Marketing BG Sports

[Anonymous]

I am no marketing genius by any means, but I think there are a few things that BG could do to market their football program.

1. On I-75, on some of the bill boards, at least put the BG football schedule on a billboard.

2. Go to local high schools and advertise their. Include an insert in the HS program for upcoming games, and offer discounted tickets to HS students when they wear their school attire. We need to get area high school students and parents to attend the games.

3. Ask area restaraunts if they could have flyers placed within the restaraunts. BG should allow discounts if you bring a receipt from your mean from one of those restaraunts.

4. Have the area restraunts put a message on their restaraunt sign. If we go down Wooster Street only a few restaraunts say anything about BG Sports. Burger King, right across the stadium currently says, We Now Accept Credit Cards, how about BG Home this Weekend Against Western. Stop in for free drink before or after game.

5. Have special food promotions! 25 cent hotdogs, although I would not even pay more than 25 cents for them.

6. Promote Football tickets with other sports. Buy one ticket at regular price, get one ticket free to a home basketball game.

7. I love the band, and the band is great, but get some halftime entertainment in the stadium. Get a famous singer to sing after the game. Football and fireworks in the evening will make a great attendance, how about football and concerts.

8. Give BG fans a punchcard. Everytime you buy a ticket at regular price you get a punch on your punch card. After you purchase 10 tickets, in one year, football, basketball, hockey, etc, you get discounts on tickets, free falcon merchandise from the bookstore, free meals at the Union, etc.

9. And this is my favorite. I am sure all of us how received at least one phone call a day lately from a recorded message concerning the election and voting. Have someone, other than our boring ticket manager, I think his name is Scott, record a message. Then have someone setup a marketing scheme to call all people within Wood County and surrounding areas to come support their team. I would love to call 30,000 residents but my voice would get sore. I think it would also be a great idea for coaches and players to call Falcon Club members asking them to spread the word. Just a simple hello, nice to see you at the game will go a long ways into keeping fans into the crowd.

If BGSU would give me the chance, I would like to take the position to market BG athletics. I would do it for free just as long as it would not interfere with my nighttime job. I would work hard in getting fans in the stands!!! It is so much better of an atmosphere when the fans are jammed back. If someone wants to forward this on to BGSU, Coach Brandon, Dackich, or someone else go for it. I would like th job. I think I could do well, because I have some good ideas.

[Anonymous]

And believe it or not, I have heard this from about 50 people from my Church in Sylvania over the past few weeks. The reason some people dont go to the games is because they dont want to miss any action and dont want to leave their seats during the game to get food. We have the worse concession lines in the MAC. We need vendors in the stands at all times, not just once or twice a day in certain sections. Get some real food, real vedors, and get the food in the stands!!!

[bgbill]

BG needs to market Omar more. One of the top quarterbacks in the country, a fun offense, etc. Need to put a face to the team.

[CapitalFalcon]

Yeah...I think we need to be touting this team way more in the surrounding area. But again, you have much more competition locally than a lot of other cllege football teams.

[Expos79]

For a smaller-sized state (geographically speaking) Ohio has A LOT of Div-1 football teams: Ohio State, Cincinnati, Ohio, Bowling Green, Miami (OH), Kent State, Akron, Toledo -and- Youngstown State, Dayton. So, technically, the odds are against you.

I don't want to make this lengthy post...but BG will only see the desired attendence if 1) BG is ranked/or undefeated 2) Weather doesn't suck 3) you bring in some top dog opponents (it's doesn't help that the MAC has been poor this year) and lastly 4) if OSU and UM suck this year.

Hey, I love BG, and I'd love for the team to pull in 26,500 each home game...but so many factors are in play that it just doesn't seem realistic. We should be greatful that we are not Akron and CMU this year, teams that are on the verge of losing Div-1A status. You never know if Gregg Brandon might sink this ship and then the ride's over. Hate to think about...but it's the truth that nothing is for certain

[bgmaggot00]

"We need vendors in the stands at all times, not just once or twice a day in certain sections."

Wait, you mean to tell me that we actually have vendors in our stands? Honestly, I've been at every home game for 5 years now, and I've never seen this.

