2015 MVC Attendance: It's bad.

[ShockTalk]

For all the grief we pass along to SWMO:D, they do have the 4th best attendance over the 31 years and were 4th in 2015.

Evansville's attendance is jacked up do to a 6 year spike where they averaged better than 3,500 over average. Without those 6 years, they're a little over 6,200 average the other 25 years.

Of these 10 teams, who would you say might have had the best run besides WSU? SIU probably? Well, their average attendance over 31 years is 6th and their best year is less than Bradley's average.

[pogo]

Kind of easy to see when Wichita played in them. ITS NOT THEIR SUPERBOWL

[Rosewood]

I'm tired but basically WSU's two worst years, 94 and 96 are still better than most Valley schools draw today.

[WSUwatcher]

So much for capturing the Chicago market..

No, Shurtz -- you missed the point. All those Chicago market people were at home watching on TV! I'm sure Loyola has a great home TV package, don't you suppose?

Seriously, it says something for Bradley, as bad as they've become, that they still were the only school to draw much over half of WSU's home attendance (IlSt barely made it over half). Sure, their arena holds more than most, so the percentage isn't all it could be -- but it's an indication that, similar to what we saw in Wichita during the drought of the '90s, Bradley has a hard core of fans faithful to the end, which in turn gives hope for a revival in the stands if Wardle can get them back on the right track.

[Rlh04d]

@Rlh04d, you say 30 year historical attendance, but your graph has 31 years. I haven't check out the other schools' attendance (not going to), but WSU's just didn't look right. I knew Bradley had the 2nd best attendance in the Valley and it was reasonably close to WSU, but not that close. We had 12 years where we averaged better than 2,000 over your average for WSU and also 12 years under your average for WSU, but many of those years are close to the average and only 2 year more than 2,000 under the average.

I come up with the following: 1st 9 years - 76,523 / 9 = 8,502. 2nd 10 years - 75,080 / 10 = 7,508. Last 12 years - 124,903 / 122 = 10,408.

For the 31 years: 276,506 / 31 = 8,919.

You're right ... just fixed it. Current data is right.

Bradley's averaged 262 less fans/game than us over the last 31 seasons.

(I grabbed the historical data before going back to calculate the 2015 numbers, and messed up my Excel formula after I put the 2015 numbers in.)

[Rlh04d]

I'm tired but basically WSU's two worst years, 94 and 96 are still better than most Valley schools draw today.

Our worst attendance in 31 years would have ranked third this season. And only 198 behind Bradley for second to ourselves. 1994 would have still been second this year.

[kochHead]

The Valley:

[LoneStar48]

Size does matter! Here's a look at attendance leaders in D1 over the years. Had to have a big arena to top these charts.

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketball_RB/Reports/attendanceYBYtop25.pdf

This article tracks attendance averages over the years and gives some reasons for increases/decreases. WSU is way above average.

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2015/03/02/Colleges/College-basketball.aspx

[jdmee]

Our dark days, the 1990s, during that decade WSU had one winning season at 16-15. Of course during that time our attendance had to suck also right? If you take the attendances of the following, Drake, Loyola, Indiana State, UNI and SIU no way our dark days could compete right? Especially UNI, IN St and SIU. SIU ruled the conference for awhile there. UNI and In St seem to always be in the top of the conference.

Well during that time our average attendance was 7341. Of those 5 schools, only SIU in 2007, 7743, had an average attendance above that number. UNI, In St, Drake and Loyola have never an attendance average above 7000. SIU has done it twice. That means that if you only take the losing seasons from 1990-1999 for WSU our average attendance was 7107. Those schools combined in 30 years have beat WSUs worst decade twice in attendance.

You might say that is unfair, I only took the lowest schools. Ok, lets look at the 2000s decade. You know the decade where we had 4 schools make the dance with 2 of the advancing to the sweet 16. The MVC was pretty strong then. Attendance must have been off the charts. Bradley has done pretty good averaging over 9000, only recently have they dropped off. The other 8 schools since 2001 MSU in 2011 at 7595 and the 2007 SIU season would have beat WSUs dark day average of 7341.

[SHOCKvalue]

I wholly appreciate the work it took to whip up the 2015 MVC attendance figures Rlh04d, but if you had waited a little bit the NCAA would have done that work for you.

[_kai_]

Why is Bradley's number so high? How are they 2nd in attendance? Do they really support their program like that?

[_kai_]

Someone figure out what UMKC's attendance was last year?

I found the 13/14 season numbers of 1,677/gm. If UMKC beats out Loyola, I'm so done with this conference.

[Dave Stalwart]

Someone figure out what UMKC's attendance was last year?

I found the 13/14 season numbers of 1,677/gm. If UMKC beats out Loyola, I'm so done with this conference.

Pretty soon we aren't even going to be a step up for teams in the Summit and Horizon. Everyone else seem to be on a quest to improve their profile. The MVC seems to be the opposite.

[kochHead]

Pretty soon we aren't even going to be a step up for teams in the Summit and Horizon. Everyone else seem to be on a quest to improve their profile. The MVC seems to be the opposite.

Yeah right!!! Loyola just won the CBI!! Or was it the CIT? No...no...Evansville won that one, or was it the other way around? Anyway...ok, your right, we are screwed.

[KUhater]

Is there a causation between not having football and having great basketball attendance?