This is a problem. Basketball program showing solid improvement and still playing in a half full arena with a giant curtain covering it. Embarrassing. What can they do? Move more games to the palestra? Play some games in rec hall? Hershey? How about rebuilding the bjc, which structure wise is one of the worst home venues In the sport. It's clear now that the reason for the poor attendance is not about the team on the floor.
Are there solutions to the mid week home games?
- Thread starter Dunkindonuts
- Start date
Outside of building.a new dedicated basketball arena (around 10,000 similar to Colorado or UDub) I think they should move some mid week games to rec hall. The atmosphere would be much better like at the Palestra.
If they made the basketball atmosphere more of an event like football did with the white out years ago I think they could attract more locals, not to mention the 40,000 students already on campus who pretty much ignore basketball.
If they made the basketball atmosphere more of an event like football did with the white out years ago I think they could attract more locals, not to mention the 40,000 students already on campus who pretty much ignore basketball.
You have 40K plus student at Penn State, but cannot get even 5K to attend home games. So, yes I think they are part of the attendance problem for basketball.
They should renovate Rec Hall to add about 3,000 more seats and move the games there...done. There is basically no other way to pack out the BJC...just not gonna happen and most of that is due to location imho....look where you're currently drawing your crowd from....Lewistown, Mifflinburg, Huntingdon? Central Pa is not the hotbed for disposable income to go to basketball games.
Late starts like 8:30 on a Wednesday night are not helping either. I attend mid week games that start no later than 7 but needing to work next day later games I watch from home.
Like Cpeplion mentioned, the travel piece is a huge attendance problem. I live outside Philadelphia. I would love to attend a midweek game(s).Regardless of the start time, to & from is a logistical nightmare.
How would you add 3,000 seats to Rec Hall? Impossible.
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anon_is9z1n0h3zblb
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B1G nixed games in Rec Hall. We did an occasional OOC game there but it's been a while. B1G games at Palestra or other locations need approval of both the B1G and the opponent.
That's what I was thinking too. Short of knocking down the walls and essentially erecting a new building, there's no way to significantly expand the capacity of Rec Hall.
That's because the conference has a gate sharing arrangement. Since then it added Rutgers where the RAC seats 8K. Thus, a good argument could be made for shifting home games to the Palestra, though I'm not sure that would be done for a variety of reasons.
Maybe the students are, uh, studying on weeknights? Anything is possible....
The Palestra is fine for a single game novelty. But it belongs to Penn and it’s located too far away for our students to attend midweek. We should renovate the BJC and turn it into a 10k seat single level arena with close court side seating and good sight lines. And finally, put the student section on TV rather than the retirement home season ticket holders. Just flip it.
They are a big part of the problem. If you can't convince them to attend, why should anyone else?
bottom line is...
No Tradition+Crappy Venue+Middle of Nowhere=crappy attendance
Not sure what you can really do about it besides have a smaller basketball arena like Cameron Indoor...because they are never going to pack the BJC...which was built to attract concerts to State College.
No Tradition+Crappy Venue+Middle of Nowhere=crappy attendance
Not sure what you can really do about it besides have a smaller basketball arena like Cameron Indoor...because they are never going to pack the BJC...which was built to attract concerts to State College.
A big part of the visual problem is a lot of those empty seats are sold to season ticket holders who don’t go to every game. The same thing will happen in any alternate venue as long as the game is included in the season ticket package. Someone needs to get creative and find a way to fill the seats closest to the floor when those season ticket holders don’t attend and don’t bother to sell their tickets.
Home basketball games are never going to be played at Rec Hall excepting for an OOC game during Christmas break once every year or three. Forget moving home games to Rec Hall, expanding Rec Hall, or building a new basketball arena. Not feasible for several reasons in each case.
The practical solution is some retrofitting of the BJC to make it a better basketball venue. The BJC was designed about 3,000 seats too big, but no seating is going to be torn out.
However, you could build 8-10 rows of custom-designed temporary bleachers behind the baskets for student seating/standing, probably allocated to freshmen and sophomores, and then tape off the sight-line-blocked permanent seats behind them. That would bring the students much closer to the action and create more intimacy, which the BJC sorely lacks.