I have to admit that when I was at Oklahoma in September, I could almost tolerate the fact that I missed almost the entire 3rd quarter due to the fact that OU spent a few thousand dollars on TV's and stands for them on the walls all throughout the underside of the stadium. Again, small improvements like this, and getting more than two lines at each booth, would be huge improvements. Jeff

[hammb]

"We need vendors in the stands at all times, not just once or twice a day in certain sections."

Wait, you mean to tell me that we actually have vendors in our stands? Honestly, I've been at every home game for 5 years now, and I've never seen this.

When I was growing up nobody in my family really cared much about BG football. My grandparents and uncle have always had season tickets to the hoops games, and I went to a lot of games with them to see the hoops team. My younger aunt & uncle were students and they took me to a number of hockey games, back in the day where you couldn't find a seat in their if your life depended on it. I still have a puck that the ref gave me after one game we went to. The only football games I ever went to though were when they gave free tickets to us at school. I think all Wood County Elementary schools got free tickets to one game a year, and we always went, and had a good time. All I remember from those games was one year we beat the Cincinnati Bearcats at the game I went to. Also I remember that they did have vendors in the stands during games. They used to sell fountain pop in white plastic souvenir cups and I brought home like 30 of them...mom was thrilled! LOL

Anyways, the fact is that we USED to have vendors at the games. Saturday we, again, had some vendors going through the stands to sell to the 10,000 people that were there. I was rather astonished as it was the first time I've seen it in a long time. Hopefully this is something that sticks around, if for no other reason than the concessioner's sakes. I'm about 500% more likely to buy something if they're going through the stands than if I have to go myself. I don't like to miss the game and I'm also lazy! I think if they consistently had people selling in the stands it would enhance the experience and help increase their revenue.

Now if we could get a better selection of food...although from my younger days in Anderson Arena the white boxes of popcorn will always have a special place in my heart. I used to get a box of popcorn at halftime of every single game... LOL

[bg8492]

...as my son and I were watching Nickelodeon over breakfast this morning, a commercial for BGSU football comes on...good spot...I'm thinking "Cool, aggressively trying to get those people in the stands after last weekend". Alas, the promo was for the Oct 16 game vs. Ball State.

This doesn't help.

[Warthog]

...as my son and I were watching Nickelodeon over breakfast this morning, a commercial for BGSU football comes on...good spot...I'm thinking "Cool, aggressively trying to get those people in the stands after last weekend". Alas, the promo was for the Oct 16 game vs. Ball State.

This doesn't help.

I had the same experience watching SpikeTV last night. Got excited to see that we were actually advertising about a home game this week and then up pops the graphic "Ball State vs Bowling Green, Sat Oct 16". It was bad enough to not advertise at all, but I think it is even worse to advertise with the wrong freakin' information. It just makes the school look stupid. And confirms that our Marketing Dept is a bunch of idiots.

But I guess we should expect this after seeing the ad on the scorebaord for the Marshall game having the wrong date and time. The more I think about this, the more it infuriates me. First, is there not anybody proofreading what goes up on the scoreboard? Who in the athletic dept is putting together that ad, which has the Western game advertised fist and then goes right into the ad for the marshall game, and doesn't realize that that have the same date for both games! It is one thing to just have the wrong date on a stand alone ad, but to have the two ads together as a package and miss something like that is embarassing. Second, the first time that ad goes up on the scoreboard, is there not anyone in the press box that realizes what just happened? Someone should have immediatley A. stopped the ad from going up again, or B. found someone that could edit the ad to get it corrected immediately, or C. changed the announcement to note that the ad had the wrong date and verbally explian the correct date for the Marshall game. It is stuff like this that keeps us as a rinky-dink program in the eyes of the rest of college football. :duh:

[BGSU Falconz]

10. Hire me as a graphic designer for BGSU promotional material. :-\

[CapitalFalcon]

For a smaller-sized state (geographically speaking) Ohio has A LOT of Div-1 football teams: Ohio State, Cincinnati, Ohio, Bowling Green, Miami (OH), Kent State, Akron, Toledo -and- Youngstown State, Dayton. So, technically, the odds are against you.

