Michigan Basketball Attendance

Do we really need a thread on this every couple weeks? 

I think the OP's point is the seeming disconnect between observed attendance and the ticket price on the secondary sites, not how much of a football/basketball school we are.

I agree 100%. The cheapest lower bowl seat on Stub Hub right now is $60. That is a joke considering the number of empty seats there will be for that game. 

I always hate when people bring up attendance, or question your fandom of you don't go to games.

I prefer watching games at home. I may go to a FB or Basketball game once a year, but I genuinely enjoy the TV viewing experience. Not to mention it doesn't eat up my whole day.

I had upper bowl season tickets last year. I had to pay a PSD and went to every game.

There were huge swaths of lower bowl tickets unused for virtually every game.

So rather than renew I cancelled my season tickets.

There has to be a way to monitor ticket usage, or move fans into those seats 10 minutes after the game starts. It was so frustrating to pay quite a bit of money watching the good seats go unused for much of the season. 

It’s really unfortunate that ticket holders who have no intention of going to games don’t sell/donate the tickets to someone who absolutely would go. Until the ticket office starts tracking attendance and penalizing those who never show up (probably never gonna happen), this is just what it will be. 

It’s not a lack of demand though. For reference, these are the next two home games for big ten teams in Michigan, one of which absolutely is a basketball school:

https://www.vividseats.com/ncaab/michigan-wolverines-tickets/wolverines-12-8-2817187.html

https://www.vividseats.com/ncaab/michigan-state-spartans-tickets/spartans-12-3-2817496.html

Dang! Another thread on this? We just talked about this yesterday

Build a parking garage next to Crisler. Connect it to Crisler, so people don't have to walk a mile to the Arena/Center in the winter weather

Charge a low fee or no fee to people who have tickets to the game

Make general admission tickets, so people can pay and get good seats. Too many season ticket holders renew every year and then don't go to games. Pretty much the entire lower bowl is season ticket holders. Those seats are sold, but not filled. The ushers won't let people move down at halftime either or at any other time.

Lower the price of seats. Michigan doesn't need the money. $35 for an upper bowl ticket in the corner? That just isn't market value and not worth the hassle.

Check the thread yesterday for more talking points.

i looked at tickets for the saturday game on stubhub on saturday afternoon and the cheapest was $44. 

i am happy michigan is an elite team but it's just a little saturday afternoon game. Being over $100 for 2 people after tickets, fees, food, parking just felt like too much

just one data point. if others willing to pay, then great. 

I've never lived in Michigan, but the impression I get from national reporting is that everyone has moved out of Detroit and on out.  So there must be no one left, besides students, to attend games. 

I know my GF was looking for tickets to take us to a bball game this year and was having a really hard time finding actual tickets for sale. The ones we were finding seemed to have quite inflated prices likely due to the lack of other options. 

They should have a certain time (maybe 5 min after tip) where they let fans waiting outside have free admission to fill the seats.

You would be surprised how many football seats remain empty.  Often no one notices because everyone in the football bench seating just spreads out more and uses the extra room.  You can't spread out at Crisler Center to mask the empty seats.  When a seat is empty, it's empty.

I have been a basketball season ticket holder since Amaker's last season. . I have had 2 lower bowl season tickets for the past 8 seasons. I live 100 miles away and go to about half of the home games. I have had zero problems selling the other tickets on stub hub, even the exhibition this season. The pricing information there makes it easy. I usually just look at the cheapest pair in mine or an equivalent section and offer mine for $2 less. They always sell. It really isn't difficult. I don't know why so many people are willing to eat their unused tickets. I wish they didn't.

Still the crowds have been great in terms of enthusiasm and I was surprised at how well attended the game was the day after Thanksgiving. It looked to be 80 percent full to me against a non- descript opponent. A lot of kids that day.

When I was a student the team sucked, Crisler was a dumpy place to see a game, and the student section location was also garbage. Those are no longer issues thankfully. One thing that has not changed is that Crisler is not a convenient location for most students to attend games, especially when the games are in the middle of the week.

Going to a game meant walking to the bus stop and taking the bus down and then back after the game. When it is winter, cold and dark, I am sure many students do not want to bother trying to make a tip off in the middle of week when they have to study or do any number of other things with their time. All of the games are on TV which further decreases the motivation to deal with the pain of going to the game.

Ultimately I think a huge part of the problem was the siting of Crisler by the football stadium. At other schools the arena is in a more central location which increases the likelihood of students going to the game. Also there is virtually nothing around the Arena in terms of food or bars.

The AD probably would have been better off building an arena with fewer seats in a different location rather than renovating Crisler, but Ann Arbor being what it is I do not know if that would have been feasible.

It is depressing when the team is playing so well that there are still a bunch of empty seats. College basketball is the most fun sport to attend live in my opinion. I probably would have gone to way more games during school if not for the location of Crisler combined with not wanting to see an Amaker team dribble for 30 seconds before taking another awful shot.

The Purdue game had some empty seats (although the upper sections did fill in as the game went on), but by the same token, I was pleasantly surprised that the Wednesday night game against UNC - a 9:30 tip, mind you - was packed and the crowd was as loud as I can ever remember Crisler, and I was a freshmen back when the Fab 5 came in and we had some decent crowds back then (although still had empty seats, even then for a lot of games).