I just don't see how you're ever get more than 10,000 fans for a midweek game in the best of circumstances. B1G games on the weekends should be sellouts, which, if PSU did as suggested in the above paragraph, would mean about a 13,000-seat capacity.
It's going to take several consecutive seasons like the present one to create a basketball fandom in State College. The Centre Region and Pennsylvania generally, excepting Philly and its suburbs, are simply not basketball hotbeds.
How many of your alumni friends follow NCAA or NBA basketball closely? Very few, I'd venture.
The practical solution is some retrofitting of the BJC to make it a better basketball venue. The BJC was designed about 3,000 seats too big, but no seating is going to be torn out.
However, you could build 8-10 rows of custom-designed temporary bleachers behind the baskets for student seating/standing, probably allocated to freshmen and sophomores, and then tape off the sight-line-blocked permanent seats behind them. That would bring the students much closer to the action and create more intimacy, which the BJC sorely lacks.
I just don't see how you're ever get more than 10,000 fans for a midweek game in the best of circumstances. B1G games on the weekends should be sellouts, which, if PSU did as suggested in the above paragraph, would mean about a 13,000-seat capacity.
It's going to take several consecutive seasons like the present one to create a basketball fandom in State College. The Centre Region and Pennsylvania generally, excepting Philly and its suburbs, are simply not basketball hotbeds.
How many of your alumni friends follow NCAA or NBA basketball closely? Very few, I'd venture.
There are 70% less fans in the sea
Seating for the Wells Fargo Center. How many good seats are there?
A basketball court is 96' long, there are only so many good seats no matter the venue.
Very few basketball programs compete with top notch wrestling and hockey programs.
It’s not pleasant getting to state college in winter, and I think many PSU fans are choosing to attend wrestling or hockey events instead. I understand they don’t directly compete with scheduling, but most people have limited time and money and can only attend a given number of sporting events. If PSU basketball keeps winning more people will decide to buy basketball tickets instead of hockey (I think).
It’s not pleasant getting to state college in winter, and I think many PSU fans are choosing to attend wrestling or hockey events instead. I understand they don’t directly compete with scheduling, but most people have limited time and money and can only attend a given number of sporting events. If PSU basketball keeps winning more people will decide to buy basketball tickets instead of hockey (I think).
Nebraska averages ~15,000 per game for basketball, and they have less tradition than we do.
Their arena is also newer and looks to be a much better venue to watch a game than ours is.
Until we do something about a full renovation of the BJC and retrofit it to allow for a better experience of watching basketball, attendance will never be consistently there.
Their arena is also newer and looks to be a much better venue to watch a game than ours is.
Until we do something about a full renovation of the BJC and retrofit it to allow for a better experience of watching basketball, attendance will never be consistently there.
I’ve wondered if we could configure the BJC for a smaller crowd during midweek games by moving the court and erecting temporary bleachers. Thinking of what Syracuse does to the Dome to reconfigure for basketball (obviously on a much smaller scale). Something to get those end seats closer to the action (and use the temp bleachers at the other end).
We aren’t moving back to Rec Hall, aren’t playing weeknight games in Philly, aren’t blowing up the BJC anytime soon, etc. But we need to do something (and giving kids cheaper tickets or free food doesn’t move the needle).
We aren’t moving back to Rec Hall, aren’t playing weeknight games in Philly, aren’t blowing up the BJC anytime soon, etc. But we need to do something (and giving kids cheaper tickets or free food doesn’t move the needle).
You could get end zone seats closer but that would put sideline seats farther away. The end zone seats would still be behind the basket.
^^^^ THIS ^^^^
1st - The problem is not that they are "not selling enough tickets", the problem is "there are too many tickets to sell".
>> The BJC was over-built. Just poor planning, or greed or a little of both. But other than the occasional concert from a top line performer, or a 1-off basketball game (IE - Duke comes to town on a Saturday night), the BJC is just too large 99.999% of the time for Centre County.
