Based on research if the internet didnt lie.....

Fayetteville Arkansas population: About 100k

Number of people within 50 mile radius: approx 600k

Average men's basketball attendance in last 5 years:
Over 16k for a 19k arena: 84%

Bryan College Station population: about 233k

Number of people within 50 miles: approx 500k

Average mens basketball attendance in last 5 years:
8957. Capacity of Reed: 12,989: 68%

So, there are lots of reasons for this, but I argue it isn't populations and school kids on a weeknight.

I argue, we aren't getting new fans, local companies, and fence riders to buy-in.

The biggest issue is that its really hard for a non-urban school to have great attendance and fanbases in multiple sports if football is the anchor. Our football team is a major carrying factor for our school. We are a "football school", so most of the attention, investment are spent on football. Baseball is second, but not even close to the same as football. The fact is basketball is wedged in between the two big sports seasons and really only hardcore fans are making the investment in basketball (particularly if they are investing in football too). And I'm not just talking about money, its the investment in time, travel, attention, etc. The big difference in Arkansas and A&M isn't the basketball piece, but the football piece. I suspect if Arkansas had a 90k football stadium and routinely sold that out, their basketball would suffer. There are notable exceptions to this rule, but for the most part if you are in a college town, have a heliocentric football team, you won't see awesome followings in basketball unless you have been historically good. In the case of A&M, if we started having Final Four runs, I would see substantial increases in crowds and attention, but only until that ran out, then a reversion to the mean. JMO.

The only way team success would increase attendance is if it caused secondary market ticket sales to rise dramatically. I live in NW Houston, so the 2.5 hour round trip is manageable. Making 6:00 weeknight games, driving home after 8:00 games, and freeing up all day Saturday is quite the sacrifice. But I'm not doing that for insignificant games.

If I can't make it, I give my tickets to friends or neighboring season ticket holders.. or I'll look to give them away in ticket exchange, but the non-con games typically go unused.

with the current state of affairs of arky sports which sports would you show up for consistently?

seems ROI is much better in baseball and basketball than football

It's a marketing problem. The school has to create demand for sports attendance. And most of it to be stable and successful will be local attendance.

Fans focusing on attendance is fine but gets the cart in front of the horse. Usually the subject of trying to berate students to show up comes next.

We have a very deep acculturation process for football. Think about how that happened and also consider how it is awkward when applied to other sports…and how hard it is to change.

I agree we need to get more attendance at Reed to support our program and keep it rolling. Our biggest issue is consistency, and this is mainly from a coaching perspective. I started buying season tickets in the BCG era and really enjoyed the games. Then BCG was pulled away and we got Mark Turgeon; again we had some success, but then Turgeon was pulled away to a better job. I was in Houston at the time, and going to most games was manageable. As my kids grew, I had to stop as I was not able to make many games...just happened the program slipped during that time as well. I am now local and can make almost all the games.

We have had some success under Kennedy, and now Bucky is showing promise. We need to find a way to retain the coaching talent, which has shown promise, but we need some longer term success to attract fans who want to see a quality program compete year in, year out.

I love having season tickets to basketball. It does not consume most of day like football, it costs a $4!t ton to less to attend, and traffic to and from games is better. Plus I was able to get some pretty killer seats. I did not expect us to have the season we are having honestly. To me it shows what a great coach we brought in.

Funny, that the coaches who have bolted from the A&M program have not done great at their next destinations. Maybe the success they had is due in part to the culture here, albeit not huge program support in attendance. If can find a way to retain that great coach, perhaps we could build a program that is making the tournament consistently and then we might get the attention of donors and attendees.

I will continue my support as long as I can. To me, this is pretty good entertainment for my money.

Make sure it is properly titled.

**** Official Preaching to the Choir Thread 2026 ****

Culture and history, you could do the same comparison with us against Texas Tech. Their fans give a **** about basketball, it's that simple.

The A&M showing for the "neutral" site game in Fort Worth last year was embarrassing.

Winning solves a lot but we've talked ad nauseum about how poor a job the athletic department does with marketing and it doesn't seem to get notably better.

With 70k students or whatever ridiculous number it is there's really no good reason for it.

As far as the season tix go they really aren't that expensive if you go to the games but I'm also retired, only about 75 mins away and have always been a big basketball fan so that's easy for me to say. We have thoroughly enjoyed this season .

