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Now that the Sebo is underway, what's next for the Doyt?

I'm sure we'll see some minor renovations, but what do you think will be the next major renovation?

I'm thinking it will have to be something that significantly increases revenue. The Doyt sorely needs a bigger and better press tower, but I don't see how this would increase revenue unless it included luxury boxes.

The obvious way to increase revenue is through larger attendance. My guess, then, is that we will not see another major renovation at the Doyt until there is a sustained demand for more seating. When that happens, and it may be a while, my next guess is that the South end of the Doyt will be enclosed to add seating. A clue that a serious effort is underway to increase attendance would be sinking more money into promotions and marketing.

If I'm right about the key being how to increase revenue significantly, do you see what other kinds of renovations would accomplish this?
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We have a whole bunch of people in the athletic department marketing area now, but it doesn't seem to help. There are a lot of "activities" like musical chairs at games, much like the NBA, which I despise, but it does not seem to be helping attendance. We had better attendance 10 years ago when we had one person doing EVERTHING. The secret may be to forget the marketing, and improve the win/loss column, by increasing coaches salaries and facilities to improve each of sports.
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Everyone loves a winner.

factman wrote:We have a whole bunch of people in the athletic department marketing area now, but it doesn't seem to help. There are a lot of "activities" like musical chairs at games, much like the NBA, which I despise, but it does not seem to be helping attendance. We had better attendance 10 years ago when we had one person doing EVERTHING. The secret may be to forget the marketing, and improve the win/loss column, by increasing coaches salaries and facilities to improve each of sports.
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Factman, that's a good post. I know this unpopular here, but I have been following Falcon sports for thirty years. In that time, every kind of marketing program has been tried--discounting, advertising, far flung radio networks, coaches on morning shows, alumni programs, flexible ticket packages, etc. And, in the end, nothing has changed. The attendance situation hasn't changed significantly in that time.

I don't believe its a marketing problem. I just don't think we have the relationship with our fan base that breeds the kind of commitment where fans show up every week no matter what, win or lose, and we don't have the overall population base to have any margin of error. That relationship can't be solved by putting discount tickets on sale at Meijer.

The challenge it seems to me is to upgrade the image of BG football, and for that matter, the image of the MAC.

I do think that the quality of BG football (and the MAC} has improved. But how do you get people to realize that sufficiently so that they'll want to attend games?

I think that BG football on a national level is much better than a lot of people realize, but they are resistant to seeing this.

Some factors are:

1-Winning more games, but especially big games that lead to MAC championships and big out of conference games.

2-Improving facilities

3-Increasing overall entertainment value for those who attend

4-More TV appearances and wins

5-Improving home scheduling

All this has been said before. I believe we're making progress. But again, the big issue is how do you change the image of BG football?

O&B is onto something....the marketing people have to find out why football fans who flock to HS games within an hour of BG don't come to the DOyt. They have to find out why alumni within a 2-3 driving distance don't come to the Doyt. They have to find out why locals won't coem out in bigger numbers. The football program doesn't have a passionate fan base outside of a few thousand people.....WHY???? Spend dollars on finding that out and you won't need the other ancillary crapola.

Having special promotions and discounting tickets at Meijer's aren't a plan, they're a hope.

Flipper wrote:O&B is onto something....the marketing people have to find out why football fans who flock to HS games within an hour of BG don't come to the DOyt. They have to find out why alumni within a 2-3 driving distance don't come to the Doyt. They have to find out why locals won't coem out in bigger numbers. The football program doesn't have a passionate fan base outside of a few thousand people.....WHY???? Spend dollars on finding that out and you won't need the other ancillary crapola.

Having special promotions and discounting tickets at Meijer's aren't a plan, they're a hope.

I live 1 1/2 hours south of BG. We make all the games. BUT our local newspaper wouldn't even know BG had a team let alone when they played. We had the #25 women's team in the nation with a PLAYER FROM THE HOMETOWN and it took 3 e-mails to get an article on her. Never any mention of the games all year long.

