Auburn area population is not close to 200k. They are super close to any other major metropolitan area either, maybe Montgomery, I guess.

Texas_Ag11 said:

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When will we point the finger at TexAgs as a primary driver for the negativity that gets generated and its impact on Aggie sports. I know its ironic that I am posting it here, but I do think TexAgs has an outsized impact on Aggies and where they get their direction on sports. Most sports fans of Aggie athletics are not deeply engrained in all aspects and don't care to know if someone is a troll that posts here or if they truly even know what they are talking about. Instead most use TexAgs as a pulse of the teams. In the last two weeks, if I am an alumni or student that only superficially follows this team, I am not sure I would be interested in going to the game either. The talk is about our terrible venue, our team sucking, our coach leaving, how we are going to lose 6-8 straight to end the year. All that drivel spewed mostly on here, the primary conduit for fan information. We are not covered by mainstream media, so the info comes from here. If we honestly think that has no effect on attendance, I don't know what to tell you.

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I would totally disagree on this. Look at the historical pre Texags basketball attendance and get back with me

Ag Eng 92 said:

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Auburn area population is not close to 200k. They are super close to any other major metropolitan area either, maybe Montgomery, I guess.

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Auburn is an hour dirve from Columbus, GA (metro 330,000) and Montgomery, AL (metro 400,000). The metro area for Auburn itself is 199,289, so yeah, pretty close to 200k...

Ag Eng 92 said:

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Auburn area population is not close to 200k. They are super close to any other major metropolitan area either, maybe Montgomery, I guess.

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I included the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan area which as of 2023 was ~200K.

27 million people live within 3 hours of our arena, but I dont know if even 350,000 live within an hour of it.

Before I was married and had kids, I had season tickets and lived in Houston. Often the midweek game was at 7:00pm, so I could leave my job slightly before 5, pickup whoever I was taking, get on the road before the worst of rush hour, walk in the building before introductions, and be walking out of the building almost exactly at 9:00pm. 8pm games, you had to worry about getting home late, but college basketball back then was a lot like soccer (I also had Dynamo season tickets at one point). You show up, you were there for two hours exactly, and then the game was over (except that one time there were 5 overtimes).

I dont have seats anymore, but it would be extraordinarily difficult even if my family situation allowed time for it. SEC games are scheduled at 6pm making cutting the workday short absolutely necessary. And when it is a late game, the game doesn't start on time, and it definitely doesn't end on time like it used to. I can see where it's probably getting harder to justify going to basketball games, not easier, over the past several years.

Interpret this as you will, but I thought it might be interesting to look at a selection of SEC and Texas schools as a function of their relative attendance in football and basketball. This selection covers a range of geographic settings and enrollment sizes.

Football / Basketball / Ratio

Texas A&M………..103k / 9.7k / 10.6x
Texas…………………102k / 10.7k / 9.5x
Tennessee…………102k / 19.7k / 5.2x
Auburn………………88k / 9.1k / 9.7x
Arkansas……………73k / 19.1k / 3.8x
Texas Tech…………59k / 12.9k / 4.6x
Baylor………………..42k / 7.8k / 5.4x

Scotts Tot said:

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Interpret this as you will,

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What is your interpretation of it?

JJxvi said:

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Scotts Tot said:

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Interpret this as you will,

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What is your interpretation of it?

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My interpretation is that regardless of the geographical issues surrounding our location which certainly exacerbate the issue, there is simply not a strong culture around basketball at A&M. If the issue was purely a matter of location/geography, we wouldn't be able to pull in a top 5 football attendance year after year.

Scotts Tot said:

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Interpret this as you will, but I thought it might be interesting to look at a selection of SEC and Texas schools as a function of their relative attendance in football and basketball. This selection covers a range of geographic settings and enrollment sizes.

Football / Basketball / Ratio

Texas A&M………..103k / 9.7k / 10.6x
Texas…………………102k / 10.7k / 9.5x
Tennessee…………102k / 19.7k / 5.2x
Auburn………………88k / 9.1k / 9.7x
Arkansas……………73k / 19.1k / 3.8x
Texas Tech…………59k / 12.9k / 4.6x
Baylor………………..42k / 7.8k / 5.4x

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According to your numbers:
Football averaged about 99% capacity and basketball averaged 73%. So 1-in-a-100 empty for football and 1-in-4 empty for basketball.

JJxvi said:

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Ag Eng 92 said:

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Auburn area population is not close to 200k. They are super close to any other major metropolitan area either, maybe Montgomery, I guess.

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Auburn is an hour dirve from Columbus, GA (metro 330,000) and Montgomery, AL (metro 400,000). The metro area for Auburn itself is 199,289, so yeah, pretty close to 200k...

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I stand corrected- been there many times and it comes across as much more Starkville than BCS.

Disregard the above…
I just googled it because I knew it was half the size of BCS. Auburn is 82k. Opelika is 33k. Metro area is way smaller than Aggieland.

We all know the issue is that out of town folks just aren't going to make a Tuesday night game at 8 but A&M is happy to sell those seats to season ticket holders so they can't go to more students or locals

A&M can still sell to the big metro area donors. They still need to find a way to market and build up the local fanbase to make the games though. The job is not done just because you sold the ticket for that year.

Donors from Houston (primarily) and elsewhere buy the season slate. However, what doesn't exist is a secondary market of people wanting to go to the game and willing to buy a ticket. When I didnt go to a game, I usually either had to give my tickets away for free or in some cases couldn't even give 'em away (rare).

If effort were expended and local demand increased, they would be able to soak up some of that secondary market, allowing the big donors, to pay the 12th Man Foundation even more for season tickets since they would be getting some of that initial investment back more regularly. What we have now is whenever there is a strong secondary market game, its likely because every single Kentucky or Tennessee fan in Houston/Austin/Dallas all want to go to a game and the tickets get sold to our opponents fans.

Yes, I think you are right about A&M not having a strong "basketball culture". However, I also believe that our athletic marketing department is pretty comfortable with football where they do the minimum and get a fantastic ROI. I lived in Houston in the mid-2010s, and A&M played at least twice at the Toyota Center at the time; the only way I knew about the game was because I checked the A&M schedule on its website, and I followed the team closely. At the time, no marketing/ads were going on in the Houston area about A&M playing a good game. As far as I know, the marketing department invests very little in promoting non-football games in places like Houston or Dallas...heck I am sure there is an alumni database where, hypothetically, they could reach out via email (if they opt-in) to promote the game and additional activities.

agtrevino07 said:

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Yes, I think you are right about A&M not having a strong "basketball culture". However, I also believe that our athletic marketing department is pretty comfortable with football where they do the minimum and get a fantastic ROI. I lived in Houston in the mid-2010s, and A&M played at least twice at the Toyota Center at the time; the only way I knew about the game was because I checked the A&M schedule on its website, and I followed the team closely. At the time, no marketing/ads were going on in the Houston area about A&M playing a good game. As far as I know, the marketing department invests very little in promoting non-football games in places like Houston or Dallas...heck I am sure there is an alumni database where, hypothetically, they could reach out via email (if they opt-in) to promote the game and additional activities.

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This is true, but not sure it totally proves the point. I live pretty close to Dickies Arena (where this game was played). Local advertisement for the game was basically nonexistent. Maybe DFW Tech alumni were getting emails from their athletic department encouraging them to go to the game, which I doubt, but even without much local fanfare the Tech fans turned out in great numbers compared to the Aggies.