Expo...First off, are you ticked about the prospect of the Expos maybe becoming the Senators?

In my previous post, I really meant our competition from Toledo, but you have a GREAT point. Kent, Ohio, Miami, BG, Toledo, Akron all in Ohio. Next year, half the conference would be in Ohio. Imagine what attendance would be if Ohio State, Michigan, Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Michigan State were all in one state? Why would anyone from Columbus, Cleveland, or Cincy root for BG unless you were connected to the University? Wood county is not that populated.

Let's look at the numbers for a second. OSU has, let's just say for the sake of arguement, 100,000 fans show up. The population of Franklin County according to the census, is 1,088,944. So about 9% of the population show up for the game. Now the population of Wood County is 123,020. And our average attendance is about 17,000. THAT'S 14% of the population!!!! PLUS, OSU does not have another Big Ten team 45 minutes away nor is BG as big as any of the other schools. So EVERYTHING works against BG.

Marshall has great attendence, but really the only other game in the state is WVU. Northern Illinois has Illinois and Northwestern (not really the Big Ten Elite in football). The only team you really have to take your hat off for is UCF. Florida, FSU, and Miami, and UCF still draws over 20k.

Now I guess I am making excuses, but even if you look at Toledo, Lucas has 4 times the population of wood. So I don't know, realistically, how we can expect higher attendances unless there is real buzz around the program, on a bigger stage, then just local-yocals, students, and alumni.

BUT with that being said, having commercials with Game information on a game that has already happened...THAT IS JUST PISS POOR and who ever is responsible for that should be thrown out on his or her EAR!!!

[frdmgir7]

1972,
Those are some AWESOME ideas. I think you need to be making some phone calls.

Also, it might of been my imagination, but wasn't there were people walking through the stands with pop and popcorn last week? That's a pretty good start, right?

[NWLB]

A note on UT first. We are talking about UT here, so we will factor into this a degree of rocket inability to not screwup a good thing. However, even in a metro area of nearly 700,000 people, UT can't actually fill their own stadium. Yes they are getting 23,000 a game, average. That UT isn't adding seats and filling 30,000 seats per game only underscores weakness in their efforts. However, by all rights they should have the strongest attendance in the conference. They don't. And for those of us not in grade school at the time, we remember that they were drawing crowds of 6,000, 8,000, and 10,000 even in a title year such as 1995 and beyond.

As the young marketing lad noted on the curiously timed coaches show interview, athletic marketing also has to deal with women's sports and the other men's sports. Thats one budget, a couple of people. Not enough and too few.

I'm going to suggest we define the problem as not our ability to draw a crowd, but rather how to draw them consistently.

Despite a 6,000 person spread between our last two home games, there isn't a major difference in who did or did not show up. We have a foundation to build on, which we can predict rather well.

The problem isn't rooted in who we play. This isn't a reversal of my view on the topic, but I am going to refine the point here. Quality of competition does factor into bad crowds, but not to the core fan base, which isn't whom this debate is about. If who we play is the only reason people do or do not show up, then it only underscores that the gameday experience lacks entertainment value.

Likewise, if BGSU can't draw well for homecoming-which typically is against a lousy team, it underscores that the basic approach towards that weekend is flawed.

The gameday experience is not the sole responsiblity of the marketing department. It must be a university-wide priority if BGSU is to draw well, and gain all it can from the investment in football.

Alerting people to fact the game is happening, and how to get tickets isn't the problem. There is enough awareness of BGSU football with the radio network, web site, coaches TV show, state-wide media coverage, and incidental mailings. Presently ticket sales and schedule promotion seems to be the main focus of athletic marketing.

Promoting an event people want to go to, works better than advertising tickets for an game people don't want to attend. So if the Unviersity did work on improving the gameday experience, adding hooks, depth, value, etc, any marketing efforts would gain more traction. Marketing should be able to focus on selling a great product, not trying to create the product.

[Expos79]

Expo...First off, are you ticked about the prospect of the Expos maybe becoming the Senators?


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