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+1 What Lance said.

As for butts in seats . . . its an issue of value for the money. I've said it before . . . Aggie basketball needs to be priced to put the LOCALS in the seats, and not just the top corners of the building. This is not a competitively priced product right now and it isn't JUST about winning. There aren't enough Aggies that will travel during the week to fill the arena, period, even when the team was winning under BCG.

$ Bill jacked prices up way to high, way too fast when BCG had success and the season ticket numbers have never rebounded. Drop prices, create demand (winning helps) and go from there. The failed $ Bill approach of "there is a base of basketball fans who will pay anything we charge" was an unmitigated disaster, and Hyman is a fool for following it.

The goal is NOT to get a family to come to a game once a year with "holiday pricing." You need the community to be able to invest in the program all year, so it has to be affordable. . .especially given that basketball historically ranks third in the pecking order for many local fans behind football and baseball. There's only so much money you can spend to watch the Ags, no matter how much you want to support them.

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And we have a winner! With so much competition for a consumer's attention in regard to TV, DVR's, video games, social media, every game on TV anyway, etc....you simply can't expect any walk-up crowd for single games (non-student) like you could in the past. There are too many avenues of entertainment to think you'll get a family to hop into the car on a day's notice and drive 90-100 miles to reed Arena. It won't happen. The AD must aggressively sell season tickets well in advance and make the customer invested in attending each game. Must aggressively market to close A&M clubs and the local community with grass roots campaigns and loss leader pricing...I'm talking $25 season tickets and if you buy them "now" you get that $25 price for the next two seasons. Have a promotion that if you attend every home game this season, then your season tickets next season are free. People must have tickets in hand well in advance and have it on their calendars to go...and to get movement of tickets you are going to have to use the short term as a loss leader and hook your fans that way by building loyalty...and hopefully with some winning given the uptick in the future roster.

Byrne made a HUGE strategic business error when he jacked up season tickets after that 2007 Sweet Sixteen run. He should have lowered season tickets and sold out the inventory of season tickets and i bet the outcome may have been different four years later when attendance declined despite averaging 25 wins a season.

Hop, with regard to grass roots marketing, your basically saying Hyman needs to crawl out of his hole and work. I'll believe it when I see it

And I totally agree Byrne screwed up the pricing, like he screwed up a lot of things. Nothing stopping the AD from trying to correct pricing now... Although with the product this bad, I don't know how much a fire sale will help...

I think a fire sale on season tickets would increase season ticket sales (maybe) but I doubt many of those people would take the time to show up. I think they get the cheap season tickets for things like priority points and just to have them in case the team gets better.

For regular game tickets, it is not going to work. They basically gave tickets away several times over the last two years and no one showed up. Only winning is going to get students/alumni back to the games.

byrne definitely screwed up when it came to things like bad contracts, extensions, and ticket hikes, but at least he realized that basketball needed a good product out there. Captain Pablo is right though, hyman seems to passive to do anything major to increase attendance. He was oblivious to the obvious solution to increase attendance for this year.

Hop I love your posts here but I have 0 faith in the AD to actually market BB. For non-conference they need to give BCS folks a reason to come out and a bandit sign at Bush and Wellborn isn't marketing.

Locals know about the games they just don't want to pay that much for tickets or sit in the upper corners. Don't know how many times I heard other parents in the stands a youth basketball talk about Aggie hoops and what was happening but when I bring up where they sit etc... all I get are blank stares. It's fine I get it, you can throw some serious money going to a game as a family. Tickets, parking and/or concessions can add up even if you go on the cheap. Need the students to create a good atmosphere and when the winning starts the crowds will show up. Unless your Duke, Kentucky or Syracuse I think the days of crazy sellouts are gone so many things going on nowadays as well as a ton of ways to watch games.

Remember last year when a couple certain posters came on here guaranteeing the AD had all this amazing stuff in store to market the program last season? We were all told to just wait and see. Then we were told to wait until after Xmas break. By then the team was exposed as a fraud along with the head coach and the same old excuses started piling up from years past.

Marketing the program locally has been an issue since Turge. The AD has been an abysmal failure in that regard.

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Byrne made a HUGE strategic business error when he jacked up season tickets after that 2007 Sweet Sixteen run

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I do agree with this statement. I also believe that we were destined to experience an attendance drop the moment we moved to the SEC and some of our deepest rivals disappeared from the schedule. In spite of this, I am very glad we decided to move to the SEC.

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I also believe that we were destined to experience an attendance drop the moment we moved to the SEC and some of our deepest rivals
disappeared from the schedule.

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The reason the attendance has dropped has almost everything to do with the program going from a perennial NCAA to team to not even making the NIT, and little to do with the SEC schedule.

Unless you actually believe we would still see a 50% attendance drop if we were still regularly making the NCAAs.

Hop...excellent comments.
Hyman could do much to turn the declining numbers but first he has to establish trust that he knows what to do and that he cares about something other than managing Aggie fans expectations.

