NCAA Women's Basketball: Attendance Winners and Losers for 2010-11

posted by Swish Appeal
Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 12:23am EDT

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Looking at the attendance numbers between 2010 and 2011 is - well, hard. The NCAA is great on talking about increases in attendance, but not so great regarding declines. So to give both sides equal weight, I decided I'd focus on the teams that had the biggest total changes in average attendance per game in both directions between the ends of the 2010 and 2011 NCAA women's basketball seasons - along with reasons why I thought attendance might have changed.

As we all know, women's basketball a) isn't promoted very well and b) faces a great deal of resistance from the more reactionary part of the sports world. Some teams like Tennessee can average 10,000 + in attendance per game but most teams have three-digit averages. Granted, we're examining all 343 Division I schools, including schools from very minor conferences where the gym facilities were probably built by the Works Projects Administration. But even so, one wonders where all the school spirit has gone.

First, the winners:

Team	2010	2011	Total Change

Louisville	5968	10859	4891	New Yum! Center Seats 22,000
Iowa	3488	5823	2335	9865 saw Iowa beat Ohio State
St. John's	945	2200	1255	First back to back NCAA since 83-84
Michigan St.	6192	7388	1196	Big Ten winner of Pack the House
West Virginia	1947	3103	1156	School record in attendance
Gonzaga	2931	4060	1129	Sloot undoubtedly helped
Texas A&M	5155	6104	949	Fans must have suspected something….
Boise St.	1658	2509	851	Team got worse but attendance jumped
Oregon	2254	3100	846	$2 tickets = record attendance
McNeese St.	369	1197	828	Cowgirls were undefeated at home

And now, the teams which declined in attendance from 2010-2011:

Team	2010	2011	Total Change

Nebraska	7390	4333	-3057	Biggest gainer previous year
Oklahoma	7681	5490	-2191	Offer of prizes must not have helped
Dayton	3404	1400	-2004	Even with NCAA grant attendance fell
Rhode Island	2417	811	-1606	New conference in future?
AR Pine Bluff	2793	1363	-1430	Finished 1-28 for the year
Kansas	3772	2405	-1367	They got their grant in 2009
Mississippi	1866	637	-1229	Hoping to get new arena soon
Wisconsin	5635	4664	-971	Coach Lisa Stone ended up fired
Georgia	4336	3467	-869	Who knows? Maybe more Tech fans?
Minnesota	4347	3540	-807	Rough seasons recently

Mississippi is a particularly sad case, but there's a drive to improve the campus facilities - maybe no one wants to go to Ole Miss's arena. The five worst average attendances per game from power conferences were:

1. Providence: 390

2. Seton Hall: 509

3. Washington State: 608

4. Mississippi: 637

5. Wake Forest: 687

So why didn't Providence make the "Biggest Drop" list? Namely because Providence's average attendance the previous season was 335! It's hard to conceive that Providence has the lowest women's basketball attendance of any power conference team...and it went up!! Generally, these schools didn't hit the "largest drop" list because they were too close to the ground to start with.

Okay. What can be done, besides moaning and groaning? A school can always apply for an NCAA grant
with the hope of using the money to improve attendance. We've definitely written about methods at Swish Appeal before.

Supposedly (I have no proof of this) Purdue used something like a priority system for ticket allocation - attending sports that didn't get media attention - women's basketball included - were a factor in determining what kind of seats you got for the heavily promoted sports (football, men's basketball) and how easy they'd be to get. Before the perpetually aggrieved scream "reverse discrimination", nothing about this system stated you had to attend women's sports - overlooked sports like wrestling, or volleyball, or tennis contributed their own points. And it makes sense - you want to give your tickets to those who are loyal to your school, and not just one small aspect of it.

Hopefully next year I'll be writing about how every school is in four digit attendance. (Only the Big 10 and Big 12 have all schools in four-digits in attendance.) And if not next year, well, hurry up because no one's getting any younger here.

UPDATE: Eagle-eyed reader RP_45 noted the .pdf report of 2011 NCAA attendance, which gives different numbers for St. John's. In which case, the 10th highest increase in attendance would belong to Kentucky.

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There is 1 comment on this post. Join the discussion!

Dr. Nicole M. LaVoi says:

great post!!! Thanks for the numbers and analysis. -nml

Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 2:18pm EDT

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NCAA Women's Basketball: Attendance Winners and Losers for 2010-11

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