jeremy said:

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agent-maroon said:

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Agree with the facilities, NIL, staffing, etc. Especially agree with the marketing push. This might not play well here on TA given our history, but we should do a study of what Tech has done to build their program. Lubbock is only slightly larger than BCS, but it's 300 miles from anything. We're an hour away from literally millions of potential fans and have way more money. We should be able to do better at anything & everything that they do only better.

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Could run a few Shuttle buses from North Houston and add a few people for mid-week games.

Could run shuttle busses from Post Oak mall to get people to the games without them having to fight traffic.

Could get some actual food and restaurants around the arena to make it a "go to place" for weeknight games.


Make it easy to get to the arena!

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Agree on the food. In the Ole Miss arena they have restaurants like a Canes, Shake n Steak, pizza place, and bbq place. Could also add some club seating or bar/lounge area. Like any professional arena would have.

Y'all are worried about marketing but I'm guessing next Saturdays game will be close to a sell out. The key is making sure all those people have a great time and be experience makes them want to come back for our lesser opponents because it was so fun. Not a huge PITA that's only worth it for big games.

So you think KU fans are going because of marketing. 4 titles, 18 FF, 50+ tourney appearances I'm sure have nothing to so with it.

The best part of BuckyBall is between the ears. Tempering highs/lows and all out hustle. When things don't roll our way, they aren't too bothered by it. They KNOW they can make a run at any time!

How far are you driving in for games?

I have season tickets. I live in Kansas so when I drive in - 600 miles.

Why do you care ? Do you think I don't deserve an opinion or don't have skin in the game ?

Charlie Moran said:

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I have season tickets. I live in Kansas so when I drive in - 600 miles. How about you ?

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So what marketing campaign convinced you to drive in 600 for every game. I live 10 minutes from Reed, we got tickets this year on a whim. Mostly because we dropped wbb tickets, no marketing plan was needed. My point is marketing doesn't really solve this so called problem.

We could sell out every game with students if they really wanted to go

No marketing campaign convinced me. I've had tickets since Melvin. I'm a basketball fan and supporter of Aggie sports in general.
The question would be better directed at yourself. Was there any reason other than a whim as to why you purchased seats or rather what has held you back to this point ?

The "availability " of tickets to home games is part of the problem. Better marketing of season ticket sales would reduce walk up / whim buyers and promote more engagement from a dedicated following. Season ticket packages with groups of games in desirable locations is an idea. " Family packs" work too. We could try some creativity with all of this. How could it hurt ?

I hope we give Bucky what he needs to build something wonderful.

I also wish we could get the local community more involved. They can help fill the stands on week nights and also help build the program in their own way. It's an act of service as well.

I'm no marketing person, but maybe we could let school kids in the upper decks for free with a parent. Or maybe do can drives in exchange for a ticket. Free entry for good grades/attendance/conduct or something like that. Just something to get folks in the facility who might not ever have the chance to attend. This builds an audience, donors, and players of the game, not to mention the good karma.

Make CS a college basketball town, not just a college basketball school.

Because I didn't care enough to buy tickets. I had them under Turg and BK when they offered deals. Then they jacked up prices and then we had bad years and we dropped them. This year it was a whim. Again we had wbb and dint renew.

Marketing doesn't matter. You have to,convince the non die hard basketball fan that you have to have them. Again we could sell out every game with just students if they wanted to come.

Good news maybe we now play a style ball that will attract the casual fan.

Quote:

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When I coach basketball, our fans are a part of our team. I want everyone to have a blast at our games. I want the way we play to be fun for everyone. We want people when they come to Reed Arena to have joy.

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In Bucky's own words

Make Reed a fun experience and accessible for the fans. This might not be sufficient to keep the blue bloods and/or Alabama from poaching him in the future, but it does seem like it's necessary IMO

bobinator said:

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I think the bigger "marketing" is to make the actual game environment better. A lot about our basketball situation is amateur hour compared to a lot of places. Fix that first, win games, and the crowds will show up.

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I've been to games in a lot of places, and Reed gives us a couple of challenges that are hard to overcome compared to other campuses.

1- it's way out on West campus, this is great for parking and the old Ags that like to come to games, but for students that makes it slightly out of sight out of mind on game days. If it was right in the middle of campus like G Rollie was I bet you could get another 1-2K students who attend purely based on convenience and proximity. A 25 minute walk from Southside isn't a huge ask, but I think sometimes students don't even know there is a game going on, put the arena in the middle of campus and it'd be hard to ignore.

2- Reed was built as a cavernous multi-event center not a basketball arena. Even when Reed is packed, it doesn't rock like it should. We really needed a 9000 seat intimate arena, not a 14000 seat multi purpose center. My guess is the acoustic engineers designed it to dissipate noise so that we could hold concerts in there. Good for music, bad for basketball.

