Stumbled upon this on twitter... A good start for getting more students in the stands.
http://from-now-on.com/blog/2017/4/19/s ... attendance

Interesting, but I have to ask: what were the teams we played during the games where attendance increase was measured? Were students on break during any of these games? You have to control for those factors. There were almost no students at the Illinois State game, because it was New Years. A game against Witchita State is going to draw more students than a game against Drake, whether there's an app or not.

The article accounted for this.

"Ultimately, we chose our first four home conference games following the holidays. First, any time students return following a long break from campus we know there is a great opportunity to re-engage them in campus life. These four games also happened to be four important conference games where having a student presence would be key to our team's success."

I believe that would be MSU, Evansville, Bradley, Southern. I'm a bit of a glass half full guy but often times this season the student section extended into the 200 row during conference play which was exciting to see. The student section for Drake was pretty large and rowdy as well for Jesuit Jam. You can see on twitter that there are way more young Rambler fans popping up than in previous years which is exciting to see.

The MSU game was technically the last day of break, though, which is why I asked what teams were included. If it started with Evansville then the four games would be Evansville, Bradley, SIU, and WSU. 3 of those four are some of the bigger games normally, measured against games that aren't big draws, so it makes a big difference.

I was in town, and able to attend the Missouri State game, and I know that they didn't do anything like mentioned in the article or with the app. Like 01grad mentioned, they were still technically on break, and a decent amount of students weren't getting to campus until late Sunday or that Monday (MLK Day) so I'm pretty sure it was Evansville, Bradley, SIU, and Wichita for the 4 games.

However, when I was watching those games on TV, I did notice that the first 3 seemed more filled than usual. Wichita it's tough to say if the app helped or not. I can't get the app since it's not available through Windows, so does anyone who isn't a student have it? Is there any incentive for a fan to get it? Do you think that if they did promotions for fans who came to the games through it or sent alerts to everyone, it would help boost non-student attendance?

Ah, i see. Looks like it was WSU. But outside of Wichita i haven't really noticed student sections fluctuate though; which other 2 are typically bigger draws for students? The crowds are usually larger for Bradley and Southern because of local alumni... but as a recent alum who graduated in 2014, I didn't know anyone who cared more about Southern, Bradley or even ISUr because they were in state rivals. A lot of Loyola students including myself were pretty ignorant of what the Valley was; i wasn't a huge basketball fan at the time and all i knew is i hadn't heard of most of the schools so they probably weren't too good (I'm not saying this is right, this was just my assumption). I mean in 2015 there were barely any students for the home game against a nationally ranked UNI team; and the student section was probably under 100. I remember friends saying"oh i've never heard of them" and skipping the game.

There's been so much negativity on the board about lacking creativity, money, etc lately. This uses creativity to surpass budgetary issues and from a student section perspective it certainly passed the eye test over the course of the season. It's a step, and is also working with Reslife, who are key to reaching freshmen and sophomore.

Tank. As for the App, i have it and it does send out push notifications for games/deals/etc. They advertised it at every game at least once (though i feel like it may have been twice). And it's open for everyone, you don't need to be a student to download.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I'm not sure comparing the overall average attendance for the year vs attendance for those 4 games is by itself a good measure of how successful it is. It's not really a random sample of you cherry pick games in which you think students would be the most engaged. If you're wanting to measure those 4 games, I'd rather see a comparison against similar games and dates from previous years.

Again I don't think it's a bad idea, I remember the board discussing these promotions when they were happening and the positive response to doing this type of outreach... I just worry their iffy methodology to measure its success will lead them to thinking stuff like this is all they need to do.

If it works--even a little bit , USE IT !!