Alumni Arena

[John]

5 minutes ago, UB85 said:

Bona's atmosphere is great. It is also a bit contrived. They pack the place. The students are on top of the court especially at either basket. The ceiling is as low as you'll ever find one in major college hoops. On top of that they close the doors leading to the gym during the game, which means the sound is literally bouncing off the walls and ceiling with little place to go.

Do agree. The layout of the arena makes that type of atmosphere.I don’t think Alumni can do anything to enhance that except to have a full house and continue to play an exciting brand of winning basketball. Go Bulls!!!!

[bull_trojan]

7 hours ago, dutchcountry7 said:

I can tell you don't run a business.  Revenue is less important than the bottom line.  You don't build an expensive facility with a ton of seats for them to sit empty.  You want every seat to not only be utilized but also to have the revenue cover the cost of the outlay.

You'd have to show me that fans are being turned away because they can't get a ticket to the game.  Or that fans would be beating down the door to get into Alumni Arena if they could get tickets for $5 rather than $10. 

Profit is most important, profit is Revenue - Expenses. I agree you don't build a big facility for the seats to sit empty, the hypothesis is that a more "pro" style gym would attract more fans. My argument is there are people who look at alumni and wouldn't go to a game for free, cause it's not big time like the arena they are used to going to. So you'll never have them getting turned away or beating down the door.

Quote

No.  The arena is not the problem.  The Pavilion is more popular with Villanova fans despite the Wells Fargo Center being 'big time' as you say.

Nova fans prefer the Pavillion, UB fans may prefer the Wells Fargo.

Quote

But the biggest issue is the lack of home games and the lack of home games against quality opponents.

That's a revenue issue. We can earn at least 90k on a buy game. So we have to be able to net at least 90,001k to buy someone to us and have it make fiscal sense. 6,000 seats, Throw in 1,000 student tickets and 2,000 season ticket holders who were going to buy anyway, you have 3,000 seats to sell @ $30/seat, or 2,000 seats at $45/seat.

Same equation in a 10k building you'd have 4,500 seats at $20 up to 7,000 seats @ $13 to sell in order to afford that opponent.

I dig your hypothesis of schedule improving attendance and revenue tho, I'd love to open with like a Cuse, a Michigan or a UConn, and have the single game price = the season ticket price. Imagine this year if locals who normally wouldn't go to Alumni went to see us play WVU, and bought the season tickets figuring hey might as well buy seasons if it's the same price as the one ticket, we played a great game and won, some of those fans may be motivated to come back to see us play south east Houston state, and Kent.

Edited November 19, 2018 by bull_trojan
typos

[rma]

I don't think AA is a bad arena.  It's the best D1 basketball arena in upstate NY.  It doesn't get as loud as Bona or is as big as Cuse, but I think it's the nicest.  Canisius and Niagara remind me of my high school gym.

Want to complain about concessions? Bona doesn't even take credit cards.

[Jeseph]

33 minutes ago, rma said:

I don't think AA is a bad arena.  It's the best D1 basketball arena in upstate NY.  It doesn't get as loud as Bona or is as big as Cuse, but I think it's the nicest.  Canisius and Niagara remind me of my high school gym.

Want to complain about concessions? Bona doesn't even take credit cards.

I don’t think Olean has internet service

[dutchcountry7]

3 hours ago, bull_trojan said:

 

Same equation in a 10k building you'd have 4,500 seats at $20 up to 7,000 seats @ $13 to sell in order to afford that opponent.
 

First: Alumni Arena is a sunk cost. It is already built and fitted out. Building a new or expanded facility changes your figures drastically. 

 

Second: that’s not how buy games work. You can’t buy West Virginia for $90k. You can buy Hofstra or Vermont for $90k. 

[dutchcountry7]

30 minutes ago, Jeseph said:

I don’t think Olean has internet service

Stop!

they have had dial up for at least three years now...

[rma]

35 minutes ago, Jeseph said:

I don’t think Olean has internet service

Maybe with a few buy games they can outfit the stadium with a few of these

[UB85]

10 hours ago, SGBull said:

I do not think that Alumni Arena renovation should be a priority right now. We should see an uptick in attendance long as the team keeps winning. Once we see a consistent increase, then we can look at that. 

The main negatives I see are:

-It does feel a little like a high school gym 

-When watching on TV you see the south side of the arena. This leads to a lot of the shots of the red areas in the picture below (if it attached to the post properly). This does not look good IMO.

-Concessions are not great

After having said this, I still believe it is a good game day experience and compares favorably to many other D1 arenas.

I think the football stadium should be a bigger priority because it does not compare favorably to other D1 stadiums. The biggest issue is the track which leads to horrible sight-lines and a quiet atmosphere. 

