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Post by tomclen on Dec 21, 2018 12:09:02 GMT -5
When you're looking at the top 20 teams for volleyball attendance, you're not really looking at reality.
First, that top 20 is skewed by Nebraska, Wisconsin, Hawaii and Minnesota, which all draw over 5k per match.
Here's the somewhat sad reality about D1 Volleyball. There are 336 D1 VB programs, and only 54 are averaging at least 1,000 fans per match.
83% of D1 programs are drawing fewer than 1,000 fans on average. 64% are drawing fewer than 500.
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Post by Floyd R. Turbo on Dec 21, 2018 13:28:32 GMT -5
It seems like it's a lot like soccer - lots of kids play, but nobody watches. If a sport's overall popularity was proportional to the number of kids playing (both male and female), soccer's popularity would be off the charts. Somehow youth participation by the gazillions hasn't translated into mass appeal for the average American.
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Post by volleylearner on Dec 21, 2018 13:51:14 GMT -5
Seems like some expect a strong correlation between wanting to play a sport and wanting to attend a sports event in person. In my experience that correlation is weak at best--I know plenty of people who enjoy playing but not watching (or vice versa). I also think some people only enjoy watching from a "good" seat and many sports venues offer seats that I would not characterize as good. My guess is that a lot of people attend for a social experience, not actually to observe an athletic performance.
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Post by huskergeek on Dec 21, 2018 15:42:27 GMT -5
When you're looking at the top 20 teams for volleyball attendance, you're not really looking at reality. First, that top 20 is skewed by Nebraska, Wisconsin, Hawaii and Minnesota, which all draw over 5k per match. Here's the somewhat sad reality about D1 Volleyball. There are 336 D1 VB programs, and only 54 are averaging at least 1,000 fans per match. 83% of D1 programs are drawing fewer than 1,000 fans on average. 64% are drawing fewer than 500. That's not really different than any other sport. The first few teams at the top of the curve almost always look like outliers when you look at them in order, but when you look at the group as a whole they generally aren't actually outliers. For the most part, they are exactly what you would expect to see in an attendance set. You would expect to see a lower percentage retained at the very edge of the population and gradually higher retention numbers as you move toward the middle of the population. Here are the top fifty teams of five different women's sports graphed as a percentage of the top team's attendance. I'm not arguing the idea that higher attendance would be great, but the top attended teams aren't skewing anything. It's pretty much what you would expect given a first place attendance of just over 8,000.
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Post by jayj79 on Dec 21, 2018 18:23:43 GMT -5
Alabama: 2,732 Oregon: 2,146 (Auburn: 1,979) There are only a handful of college softball stadiums that seat much over 2,000. I can't even fit one college softball stadium in my hand.
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Post by jayj79 on Dec 21, 2018 18:28:33 GMT -5
Also, I think it hurts that volleyball is played in high school gym class. Does that "degrade" the sport? I don't remember playing softball and basketball in gym class. To the extent there were organized sports in gym class - it was "medicine ball soccer," flag football, and whiffle ball, and volleyball. Not exactly DI sports thrown in there with volleyball. I remember playing basketball in gym class. (okay, so I can't remember if that was high school or junior high, but I do remember playing it in P.E.). I'm guessing softball/baseball isn't played much in gym class because it requires gloves for everyone (unless you play the mushball variety with the 16-inch ball that is actually soft and no gloves are used).
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Post by gobruins on Dec 22, 2018 6:00:43 GMT -5
There are only a handful of college softball stadiums that seat much over 2,000. According to the NCAA website there are 30 softball facilities that hold 2k or more. So, just over 10% of the 286 Division I softball programs.
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Post by Cruz'n on Dec 22, 2018 8:26:33 GMT -5
Stanford women's soccer regularly sells out (unless there are California wildfires making the air unbreathable). Unfortunately their stadium only seats 2,000.
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Post by Scipio Aemilianus on Dec 22, 2018 9:49:25 GMT -5
According to the NCAA website there are 30 softball facilities that hold 2k or more. So, just over 10% of the 286 Division I softball programs. Wait, so is 30 still only a handful?
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Post by tomclen on Dec 24, 2018 16:30:13 GMT -5
A football game.
A. HIGH. SCHOOL. FOOTBALL. GAME.
In Dallas.
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Post by brucks on Dec 24, 2018 17:49:35 GMT -5
The conventional wisdom on VT always seems to be that fan interest in the sport is growing and VB is becoming the dominant women's sport. There was the Yale VB player upset at the ESPN treatment of the championship match. There's the regular bragging by fans of certain VB teams who lead in attendance every year (Hawaii and a handful of B1G teams). But D1 Women's Basketball runs rings around Women's VB. And neither WVB or WBB come close to D1 Men's Basketball. Here's a breakdown of the number of D1 teams in each sport above certain attendance thresholds: So when we complain about a men's basketball game running long and preempting a volleyball game, you can see the networks reasoning. Oddly, Softball, which gets very favorable scheduling and coverage from TV (far superior to VB, IMO) only has 2 teams that draw more than 2,000 fans per game. If they allow Bill Walton to do many more M BB games, I can see that coverage dropping off significantly.
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Post by Scipio Aemilianus on Dec 24, 2018 18:17:43 GMT -5
A football game. A. HIGH. SCHOOL. FOOTBALL. GAME. In Dallas. So this game isn’t even on any ESPN channel (only available on a southwest regional Fox Sports channel) yet we are complaining about a volleyball game getting bumped to ESPN2 during prime time Saturday night during bowl season? Perspective.
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Post by tomclen on Dec 24, 2018 18:59:03 GMT -5
A football game. A. HIGH. SCHOOL. FOOTBALL. GAME. In Dallas. So this game isn’t even on any ESPN channel (only available on a southwest regional Fox Sports channel) yet we are complaining about a volleyball game getting bumped to ESPN2 during prime time Saturday night during bowl season? Perspective. To be fair, the perspective involves awareness of the teams. Stanford and Nebraska are two very well known universities. Most average to less than average sports fans are aware of both schools. Most average sports fans in Florida, NY, California, Chicago, Boston are not going to have even the slightest awareness of these high school football teams.
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Post by Scipio Aemilianus on Dec 24, 2018 20:00:34 GMT -5
So this game isn’t even on any ESPN channel (only available on a southwest regional Fox Sports channel) yet we are complaining about a volleyball game getting bumped to ESPN2 during prime time Saturday night during bowl season? Perspective. To be fair, the perspective involves awareness of the teams. Stanford and Nebraska are two very well known universities. Most average to less than average sports fans are aware of both schools. Most average sports fans in Florida, NY, California, Chicago, Boston are not going to have even the slightest awareness of these high school football teams. It’s a decent point, I’d rather watch Stanford instead of North Central High School. But it takes away the idea that people would rather watch certain sports over others. I’d rather watch Little League baseball championships over Olympic cross-country running. Personally, I’d rather watch random North Central High School volleyball over Nebraska women’s rifle team. So that’s my point, just cause one is (to us) an unknown high school and one is recognized college brand doesn’t mean more people want to watch it. The sport being played matters just as much if not more than the teams playing. And I think the attendance figures at both these games would also back that up.
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Post by tomclen on Jan 18, 2019 9:15:41 GMT -5
See, the PAC can be at/near the top in attendance for a women's sport: basketball.... Full story in the Oregonian HERE.
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