He has nothing to sell but hope that a 50% program is going to be better " sometime" in the future and he has a coach that is incapable of mustering a personal connection with the fan base. He can say BK is building the right way but why isn't Billy Kennedy out in the community and in front of the students making that case for himself? In an atmosphere where we have a dynamic confident football coach and a women's Bb coach that works every day to sell his program to the nation, Billy Kennedy and Eric Hyman come across as indifferent to the fans and ambivalent about whether the program is accepted by the students.

As a salesman I can attest to the fact that if you don't believe in your product it is impossible to get anyone to buy your product more than once. Billy Kennedy may want the job but I'm not sure he ever wanted to be here because the job is more than just being a coach.

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As a salesman I can attest to the fact that if you don't believe in your product it is impossible to get anyone to buy your product more than once.

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And yet Kennedy is selling the program just fine to elite recruits.

you missed the part about getting a customer to buy something twice. kennedy runs off 3 players per year, and generally one of those players is a first year player, and one the head ball coach was touting as a savior just a few months before.

Mallen...from you history of posting one could surmise that you are responsible for marketing the men's program . Your position as an AD apologist has blinded you to the facts that a Billy Kennedy basketball program is a lackluster product that fewer people are buying. Why don't you spend your energy getting your coach out among the fan base and the students so that he can start convincing the customers that what he is selling is not just snake oil.

To be honest, I would hope that Kennedy is spending more of his time on the recruiting trail as this will have significantly more impact on attendance levels.

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Hop, with regard to grass roots marketing, your basically saying Hyman needs to crawl out of his hole and work. I'll believe it when I see it

And I totally agree Byrne screwed up the pricing, like he screwed up a lot of things. Nothing stopping the AD from trying to correct pricing now... Although with the product this bad, I don't know how much a fire sale will help...

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We have a model: Gary Blair. He's a great salesman without being crass, and a representative of Aggieland.

there were a few NBA teams that did a "satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" promotion for specific games. However, considering the current state of the team and coaching, I have a feeling if we did that to bring more people out to games, there will be many refunds.

As a current student who attends all basketball games, I feel I have a few things I can add.
1. The sports pass changes for this year will have little to no effect on basketball. Those who wanted to watch basketball before, plus many others, had All-Sports before and it didn't change a thing. Some games were completely free to all students... Again, no one showed.
2. Part of the student attendance issues do involve the SEC move. We do not have a natural rival that we meet on the hardwood every year. I tell people all the time how much I hate Baylor and that it stems from growing up while the bball rivalry blossomed. Something like that is going to need to happen to get people to care about a game at least once a year no matter if the two teams on the court are good. Even when we were in the process of going 0-16, people still showed up for games like tu. We need opponents we hate.
3. Basketball needs its own traditions. When many students who haven't previously been exposed to Aggie basketball walk into Reed, it seems like a poor, boring, attempt at recreating the football atmosphere. We need to push to completely separate the basketball and football atmospheres. If basketball had its own traditions and culture, I feel more people would be inclined to come and join in on the fun. Developing a separate basketball culture is something I think the Reed Rowdies should be pushing for and perhaps the AD should be taking more seriously as part of their marketing strategy.
4. We absolutely need to WIN and we need a coach who will engage students. It is painful to go watch us blow games against teams like Auburn in our home arena. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to see crappy basketball, especially if they are not completely familiar with the game. I'm an avid fan and walking into Reed the last two years has been almost painful. Also, I have never seen BK on campus promoting his team, and if he was, most students wouldn't have a damn clue who he is. He, or as many of us wish a new coach, has to be in it on the ground level. He has to personally connect with students much in the way Gary Blair has connected with the local BCS community. But most of all, people love a winner!

TL;DR
1. New sports passes change nothing
2. No natural rivals in SEC
3. Basketball needs own traditions and culture
4. Need coach to engage students and win

i think the SEC vs B12 argument has some weight, but i also think some people are using it as a convenient excuse.
I seem to recall a non-conference game during turgeon's first season (loooooooooong before any talk of conference realignment) against LSU in January that was sold out (or damn near sold out). and this wasnt some highly ranked LSU team, it was a scrub team that barely dressed 8 players for the game.

At this point who isn't familiar with the game of basketball? Students of Texas A&M it's time to move into the modern era were there are other options besides football.

The SEC vs. big12 argument is an excuse. Do people really think the 50% drop (attendance started dropping in BK's first year, which was in the big12) in three years is solely based on who we played? It is much more likely due to the fact that a perennial NCAA team has become a team that consistently misses the postseason, has numerous bad losses at home, and cannot even finish above .500 in a weak conference.

There is no way attendance is this bad, if A&M is still a tourney team. That our idiot AD, and his messageboard stooges (mallen isn't the only one), thinks the conference change is a valid excuse for our attendance woes and not the incompetent HC, shows you how bad our leadership is in that position.

Guess what LSU and Arkansas are just fine for rivalries. Bottom line I like beating everyone so every game is a rivalry for me.