IMO, they need to realize the building is just too large for 99.9999% of it's schedule, and permanently down-size the seating area to make it better for basketball. I'm sure at a top engineering school such as Penn State they could get a zillion great ideas to re-engineer the inside of BJC to make it a) more intimate and b) more functional
2nd - I think it's a little unfair now to be blaming the fans for poor attendance.
>> The original poster stated: "It's clear now that the reason for the poor attendance is not about the team on the floor."
Yea, we should all forget 50+ years of futility because of a pretty good 20 game stretch. There are people who live 1-2 hours away from State College who have watched this program stink for 50 years, and they are supposed to just get in their cars and drive 2 hours on a Wednesday night because they put together a good 20-game stretch???? This program needs to prove it on the court for 1-2 full seasons before they can expect a commitment & sacrifice from a fan base.
Penn State has to draw from places like Harrisburg and Williamsport and that's not likely to happen on winter weeknights. I like the idea of opening the upper deck (sidelines only) for doscounted student / veteran / kids clubs tickets. Mabye $5 but your stub is good for a hot dog.
The city of Lincoln also has a population of close to 300K people while all of Centre County is little more than half that
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anon_is9z1n0h3zblb
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https://www.centredaily.com/sports/...iversity/psu-basketball/article238979673.html
Penn State head coach Pat Chambers, whose hometown is 30 minutes from the Palestra, gave plenty of credit to Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery, who grew up in Philadelphia, for allowing the game to happen.
“I want to thank (Fran) and Iowa,” Chambers said, “for allowing us to move a home game to the Palestra. This wouldn’t have happened if they wouldn’t have given us the OK. ... We created amazing memories for our team.
Taking what you say at face value, that is a surprising number. They do have Omaha close to help with attendance. Penn State doesn't have a city near that size as close by. That's not as big a factor on a weekend. But on a weeknight, as many others have said, people aren't traveling from Pittsburgh or Harrisburg or Philly or ABE on a regular basis for a basketball game. Heck, I think if we ever cave and host a Thursday night football game you'll see a similar impact.
EDIT: saw what another poster said about the size of the city of Lincoln. Had no idea it was that big. That's a huge difference vis-a-vis Penn State.
Basketball outdraws hockey even in SC. They had almost 8,000 in attendance for a Wednesday game and over 14,000 for the Saturday OSU game.
And there are plenty of empty seats in Pegula for non conference games.
The problem is the BJC is a terrible arena for basketball.
Its too big and has poor sight lines especially in the seats in the end zones and behind the students.
It’s simply is a poorly designed arena.
It would mean that the sections along the baselines today suddenly become center court seats, collapsing the slow rise bleachers to the end zones, and going with something more like 8-10 rows of steeper bleachers. The goal would be that those end zone seats could end up another 40-50 feet closer to the court and feel like they're actually in the same zip code as the game. And then have temporary bleachers in the other end zone that could also be steeper and put seats closer to the court.
No idea if any of this is at all feasible, but feel like the only realistic options is retrofitting the BJC in some way. Today's option of closing off the upper deck might look better from an environment standpoint, but leaves too many people with absolute crap seats in a 9-10k crowd (whereas, put 9k in the RAC and there isn't a bad seat in the house).
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anon_is9z1n0h3zblb
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They would obviously need permission from Iowa to move a game from State College to Philly 195 miles away for nothing else than logistics (travel plans, hotels, etc). That’s different than the big ten having any say about Penn St playing on campus at Rec Hall.
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anon_is9z1n0h3zblb
Guest
No it's not. I don't have time to dig through the B1G rules on game locations but home venue is the home venue and moving a conference game from the home venue requires permission from both B1G and opponent. Why would you possibly think it's otherwise?
That was a decision that Chambers made. He didn't have to ask McCaffery, but did it as a courtesy
I'll also roll back my comment a bit. The Big Ten might have to approve it but the opposing team doesn't.
From PennLive article:
Technically, as long as the Big Ten approves it, any conference team can stage any home game wherever it likes. So, it’s not as if Chambers needed approval from an opposition coach to play another Palestra game.
As Chambers put it on Friday: “We could [do it anyway]. But you want everyone to be on the same page. It’s just the right way to do things.”
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