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ATHLETICS: Ball State sees decrease in attendance at sport events

Football program faces attendance requirement troubles

Ball State is having trouble filling the seats at its athletics venues across campus.

Drops in attendance show a declining interest in Ball State sports, with the most noticeable drop coming in the football program, which will face increased requirements for attendance this year.

"We're in the Mid-American Conference, and we're doing the same thing as everybody else is trying to do to get their attendance up," Matt Wolfert, associate athletics director for external affairs, said.

OPEN SEATING

Ball State has seen a 10.1 percent decline in attendance from the 2009-10 school year to 2010-11 across the 10 sports for which data were available.

No team is filling even half of its playing facility for home contests, with the gymnastics (45.3 percent) and soccer (45.2 percent) teams coming the closest.

Wolfert said Worthen Arena is good for recruiting, but the size can be a problem.

"It creates challenges for you, seating-wise," he said.

The biggest decline came in the football program, which had nearly 2,000 fewer people come to games during the Cardinals' 4-8 2010 season as compared to its 2-10 2009 campaign.

"You'd rather just open your gates at football and it's sold out every time," Wolfert said. "It's just not who we are."

The drop in attendance for the football program also came with a few dubious honors. Ball State finished last among the Football Bowl Subdivision teams for attendance in 2010. Largely based on that last-place result, Bleacher Report, a sports website catering in blogs and public participation, named Scheumann Stadium as the worst place to attend a college football game.

"Certainly, it's discouraging," Wolfert said. "The student-athletes have earned the right to have that kind of support to do the best we can with it, but we can't measure ourselves based on that."

BRIGHT SPOTS

It's not all negative for the athletics department, though.

Women's volleyball had attendance more than triple from 2009 to 2010 during the team's first Mid-American Conference title run since 2002.

Middle blocker Kelsey Brandl said the difference between the 2009 and 2010 seasons could be felt right away.

"In our first match, we looked to break the [attendance] record," Brandl said. "We walked out of the tunnel, and it was like, ‘Holy cow.'"

The team set a school record with 1,744 fans for its match against Tennessee State and coach Steve Shondell's first game at the helm of the program.

Wolfert said Shondell's local fame brought in community support for the women's volleyball team.

Gymnastics was the only other sport with more people at its meets this season. Two major changes — the move from Worthen Arena to Irving Gym and changing meet times from Sunday afternoon to Friday night — may have played a role in that growth.

Walsh said she thought the new venue in the Student Recreation and Wellness Center helps students realize there's a meet going on. The trick is to capture their attention and keep them there, she said.

"I feel like the girls take the incentive of wanting to show the crowd and the fans that gymnastics meets are fun, and you can be rowdy and loud just like you can at football games," Walsh said.

Irving Gym also puts the athletes close to the crowd, something Walsh said she enjoys.

"Love it, absolutely love it. That's what gymnastics should be all about, close and personal, not about being caged away very far in the stands," she said.

MARKETING

The athletics department focuses its marketing efforts on getting fans to the games of four teams: football, men's basketball, women's basketball and women's volleyball.

"We don't have very much money to do those, let alone what we can do for the other 13 sports that we have," Wolfert said.

Those are the four that charge for every game, bringing in revenue for the department as well as an increased presence.

Each team also gets a poster with its schedule to spread around campus and the community. However, Walsh said, that may not be enough of a presence to grow the crowd.

"We get our poster and that's it. We need to market more next year by taking that poster to every place in Muncie to get that schedule out there," she said. "But also I feel we need to do more promotion of our sport on campus."

One difficult choice for Walsh is whether she wants to use some of her operating budget for promotional purposes. That would have to be taken from other needs for the team, though.

While the focus is on those four sports, Wolfert said the athletics department looks for free ways to promote the teams. Social media helps inform students as to upcoming games, and a few teams, such as softball and men's volleyball, have their own dedicated Twitter accounts.

Wolfert credited the men's volleyball team for taking the initiative toward promoting the team.

Brandl said she noticed a lot of support from the community for the women's volleyball team last season but would like to grow the student audience in 2011.

Ball State also uses incentives to get fans out to the games. Molly Myers, director of marketing and promotions, said the athletics department is strategic in its uses of perks, deploying them as needed.

"There's not enough money to have that for every game," she said. "T-shirts are always the biggest [draw]."

Wolfert and Myers also cited free food as a major draw.

Myers said she preferred promotions that get fans to multiple games, such as the television giveaway during basketball season.

"I really like promotions like that, because anything that can draw more people to more things instead of just one I feel is a good way to utilize money we spend on items," she said.

Myers said it was "interesting" that extra incentives were needed to get students to games, adding that the free tickets for students also play a major role in attendance.

"If you know you can get in for free, probably most students aren't even deciding until the morning of," she said. "Whereas if you have a ticket in hand you have that obligation. ‘I paid for this. I'm going.'"

PRIMARY FOCUS

The football team is the only program that has a minimal attendance threshold to meet.

In order to maintain its status as a Football Bowl Subdivision school, Ball State must average at least 15,000 in actual or paid attendance for home games over a rolling two-year period, according to Bylaw 20.9.7.3 of the NCAA Division I Handbook.

After surpassing that bar during the 2008 season, the football attendance dipped below the standard in 2009 and 2010. Wolfert said there is extra pressure to reach the mark in 2011.

The pressure acts as another reason why Ball State was willing to move its season opener against Indiana to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The program will count it as a home game, and the attendance number will go toward its 15,000-per-game requirement.

This benchmark is a challenge for many MAC teams. Five missed it during the 2010 season.

If Ball State is struggling to reach a 15,000 average toward the end of the season, Wolfert said there are other methods to getting to the number.

"We have an anonymous donor that buys tickets to the last handful of games to make sure we hit our number, and then you have to do that every couple years," he said.

Large blocks of ticket purchases are acceptable under the NCAA bylaws.

But Ball State would like to hit its goal without extra help. Football coach Pete Lembo recognized that a relationship needed to develop between the players of the football team and the student body.

"They need to reach out and connect with other students in class or activities that happen on campus," Lembo said at his introductory news conference in December. "If the students feel they are connected with the players, they will come."

Lembo then mentioned another key to driving fans to the stadium.

"Obviously, if you're competitive and winning games that helps, too," he said.

MAKING THE CONNECTION

Along with Lembo's effort to get the football team out to meet the student body, Wolfert said that's an initiative that each sport should follow.

"Some of the things we can do a better job of is getting some of our student athletes to be more engaged and more in front of the student body so they have a little bit more affinity to them," he said.

The belief is that if students get to know the players, they will want to go out and see them compete. Walsh said getting more people out to gymnastics meets has a positive effect on the Cardinals' performance.

"Having the girls be in the arena, it ignites them to see so many people come," she said. "Whether on the balcony, the track or in the bleachers, it really makes them feel like what they're doing and all their hard work is really valued."

Brandl said there was certainly a positive effect to having strong crowds, but she and her team would handle any circumstance.

"We're still going to play if there's one fan or 1,000 fans, but it's just better to have a big crowd," she said.


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