3- This is bobinator's soapbox, we have to make the games a fun and unique experience. Spectator engagement is key here. The Reed experience is either fairly generic (Mo Bamba) or ripped from football (Yell Leaders). We should be able to create traditions catered directly to creating an intimidating basketball environment that engages the audience.


I work at IU now, and they have a really intimate arena that stacks everyone close up on the action. They have some basketball specific traditions and the arena is right in the middle of the campus housing. Right now they kind of suck, but it's still a much more basketball centric experience then what we have complete with Bob Knight scenes and national championship memories.

We can say we don't have basketball history... but I call BS here, we could and should lean into some of the old Holler House legends, as well as some of the big moments from the last 20 years. Show Acie beating Texas and Kansas. Show DeAndre and Robert Williams dunking all over folks. Show Sloans baptism, show scenes from the Northern Iowa comeback, show me "game blouses". We like to say we don't have blue blood history, but that has to start somewhere and I feel like some fans try to say we have no history, but that's simply not true. We have some kickass moments in the last 20 years and if we want to build up a narrative of basketball success we should lean into those much better.

BQ_90 said:

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So you think KU fans are going because of marketing. 4 titles, 18 FF, 50+ tourney appearances I'm sure have nothing to so with it.

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Kansas doesn't need marketing because they already have the culture. We need marketing to build a culture.

Aggie_Fire said:

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jeremy said:

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agent-maroon said:

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Agree with the facilities, NIL, staffing, etc. Especially agree with the marketing push. This might not play well here on TA given our history, but we should do a study of what Tech has done to build their program. Lubbock is only slightly larger than BCS, but it's 300 miles from anything. We're an hour away from literally millions of potential fans and have way more money. We should be able to do better at anything & everything that they do only better.

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Could run a few Shuttle buses from North Houston and add a few people for mid-week games.

Could run shuttle busses from Post Oak mall to get people to the games without them having to fight traffic.

Could get some actual food and restaurants around the arena to make it a "go to place" for weeknight games.


Make it easy to get to the arena!

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Traffic is not the issue. Last game i was almost the last one to leave the parking lot....took 25 minutes. This isn't football

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Traffic is absolutely an issue. It's impossible to get in. At the Auburn game I hosted friends one who has Parkinson's. Used their handicap tag. Took 45 minutes from the hotel across the street to park. Left hotel hour before game tip and barely got to seats. And I had to sweet talk a lady at the top of the team bus / staff ramp into letting me drop friend outside and I parked down on the ramp in a football coach spot. And I had two "reserved" parking spots. Worthless when ranked teams in town. If I lived in BCS it would be hard for me to put up with that 15 times a year.

The garage that is there empties to two streets that are not wide enough to free flow traffic out to wellborn. It's inefficient for sporting events.

A new garage at a corner and off of George Bush to directly flow in and out would be an improvement. But that would have to be right next to Blue Bell or take some of the Penberthy fields.

BQ_90 said:

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Because I didn't care enough to buy tickets. I had them under Turg and BK when they offered deals. Then they jacked up prices and then we had bad years and we dropped them. This year it was a whim. Again we had wbb and dint renew.

Marketing doesn't matter. You have to,convince the non die hard basketball fan that you have to have them. Again we could sell out every game with just students if they wanted to come.

Good news maybe we now play a style ball that will attract the casual fan.

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I think your personal experience is clouding your opinion.

Let's say we all agree weekend games aren't going to be a problem if we fix weekday games.

We need to:

1. Get locals who aren't coming, involved

2. Get "close proximity" folks involved

3. Ensure Students make it...always


Each or those 3 problems need to be overcome with different strategies.

Atmosphere, traditions, and "actionable things you participate in during the game" will solve the student problem and help with young kids having more fun

Parking, food, and a destination to go early and eat/hang out would fix some of the family and local thing as well as proximity things

Marketing let's people know of the changes and lets people know what to expect and gets buy in.

We should be going to local businesses and getting them involved with vip experiences, schmoozing opportunities, and again a destination evening.

People always complain there is nothing to do in BCS, give them something to do.

And we cannot wait until winning happens. Historically, a coach will leave before the culture actually changes.

jeremy said:

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BQ_90 said:

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So you think KU fans are going because of marketing. 4 titles, 18 FF, 50+ tourney appearances I'm sure have nothing to so with it.

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Kansas doesn't need marketing because they already have the culture. We need marketing to build a culture.

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Culture? KU Is that way because they win and big for decades. We've never made it to elite 8

Exactly. So your logic is to hope we can replicate that and if we cannot, our game experience at Reed will always suck?

Im more proactive.

Reading this thread feels like death by 1000 cuts. No one thing causes the environment have today, but all of them stacked on top of each other make it rough.

I'll add on the people that buy season tickets and then don't show or sell, so that skews the supply side of the supply/demand equation, making it more expensive for casual people that want to show up. Need to sell or give away more SRO/GA seats, then have a 4th inning fill in or similar experience for basketball. Unfortunately that doesn't work great because we don't have a good SRO space if there aren't seats to fill in.