I wasn't pointing to it as a sole reason for the attendance issues. Just one small reason among a long list of things. Most of all, I think the issue is a lack of culture and lack of winning. Also, there isn't a class on campus that has seen us play an NCAA tournament game as a student. THAT is the biggest issue, no doubt.

I don't know I have to think the all-sports pass now being universal with help add some student attendance. I mean you are adding what 20k more students to the ticket package? I have to think that more will attend now just because its a free option. I know $5 or whatever it was in the past isn't a lot in the scheme of things but to some kids its a pitcher of beer while watching the game. Maybe Reed Rowdies can build on this now. Which leads me to ask why does the ticket office wait so long to go on sale with individual tickets? What was it a few years ago we had a great ooc season and beat UK , granted only to lay an egg vs UF at home. Just wondering how many more tickets could they have sold leading up to UF for other conference games or even as Christmas presents before Conference games start etc. I just remember watching a few games last yr at South Carolina, LSU and UGA and they announced something like 8-10k, when you could plainly see less than 4k. I know its playing with numbers and all but just seems like some $ and attendance box score numbers are left wilting.

When has a Kennedy team had a great ooc schedule? And UF hasn't played at Reed yet.

yeah, we played UF at home 2 yrs ago. after BK started 3-0 in conf top 10 florida came in and blew our doors off by about 20.

That was also the year we lost to Southern at Reed or maybe it was the year we lost to Rice at Reed. Those things will put butts in the seats......of someone's couch watching something else.

That Florida game in 2012/2013,was classic BK. Probably the largest student turnout (4,000) in BK era and we laid an egg . BK sat there expressionless .

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I have to think that more will attend now just because its a free option. I know $5 or whatever it was in the past isn't a lot in the scheme of things but to some kids its a pitcher of beer while watching the game.

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I don't know what it was last year, but my last year in school it was $15 to see A&M play Southern Nowhere Tech over Christmas break. That's pretty steep for a college kid.

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That Florida game in 2012/2013,was classic BK. Probably the largest student turnout (4,000) in BK era and we laid an egg . BK sat there expressionless .

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That's when the attendance started decline under Turg, he was getting drilled at home by the sips and BU

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That Florida game in 2012/2013,was classic BK. Probably the largest student turnout (4,000) in BK era and we laid an egg.

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Florida was VERY good and we were outmatched at multiple spots on the floor. Watching Patrick Young destroy our post players was painful.

So beating up on our team too much for getting whacked by Florida at home IMO is not something to get too uptight about.

Rice, North Texas, and Southern, losing to Vandy twice last season, losing to Auburn at home last season...those are the losses that really sucked and that I personally had a hard time swallowing.

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i think the SEC vs B12 argument has some weight, but i also think some people are using it as a convenient excuse.
I seem to recall a non-conference game during turgeon's first season (loooooooooong before any talk of conference realignment) against LSU in January that was sold out (or damn near sold out). and this wasnt some highly ranked LSU team, it was a scrub team that barely dressed 8 players for the game.

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Yeah, and Turge **** and moaned about the LSU and New Mexico games in Houston. Guess he was hoping for Hawaii.


LSU *could* be our rival. BK in a coon @$$ and Johnny Jones is a good guy. The football thing is far more exciting than t.u.

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That Florida game in 2012/2013,was classic BK. Probably the largest student turnout (4,000) in BK era and we laid an egg.

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Florida was VERY good and we were outmatched at multiple spots on the floor. Watching Patrick Young destroy our post players was painful.

So beating up on our team too much for getting whacked by Florida at home IMO is not something to get too uptight about.

Rice, North Texas, and Southern, losing to Vandy twice last season, losing to Auburn at home last season...those are the losses that really sucked and that I personally had a hard time swallowing.

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The team ***** QUIT during the UF game, and that's not the only time. One of the few moments I felt embarrassed for the team.

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I think a fire sale on season tickets would increase season ticket sales (maybe) but I doubt many of those people would take the time to show up. I think they get the cheap season tickets for things like priority points and just to have them in case the team gets better.

For regular game tickets, it is not going to work. They basically gave tickets away several times over the last two years and no one showed up. Only winning is going to get students/alumni back to the games.

byrne definitely screwed up when it came to things like bad contracts, extensions, and ticket hikes, but at least he realized that basketball needed a good product out there. Captain Pablo is right though, hyman seems to passive to do anything major to increase attendance. He was oblivious to the obvious solution to increase attendance for this year.

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That brings up another missed opportunity for season ticket sales. During the hysteria over collected priority points for a draft spot in the new Kyle Field, I would have given donors 3-4x credit on basketball donations and season ticket purchases. That would have been an easy way to sell an extra 1000 season tickets.

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Hop I love your posts here but I have 0 faith in the AD to actually market BB. For non-conference they need to give BCS folks a reason to come out and a bandit sign at Bush and Wellborn isn't marketing.

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I'm just telling you some of the things I would do. The AD has not shown any interest in doing these things I mentioned.

I'm not really sure what Eric Hyman does or why he is here. His lack of basketball success as a AD is worse then his coach. I'd love to see a creative commitment to mens hoops.