BUBBFAN said:

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Cove Dawg said:

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You didn't build a facility for your current attendance, you build it for what you anticipate your attendance to be in the future. I think we know where we stand.

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And the will be about 5,500 on average. Baylor is not going to show up on a regular basis it doesn't matter how much they win. Sad fact.

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Big12Bear said:

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BUBBFAN said:

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Cove Dawg said:

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You didn't build a facility for your current attendance, you build it for what you anticipate your attendance to be in the future. I think we know where we stand.

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And the will be about 5,500 on average. Baylor is not going to show up on a regular basis it doesn't matter how much they win. Sad fact.

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There hasn't been a single conference game or premium non conference game (Arkansas this year, Villanova last year sold out) that will have 5500 - even with students on break. That's simply not true anymore.

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CTbruin said:

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And there was much complaining when we downsized our football stadium. And it turned out very well.

The new basketball arena will create a true home court advantage that we haven't had.

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bear2be2 said:

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The decision has been made and it was the right one.

People made these exact same arguments against downsizing the football stadium. By the time it was built and opened, everyone realized it was the correct decision.

The same will be true of the new basketball facility. One people see and visit it, the narrative will be how nice it is, not how small is.

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SSadler said:

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What only time will tell or prove . . one question is will the ticket holder of ticket #7500 who sits at the top of the lower bowl in the Ferrell Center now, be willing to sit sit in the top row of the entire arena.

Not sure we can predict that. Again, only time will tell

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T-REX said:

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Big12Bear said:

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BUBBFAN said:

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Cove Dawg said:

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You didn't build a facility for your current attendance, you build it for what you anticipate your attendance to be in the future. I think we know where we stand.

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And the will be about 5,500 on average. Baylor is not going to show up on a regular basis it doesn't matter how much they win. Sad fact.

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There hasn't been a single conference game or premium non conference game (Arkansas this year, Villanova last year sold out) that will have 5500 - even with students on break. That's simply not true anymore.

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except it is the truth. We still average that. Talking actual butts in seats. Arkansas will be biggest attended game. Ku is not a sell out a of today and game is tomorrow. 7500 is perfect. We won the natty and had 1 sell out last year. Nova did not sellout. We even had to let students have remaining unsold GA seats for free as student tickets were sold out and still didn't sell out the arena. Entire top sections worth of empty seats. We didn't even fill the place up 75% the night b4 we played ou in fball and unveiled our big 12 title and natty banners.....

7500 is perfect for so many reasons. Unless Baylor fans who won't even drive 30 minutes to watch us play at tcu decide to start driving to waco for games, we will not need more than 7500 and there is zero data to support this changing.

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CTbruin said:

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And there was much complaining when we downsized our football stadium. And it turned out very well.

The new basketball arena will create a true home court advantage that we haven't had.

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bear2be2 said:

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Johnny Bear said:

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bear2be2 said:

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The decision has been made and it was the right one.

People made these exact same arguments against downsizing the football stadium. By the time it was built and opened, everyone realized it was the correct decision.

The same will be true of the new basketball facility. One people see and visit it, the narrative will be how nice it is, not how small is.

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The downsize in football was barely 10%. From the capacity estimates I'm hearing, this downsize is around 30% or more. Not exactly apples to apples.

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We also filled a much larger percentage of Floyd Casey's 50,000.

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bear2be2 said:

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Johnny Bear said:

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bear2be2 said:

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Johnny Bear said:

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bear2be2 said:

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The decision has been made and it was the right one.

People made these exact same arguments against downsizing the football stadium. By the time it was built and opened, everyone realized it was the correct decision.

The same will be true of the new basketball facility. One people see and visit it, the narrative will be how nice it is, not how small is.

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The downsize in football was barely 10%. From the capacity estimates I'm hearing, this downsize is around 30% or more. Not exactly apples to apples.

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We also filled a much larger percentage of Floyd Casey's 50,000.

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We did? I seem to recall an infamous tarp that was deployed in one of the end zones during many of the last years of FCS and even with that we usually struggled to fill the remaining seats unless the opponent brought at least 25% or more of the crowd. Had we employed similar thinking on the football side, McLane would be about the same size as SMU's rinky dink stadium.

Again, I get the need to downsize like I got the need to downsize in football - but I still think we're going down too much.

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Of course we did.

These were our average attendance figures the last eight years at Floyd Casey ...