Same with football. OMAR, JOSH- we would get the AP paragraph in the paper on Sunday along with the other Ohio teams like Capital and Baldwin Wallace. Nothing wrong with those teams BUT THEY WEREN'T 1 HOUR AWAY. There are a LOT of alums here, but all we hear and read and see is OSU OSU OSU. Huge picture pages. Gag me.

ANd in all honesty, the Sentinal Tribune does a really poor job covering BGSU. They are lazy and I would tell them to their face. Yeah, we get the obligatory story and follow up- where is the big page of pictures? Where are the get to know you articles? The ST has a good hockey writer, but The Columbus dispatch has about 500 articles every Sunday about the Buckeyes. I know they don't have the same staff here...but proportionally it doesn't cut it.

So my theory is- screw all the marketing gimmicks and beef up the SID's office so they can go out and talk to Sports Editors, do research that shows them the number of alums in the area. Have the money for ads for the games. I think that giving additional perks to season ticket holders is a good way to start and they are working on that. Create a relationship with those that DO come and then work on the ones that don't.

You may now ask me what I really think.

always a falcon wrote:

Flipper wrote:O&B is onto something....the marketing people have to find out why football fans who flock to HS games within an hour of BG don't come to the DOyt. They have to find out why alumni within a 2-3 driving distance don't come to the Doyt. They have to find out why locals won't coem out in bigger numbers. The football program doesn't have a passionate fan base outside of a few thousand people.....WHY???? Spend dollars on finding that out and you won't need the other ancillary crapola.

Having special promotions and discounting tickets at Meijer's aren't a plan, they're a hope.

I live 1 1/2 hours south of BG. We make all the games. BUT our local newspaper wouldn't even know BG had a team let alone when they played. We had the #25 women's team in the nation with a PLAYER FROM THE HOMETOWN and it took 3 e-mails to get an article on her. Never any mention of the games all year long.

Same with football. OMAR, JOSH- we would get the AP paragraph in the paper on Sunday along with the other Ohio teams like Capital and Baldwin Wallace. Nothing wrong with those teams BUT THEY WEREN'T 1 HOUR AWAY. There are a LOT of alums here, but all we hear and read and see is OSU OSU OSU. Huge picture pages. Gag me.

ANd in all honesty, the Sentinal Tribune does a really poor job covering BGSU. They are lazy and I would tell them to their face. Yeah, we get the obligatory story and follow up- where is the big page of pictures? Where are the get to know you articles? The ST has a good hockey writer, but The Columbus dispatch has about 500 articles every Sunday about the Buckeyes. I know they don't have the same staff here...but proportionally it doesn't cut it.

So my theory is- screw all the marketing gimmicks and beef up the SID's office so they can go out and talk to Sports Editors, do research that shows them the number of alums in the area. Have the money for ads for the games. I think that giving additional perks to season ticket holders is a good way to start and they are working on that. Create a relationship with those that DO come and then work on the ones that don't.

You may now ask me what I really think.

Great post, AAF. That's the way it works here in Akron. Hell the Zippies won the MAC title last year but the Buck$ still had the front page 98% of the time. The MAC "writeups" in the Sunday sports page? Please. A few lines or a paragraph is about it.

Falconfreak90 wrote:

always a falcon wrote:

Flipper wrote:O&B is onto something....the marketing people have to find out why football fans who flock to HS games within an hour of BG don't come to the DOyt. They have to find out why alumni within a 2-3 driving distance don't come to the Doyt. They have to find out why locals won't coem out in bigger numbers. The football program doesn't have a passionate fan base outside of a few thousand people.....WHY???? Spend dollars on finding that out and you won't need the other ancillary crapola.

Having special promotions and discounting tickets at Meijer's aren't a plan, they're a hope.

I live 1 1/2 hours south of BG. We make all the games. BUT our local newspaper wouldn't even know BG had a team let alone when they played. We had the #25 women's team in the nation with a PLAYER FROM THE HOMETOWN and it took 3 e-mails to get an article on her. Never any mention of the games all year long.