Love that picture. I would have to think they could add seats of some nature to fill in the gaps on both ends. Filling those seats and the rest of AA would make for a great college basketball atmosphere. Of course we need to continue recruiting and playing at a championship level. 

[bull_trojan]

3 hours ago, dutchcountry7 said:

First: Alumni Arena is a sunk cost. It is already built and fitted out. Building a new or expanded facility changes your figures drastically. 

 

Second: that’s not how buy games work. You can’t buy West Virginia for $90k. You can buy Hofstra or Vermont for $90k. 

I don't know how buy games work, we have other means to get teams 😉 (and a 10k seat arena which still works fine despite a normal attendance between 4-6k).

Edited November 20, 2018 by bull_trojan
kelsey (grammar)

[bull_trojan]

5 hours ago, rma said:

I don't think AA is a bad arena.  It's the best D1 basketball arena in upstate NY.  It doesn't get as loud as Bona or is as big as Cuse, but I think it's the nicest.  Canisius and Niagara remind me of my high school gym.

Want to complain about concessions? Bona doesn't even take credit cards.

I am fine with AA, my thoughts were on outside perception, of the multipurpose gym. It is fully functional, unlike UBS. I feel outside of the functional issues of UBS, the perception of it as "not a real college football stadium" also hurts community fan engagement. Sometimes, you have to look the part.

[BrooklynBull]

5 hours ago, bull_trojan said:

I am fine with AA, my thoughts were on outside perception, of the multipurpose gym. It is fully functional, unlike UBS. I feel outside of the functional issues of UBS, the perception of it as "not a real college football stadium" also hurts community fan engagement. Sometimes, you have to look the part.

Well the World's Most Sexist Famous Arena, Madison Square Garden, is a multipurpose gym.  Basketball, hockey, tennis, concerts, dog shows, political conventions and more.  So multipurpose is not really a problem for getting people to a venue.

[dutchcountry7]

2 hours ago, BrooklynBull said:

Well the World's Most Sexist Famous Arena, Madison Square Garden, is a multipurpose gym.  Basketball, hockey, tennis, concerts, dog shows, political conventions and more.  So multipurpose is not really a problem for getting people to a venue.

That is the reason no one will go to the Carrier Dome.   You can't share a football, basketball, and lacrosse facility.  The people will revolt and not show up in protest.

If it is one thing we know about people of Western New York it's that they are accustomed to fine things.  When you live a life of luxury, you expected to have the best arena in the world and wouldn't be caught seen in anything less!  

[BrooklynBull]

58 minutes ago, dutchcountry7 said:

That is the reason no one will go to the Carrier Dome.   You can't share a football, basketball, and lacrosse facility.  The people will revolt and not show up in protest.

If it is one thing we know about people of Western New York it's that they are accustomed to fine things.  When you live a life of luxury, you expected to have the best arena in the world and wouldn't be caught seen in anything less!  

From what I remember the Sabres drew pretty well in the Aud.  I believe the Aud at the end was a dump.  I had a chance to be on the floor when Gonzaga had a walk through in 1997 and the floor had more dead spots than the meadowlands has dead bodies in it.

[ed]

Yep. Don't know why we keep going over this every year - people don't not show because of the facilities. Maybe lack of beer, but not the facilities themselves. 😉 People will show up when this becomes a consistently good program (and as stated, we have some name games at home to gain initial interest),and basketball is certainly making strides to be that. 

 

How many people in the community even know what the facilities are like? Hell, it'd be interesting to know what percentage of the STUDENTS don't know what the facilities are like. 

[dutchcountry7]

42 minutes ago, ed said:

How many people in the community even know what the facilities are like? Hell, it'd be interesting to know what percentage of the STUDENTS don't know what the facilities are like.  

Seriously. 

I would first have to see that people are showing up the Bulls games and leaving saying "Never again will I go to that facility."  How many people are showing up to Bulls games in the first place?

 

[mikescherrer8]

1 hour ago, ed said:

Yep. Don't know why we keep going over this every year

Because it's an easy excuse to blame for the lack of attendance.

[TML1000]

The now wide-spread availability of games on tv and/or streaming services should not be discounted. I believe every men's game and nearly every women's game, including all home games for both, are being shown live on either a major sports network or ESPN3/ESPN+. 

[bull_trojan]

Can ya'll define "consistently good program" in both level of success to be considered "good" and length of time needed to be considered "consistent"

I think sometimes easy answers like "consistently good" are easy answers because they are undefined.

Edited November 21, 2018 by bull_trojan
typos

[UB85]

2 hours ago, bull_trojan said:

Can ya'll define "consistently good program" in both level of success to be considered "good" and length of time needed to be considered "consistent"

I think sometimes easy answers like "consistently good" are easy answers because they are undefined.

