"College Football Encounters Its Biggest Rival: The Couch"

From Time

Review by Ryan Gerrity in SRM 435 (section 2)

College football has been a cornerstone for not only college students, but for fans of all ages. It seems as though college football brings the best out of people because they want to be apart of something bigger than themselves. Football is not just a four hour event, it is a weeks long countdown until a full day event that starts at sometimes, 8:00 AM. Attendance to these college football stadiums has filled over 80,000 people, but in the past couple of years, attendance has fallen dramatically.

The Southeastern Conference is the biggest, best, fastest, strongest conference in college football and they have even seen a fall in attendance. Nine of the fourteen SEC schools have seen a dramatic drop in attendance at college football games. University of Florida had a 137 game streak of sold out home games and that streaked ended just over a year ago. The University of Alabama, who has won the last two National Championships, has not sold out any of their home games in the past two years.

Before attendance dropped dramatically most Universities required the season ticket holders to make a donation on top of their purchase of the tickets. Most schools had a requirement of at least $5,000. Now, there is no required donation because they are trying to attract more people to purchase the season tickets. Another threat to the Universities and a cause of the drop in the attendance is the upper classmen that are attending the Universities. Over the past year 20% more upper classmen are not going or purchasing tickets to the football games. Another problem the Universities are having is promoting the games that the students or fans do not care about. All the fans want to see a top 25 ranked team in the country, and they cannot sell the tickets to the lower ranked teams. Some of the Universities are requiring people to buy tickets in two, one ticket for a big game against a big name school, and a ticket against a smaller school.

Marketing and promotions for college football games is very easy because everyone wants to be apart of the game and atmosphere. The problem the Universities are having is getting the fans into the game. Everyone loves to go to the tailgates, but once the tailgates end most people have started to go hoe to their own house and watch the game on their big screen HD TV. Having promotions at the tailgates is very important and when we worked the JMU football walking around the tailgates promoting the game worked. Interacting with the fans and getting them involved in the process is important because you want to know what will get them into the game and stadium.

A marketing strategy that could work for college football attendance is to promote the idea of being apart of something bigger. There really is not much better than the atmosphere of a intense college football, and you cannot replace that with atmosphere with a TV and surround sound. This article is relevant to this course because there is important ways we can learn how to promote and market tickets to not only students, but also all fans. Learning the different ways to reach people through different kinds of channels like social media, email, personal promotions through the tailgates. Also knowing your client, in this case it is the students and fans, and trying to promote the idea of going into the stadium and game.
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Review by Ben Edsall in SRM 435 (section 2)

The article we chose to use for this assignment was called “College Football Encounters Its Biggest Rival: The Couch” written by Brad Tuttle. This article talked about the current trend of college football teams struggling to sell out games, even including the SEC. It stated that with today’s drastic improvement in television technology, people do not feel the need to go to games when they can watch better quality in their living room. Tuttle also discussed how teams are struggling to sell season tickets as well as games against lesser opponents. The decrease in fan attendance is not extreme, but looks like it will continue to decline in the future. In the article it showed that nine out of fourteen teams in the SEC saw a decline in attendance. With these hard times some teams are starting to not require donations from season ticket holders. One program that was hurt tremendously was the University of Nebraska. The donations for the 2013 season ticket holders dropped 25% to 80% compared to last year. 

Later on in the article the topic of watching the game at home vs. watching the game at the stadium is discussed. People tend to feel that they receive a better experience in the comfort of their own home compared to the stadium. When people watch at home they have high definition television, their own food/beverages, easy access to the bathroom, and can watch multiple games. These factors need to be addressed by college football teams and figure out a more efficient way to market themselves. They need to promote that the experience at the stadium is like no other. I believe that teams can positively promote themselves by reaching out to the media and getting fans excited for the upcoming game. The team can do activities around campus and get the students involved to show school spirit, and make them feel as though they are a part of something bigger. Another strategy is to hang up posters around campus and host pep rallies to create a buzz around campus. Not only is the comfort of watching the game at home a huge factor, but the prices of food and beverages at games as well. From a sales point of view I believe it would be beneficial to lower the prices so more people would purchase the products, rather than keep them high where everyone just ends up getting frustrated. I believe that if football teams took these factors into consideration they could see a rise in ticket sales. 

This article is relevant to this course because it demonstrates the difficulty with fan attendance, and how teams need to market and promote themselves to increase ticket sales. Last weekend I worked the football game for James Madison University against Central Connecticut State University, and noticed some positive aspects of promoting the team. I walked around tailgates handing out posters and key chains to boost morale. Everybody loves getting free stuff and it showed from the reactions I received. If you are able to hand out free merchandise then there is a possibility more students will attend games. Also when students and fans were entering the stadium before kickoff I handed out thunder sticks which increased the excitement in the stadium tremendously. Overall I had a great experience working the game and feel that if teams put more effort into promoting the positive aspects of the game day atmosphere then they would have higher ticket sales.