Same with football. OMAR, JOSH- we would get the AP paragraph in the paper on Sunday along with the other Ohio teams like Capital and Baldwin Wallace. Nothing wrong with those teams BUT THEY WEREN'T 1 HOUR AWAY. There are a LOT of alums here, but all we hear and read and see is OSU OSU OSU. Huge picture pages. Gag me.

ANd in all honesty, the Sentinal Tribune does a really poor job covering BGSU. They are lazy and I would tell them to their face. Yeah, we get the obligatory story and follow up- where is the big page of pictures? Where are the get to know you articles? The ST has a good hockey writer, but The Columbus dispatch has about 500 articles every Sunday about the Buckeyes. I know they don't have the same staff here...but proportionally it doesn't cut it.

So my theory is- screw all the marketing gimmicks and beef up the SID's office so they can go out and talk to Sports Editors, do research that shows them the number of alums in the area. Have the money for ads for the games. I think that giving additional perks to season ticket holders is a good way to start and they are working on that. Create a relationship with those that DO come and then work on the ones that don't.

You may now ask me what I really think.

Great post, AAF. That's the way it works here in Akron. Hell the Zippies won the MAC title last year but the Buck$ still had the front page 98% of the time. The MAC "writeups" in the Sunday sports page? Please. A few lines or a paragraph is about it.

The Beacon Journal could care less about MAC sports period. Between football and baseball in high school I am absolutely positive me and several of my teammates names were in the papers around Akron and Cuyahoga Falls more than any of the college sports within an hour or two of the place. The probmlem is the whole state is crazy for OSU because it basically is the school the whole state can root for and they give us plenty or reason to root for them while the other schools give us little or no reason to consistently cheer for them. I think I can only recall one UA article in the Beacon in all the time before I came to school and that was a baseball article I found which I was a part of when I did a work out with the team at Brownlee's. The Newspapers don't care about the MAC because the MAC gives them no reason to on a highly consistent basis.

Niz, with all due respect, the very fact that we are here playind D-1 sports is reason enough for state media to cover the MAC. We don't need to give them a reason - we are, inherently, a reason. It is the fault of media outlets in Ohio that we don't recieve press coverage.

I never, ever thought I would say this, but - thank God for the Blade...

Oh I realize that we should be getting all kinds of press in everything. There's no reason that Akron and Kent shouldn't be all over the local papers over there but they aren't. I've been annoyed with that since I started reading the news. I'm just calling it like I see it, not saying that I agree with it because I don't. D-1 college sports should come before D-4 hs sports any and almost every day of the week.

Bleeding Orange wrote:Niz, with all due respect, the very fact that we are here playind D-1 sports is reason enough for state media to cover the MAC. We don't need to give them a reason - we are, inherently, a reason. It is the fault of media outlets in Ohio that we don't recieve press coverage.

I never, ever thought I would say this, but - thank God for the Blade...

Its not the media's job to build interesting MAC athletics, or to provide equitable coverage so everyone has a chance. Their job is to write for their audience (especially in sports), and OSU is king in Ohio, and that's not going to change. The number of people who have no connection to BG (or Kent, or Akron) that we take off the couch watching OSU and move to the Doyt is going to be rare.

Most of the people who make our attendance turnaround are going to be people with a connection to Bowling Green or BGSU. Out of the millions of people in a 2-hour radius of the Doyt, we only need a loyal 5K-7K to make a real difference. We know who those people are and we know where to find them.

I'm pessimistic our situaton is ever going to change very much attendance-wise, but I'm sure of one thing. OSU is going to stay king in Ohio--in the hearts of most of the people, and on the pages of the paper.

You want to know how to get better media attention? Beating OSU on October 7th would do it.

orangeandbrown wrote:Its not the media's job to build interesting MAC athletics, or to provide equitable coverage so everyone has a chance. Their job is to write for their audience (especially in sports)

o&b: Absolutely 100% correct.