OT: Oakland vs. ODU in the Vegas 16 - There Are About 20 People in the Stands

Submitted by BursleyHall82 on

You'll remember the backstory of the Vegas 16 post-season tournament at Mandalay Bay. They couldn't even find 16 teams willing to play in the first-year tournament, so the Vegas 16 is now the Vegas 8 - although they're still calling it the Vegas 16.

Anyway, I'm watching the Oakland-Old Dominion game right now, and there are maybe 20 or 30 people in the stands. Tops. Attendance-wise, it looks like an EMU women's game. I've seen Division I men's games with small crowds before, but nothing like this.

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rob f

March 31st, 2016 at 12:06 AM ^

as by the time I tuned in, Oakland U had just lost to ODU by 1, 68-67.  

Missed seeing Kay Felder, the 5'9" junior Oakland U guard who was named  AP 3rd-string All American earlier this week.  

But what a huge crowd!  And such a wonderful trophy that the half-dozen ODU fans there got to see awarded to their team!

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LSAClassOf2000

March 31st, 2016 at 6:40 AM ^

The upside of low attendance, of course, is that your "seat" is only as small as your imagination. This man, for example, perhaps wonders if in fact he IS Section 136:

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Mr. Yost

March 31st, 2016 at 8:05 AM ^

The point is not to get people in the stands...you've completely missed it.

Do you think someone in Vegas is going "hey, I have an idea, let's get Oakland and ODU out here to pack the arena!"

In the Bahamas they play in a ballroom for fuck sake.

Attendance is a small portion of what matters when you're talking about revenue generation.

Michigan could close the gates to Michigan Stadium for a game and still make crazy amounts of money for a home football game.

In this case, the teams have to pay to play in the tournament so they can get extra games and extra practice...so right there the V16 err V8 people are making some money. They had sponsorship agreements before the tournament field was ever announced...mo money. 

At the end of the day, no one is really crying about it. The teams get to practice and play extra games rather than going to the offseason NCAA clock - remember how happy we were to play in the BWW Bowl with our backup QB just so we got the extra practice time for the young players? So the teams are okay. The host is making money, so they're good.

The only person who's really pissed is the business officer for the athletics department of these schools.

IMO, the NCAA just needs to let teams continue to practice as a team until the championship game as that sport. If teams want to hold closed scrimmages like they do before the season - why not let them? In many sports the difference between no postseason and the date of the championship game is over a month...you can't blame people for wanting to continue to play/practice for that month like the teams actually playing in the postseason.

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Kevin13

March 31st, 2016 at 10:27 AM ^

Schools do not pay Vegas to play in this tournament. Vegas pays them money to come play in it. The idea for Vegas is to make money and they do that by selling tickets and having large number of fans come to the city to see the tournament and spend money while there. It's a gamble they take hoping it will be hit and fans will fill fly into Vegas for a few days and fill the arena.

Most times when bowls or tournaments get cancelled it's because that didn't happen and they lose money. Also the amount of money a school makes by playing in that tournament doesn't offset their expenses to travel there so it doesn't make much sense for them to lose money either to get a few extra practices.

 

We played in the BWW bowl and probably lost money doing it. But, it was offest by what the B1G makes as a conference for all bowl games. If we lost money every year attending a bowl we would probably opt out of smaller ones sometimes.

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