Going to the big dance at a minimum every two out of five years while being in the mix the other three. 

[nyquil]

Alumni was actually downsized around 10 years ago.

In 2004 we crammed 9000 people in for a first round playoff game.

[ed]

3 hours ago, UB85 said:

Going to the big dance at a minimum every two out of five years while being in the mix the other three. 

that's a start.  getting into the top 25 certainly helps. would be great if we can make regular appearances there.

but to be considered consistently good, i think we need a program that outlives short bursts of great performances by players / coaches.  a lot of people were hoping the 2005 team would mark the beginning - battle was a great get for us, nit tournament appearance (and near dance! woohoo!), thought recruiting was promising... 2010-2012 time frame gave another bit of false promise.. but fundamentally jack (sorry, some 'successful' ~20 win seasons).

we've had a nice little run the past 4 years. even survived a coaching turnover.  if this continues for another 4+ years, and then oats sticks around (or we manage to stay relevant with a new coach), we may have turned the corner as consistently good.

[bull_trojan]

I did a lot of research and found 18 teams that last year had 4k+ on average AND filled 74%+ of their building. 

I included Buffalo and made a rudimentary metric to score the quality of their past 10 seasons, Gonzaga, Wichita State, Butler and Xavier were a clear tier 1, tier 2 was VCU, SDSU and Dayton, then there is a tier 3: #8 Creighton, #9 SMU, #10 Nevada, #11 Providence, #12 Davidson, #13 Buffalo, #14 Rhode Island, #15 WKU, #16 Richmond, #17 Bona. Then a clear Tier 4: #18 UNC Wilmington and #19 GCU.

As a reminder, this is a measurement only of the teams with the 4k average and 74% capacity (plus Buffalo).

SMU ended up being a really good comparison:

SMU 197 wins over last 10 years, 126 wins over last 5 years, 2 NCAA appearances
UB 199 wins over last 10 years, 106 wins over last 5 years, 3 NCAA appearances and 1 round of 32.

Both are in metro areas (Dallas is a bit bigger of course), both have in-city professional winter sport competition (Stars, Mavs, Sabres).

In the 5 seasons from 2008-09 to 2012-13:
SMU won 71 games & averaged 2,590 fans and their building was on average 29% full.
UB won 93 games & averaged 2,531 fans and Alumni was on average 41% full.

In the past 5 seasons (2013-14 to 2017-18)
SMU won 126 games (up 77%), was the NIT runner-up and went to two NCAA tournaments.
They averaged 6,612 fans (up 155%) and their building was 94% full.

Same period, UB won 106 games (up 14%) went to 3 NCAA Tournaments and 1 round of 32.
UB averaged 3,545 fans (up 40%) and Alumni was 58% full.

5 Seasons ago at least two things happened.
1) SMU moved from the C-USA to the American (better opponents)
2) SMU renovated their arena with a focus on improving premium seating and hospitality options.
3) SMU won 77% more games.

So based on SMU some combination of better opponents, arena improvements and winning is probably what we need.

[BrooklynBull]

1 hour ago, bull_trojan said:

 

5 Seasons ago at least two things happened.
1) SMU moved from the C-USA to the American (better opponents)
2) SMU renovated their arena with a focus on improving premium seating and hospitality options.
3) SMU won 77% more games.

So based on SMU some combination of better opponents, arena improvements and winning is probably what we need.

Around that time SMU hired Larry Brown and he brought a lot to the program that increased interest, until they found violations.

[dutchcountry7]

4 hours ago, BrooklynBull said:

Around that time SMU hired Larry Brown and he brought a lot to the program that increased interest, until they found violations.

Let's hope the same doesn't happen to UB...

[dutchcountry7]

6 hours ago, bull_trojan said:

I did a lot of research and found 18 teams that last year had 4k+ on average AND filled 74%+ of their building. 

I included Buffalo and made a rudimentary metric to score the quality of their past 10 seasons, Gonzaga, Wichita State, Butler and Xavier were a clear tier 1, tier 2 was VCU, SDSU and Dayton, then there is a tier 3: #8 Creighton, #9 SMU, #10 Nevada, #11 Providence, #12 Davidson, #13 Buffalo, #14 Rhode Island, #15 WKU, #16 Richmond, #17 Bona. Then a clear Tier 4: #18 UNC Wilmington and #19 GCU.

As a reminder, this is a measurement only of the teams with the 4k average and 74% capacity (plus Buffalo).

SMU ended up being a really good comparison:

 

I think those are some blue tinted glasses.

I don't think SMU is a good comparison.  WKU and UNCW are probably the better comparison.

Also, as much as we rip on Bona not having anything to do down there, the reality is that most people at their games aren't from Olean.  Based on the conversations I have had with fans from the school most of their fans drive in from the games and many of them are from the south towns.