Not all the games are at night and you might be driving home from doing things all day too. I was responding to the guy that asked what else is there to do in Arkansas. Without the Aggie blinders there are many places with more interesting things to do than BCS, particularly for people that enjoy being outside. Like you I live far away and there's just so much more to do and the surroundings are far more beautiful.

Not disagreeing with you but the afternoon games are almost all on weekends. Granted 6 pm games are tough to make for those living in Houston metro and working

BTW , the Heloc you helped me get 5+ yrs ago is still paying big dividends in terms of financial flexibility. One of the better decisions I have made.

Yep. When I was in school from 2011-2015, our marketing for games consisted of a little sign in the grass.

TheDecadeSapling said:

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Yep. When I was in school from 2011-2015, our marketing for games consisted of a little sign in the grass.

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So what else did you need? Clearly the students where aware of the Florida game, they packed Reed.

If they aren't coming to other games then its not marketing, its they're not interested in coming.

Maybe the DJ music is too loud and driving fans away!

Serious question, what is the deal with student seating a basketball games?
Is it a limited number/sections? Do they typically fill their sections?

I ask because, assuming A&M is a "football" school, you would only need about 10% of the student body to be basketball fans to get 6-7K student attendance.

I get the feeling though that the main issue is what was said above; season tickets are bought by out-of-towners and the investment isn't great enough to attend all the games (especially mid-week) and it is such a hassle to get rid of them.

I imagine if student interest became greater than the available seats, then someone could set up an easy way for season ticket holders to transfer their tickets to wanting students.

Hopefully, Bucky keeps things on an upward trajectory and it all sorts itself out.

TxAg76 said:

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The Collective said:

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Culture and history, you could do the same comparison with us against Texas Tech. Their fans give a **** about basketball, it's that simple.

The A&M showing for the "neutral" site game in Fort Worth last year was embarrassing.

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Helps when they're really good.
And were about 20 seconds away from a Natty not too long ago.

Baseball had a great surge up thru our CWS runner up season, then we lost Dewshnozzle, and Earley shat himself the very next season.

Our fanbase can do great things.
But like any fanbase, they've gotta have a reason to show out.

LSU was crap in football until Saban showed them the way. And they won a few more after.
LSU baseball and their string of Nattys generates their fandom and baseball following.

We flat out don't have that in the big 3 sports.
Hats off to Pat Henry though.
And look out for volleyball and their very bright future.
Just F'n win, and the rest will figure itself out

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I can't star this enough. We are Aggies. We can be some of the most loyal people out there, the Aggie network proves that, but Aggie athletics either needs to excel and put a superior product out of the court or field of play, or become family friendly if they want to draw crowds and right now our athletic dept is neither.

Sure Bucky has huge promise. Same can be said for Elko, but we've had flashes in the pan before only to continually be Charlie Brown'ed. SEC Shorts has literally built our persona around this because it's true.

My Baylor buddy took his son to a Baylor baseball game last week. Paid $12 for the combined tickets and said they were able to gorge themselves on concessions for $20. So $32 they had an enjoyable night out at the park. For $20 at Blue Bell or any other Aggie concession stand I'm lucky to get 2 water bottles and soggy nachos.

"Yeah but he had to suffer through watching Baylor baseball though"... sure, but the one Aggie baseball game we finally were able to get to last year was the Sunday mizzou game where not even the team wanted to be there.

We're more and more the Dallas Cowboys every day.

Proposition Joe said:

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Texas A&M Basketball isn't in the same stratosphere historically as Arkansas Basketball.

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This is so much of it. Plenty of middle aged razorback fans remember seeing them win a title and then make the final again in '94&'95 and the program is top-20 all time in a number of categories including tournament wins and final 4 appearances.

Those fans view themselves as a "basketball school" and they pride themselves on being an intimidating environment in Bud Walton Arena which carries over to casual fan engagement. Conversely, A&M writ large has *really* only ever cared about football, so it takes more momentum to get casual fans to turn out for hoops.

We need consistency and a couple deep runs to develop our fanbase. Most Aggies don't care about basketball and we've done little to draw them in to even watching all the games, let alone actually attend

With 80,000 students, you'd think you could get 10% to show up consistently. Hell, even 5%. Maybe once we get up over 100K students, we can start selling out most consistently.