2013 -- 45,958 (91.9 percent)
2012 -- 41,194 (82.3 percent)
2011 -- 41,368 (82.7 percent)
2010 -- 40,043 (80.1 percent)
2009 -- 36,306 (72.6 percent)
2008 -- 34,124 (68.2 percent)
2007 -- 34,378 (68.8 percent)
2006 -- 37,080 (74.1 percent)

Compare that to the last eight years at the Ferrell Center (with a much higher level of success, mind you) ...

2021-22 -- 8,439 (84.4 percent)
2020-21 -- COVID
2019-20 -- 8,178 (81.8 percent)
2018-19 -- 6,218 (62.2 percent)
2017-18 -- 6,140 (61.4 percent)
2016-17-- 6,812 (68.1 percent)
2015-16 -- 6,410 (64.1 percent)
2014-15 -- 6,918 (69.2 percent)

Texans support football way better than they do basketball. This shouldn't be a surprise. And this is hardly and apples to apples comparison, too. Those football numbers were coming out of one of the worst stretches in P5 college history. Those basketball numbers were all during our greatest run in program history. If you go back farther, the basketball numbers look worse and worse.

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bear2be2 said:

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Johnny Bear said:

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bear2be2 said:

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Johnny Bear said:

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bear2be2 said:

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Johnny Bear said:

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bear2be2 said:

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The decision has been made and it was the right one.

People made these exact same arguments against downsizing the football stadium. By the time it was built and opened, everyone realized it was the correct decision.

The same will be true of the new basketball facility. One people see and visit it, the narrative will be how nice it is, not how small is.

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The downsize in football was barely 10%. From the capacity estimates I'm hearing, this downsize is around 30% or more. Not exactly apples to apples.

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We also filled a much larger percentage of Floyd Casey's 50,000.

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We did? I seem to recall an infamous tarp that was deployed in one of the end zones during many of the last years of FCS and even with that we usually struggled to fill the remaining seats unless the opponent brought at least 25% or more of the crowd. Had we employed similar thinking on the football side, McLane would be about the same size as SMU's rinky dink stadium.

Again, I get the need to downsize like I got the need to downsize in football - but I still think we're going down too much.

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Of course we did.

These were our average attendance figures the last eight years at Floyd Casey ...

2013 -- 45,958 (91.9 percent)
2012 -- 41,194 (82.3 percent)
2011 -- 41,368 (82.7 percent)
2010 -- 40,043 (80.1 percent)
2009 -- 36,306 (72.6 percent)
2008 -- 34,124 (68.2 percent)
2007 -- 34,378 (68.8 percent)
2006 -- 37,080 (74.1 percent)

Compare that to the last eight years at the Ferrell Center (with a much higher level of success, mind you) ...

2021-22 -- 8,439 (84.4 percent)
2020-21 -- COVID
2019-20 -- 8,178 (81.8 percent)
2018-19 -- 6,218 (62.2 percent)
2017-18 -- 6,140 (61.4 percent)
2016-17-- 6,812 (68.1 percent)
2015-16 -- 6,410 (64.1 percent)
2014-15 -- 6,918 (69.2 percent)

Texans support football way better than they do basketball. This shouldn't be a surprise. And this is hardly and apples to apples comparison, too. Those football numbers were coming out of one of the worst stretches in P5 college history. Those basketball numbers were all during our greatest run in program history. If you go back farther, the basketball numbers look worse and worse.

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Per those numbers, the last 2 seasons of unrestricted attendance at the Ferrell ('19-'20 and '21-'22) we are averaging over 8K, which is 1K or more over what is being reported as the new arena capacity and I don't care about the "actual butts in seats" argument - if the seats aren't there, you can't sell tickets for them. I also don't care that it happened during our all time greatest men's bball run. Unless we think the program and the corresponding interest in it is heading south over the course of the next decade or so - and I certainly hope we aren't - why're we dropping capacity well below what we're presently averaging? Again, per those numbers, In downsizing football, we built McLane to accommodate roughly what we were averaging during the end of the FCS years that included things like RGIII's Heisman season and our first B12 football title. Why not similarly do the same with bball?

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Because those last two seasons are massive outliers. We couldn't even average 7,000 per game before putting our first Final Four caliber team on the floor -- and that was with multiple Elite Eight appearances. If it takes a Final Four caliber team to fill your gym, you're not going to fill your gym very often.

It makes way more sense to build a more reasonably sized facility based on broader data and create some demand for those seats than repeat the exact same mistake we made with the Ferrell Center.

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