice they still seem to not care. For example, last Saturday the football game was at 3:30. And unlike many of them, that time was announced months ago. So when did Pitt schedule the Pitt - West Virginia women's basketball game on Saturday? At 2:00, so that the two games would over lap for people who wanted to go to the basketball game and watch the football game.
And the basketball game was a streaming game, and against a relatively local team, so why would they not have the starting time at 1:00, or at noon, so that people who went to the basketball game could get home in time to watch the football game? I mean certainly West Virginia wouldn't care if the game tipped off at 1:00 instead of 2:00. It would have just meant that their bus got home an hour sooner.
I just think that no one in the athletic department pays attention to that sort of stuff.
Louisville/VT plays at 4 after Pitt/Clemson. It would have been in ESPN's best interest to have the Pitt game start at 4 (higher ratings as Stiller game ends). I really doubt it was any strategic decision that the Pitt game absolutely had to conflict directly with the Steelers. I am not sure what is on ACCN at 6 but I am sure that whatever it is, that could have been bumped for Pitt/Clemson if necessary. Clemson doesn't play again until that Wednesday.
How on earth could something like that be a strategic decision?
The ACC likely doesn't pay any attention to the NFL schedule when making their schedule. They simply don't care that Pitt plays at the same time as the Stillers, or Miami at the same time as the Dolphins, or BC playing the same time as the Patriots, or Georgia Tech playing at the same time as the Falcons.
