Gateway attendance va. Sun Belt attendance vs. MAC attendance

[TheBisonator]

I thought it would be nice to do a little comparison of the average attendances for all the Gateway teams (including us and SDSU) and with the two lowest attendance conferences in FBS. I know someone made a thread last week of Gateway attendance, but there hasn't been a comparison yet between us and the bottom-2 FBS conferences.

Bold teams indicate averages over 15,000.

Gateway (2008 teams):

North Dakota State - 18,148
Youngstown State - 16,656
Northern Iowa - 16,219
Illinois State - 13,010
Western Illinois - 12,686
South Dakota State - 11,912
Missouri State - 11,559
Southern Illinois - 11,539
Indiana State - 3,231

Mid-American:

Western Michigan - 22,837
Northern Illinois - 22,417
Temple - 22,026
Central Michigan - 19,508
Toledo - 18,901
Miami (OH) - 18,456
Ohio - 17,983
Akron - 17,942
Bowling Green - 16,235
Buffalo - 14,026
Ball State - 13,816
Kent State - 10,577
Eastern Michigan - 7,646

Sun Belt (incl. Western Kentucky):

Troy - 22,087
Arkansas State - 19,544
North Texas - 19,211
Louisiana-Lafayette - 18,372
Middle Tennessee State - 18,356
Western Kentucky - 16,728
Florida Atlantic - 15,401
Louisiana-Monroe - 14,308
Florida International - 8,962


Seems to me like if the Gateway wants to become the Missouri Valley and go FBS with the possible addition of Wichita State bringing back football, then the schools like Missouri State, Western Illinois, Illinois State, Southern Illinois and South Dakota State will have to pick it up a bit and get their averages up. I think if Wichita State brought back football, they'd easily get 15,000 minimum. Point is that as it stands now, the Gateway could not survive in the FBS. in the future, I will be keeping a sharp eye out on how some of the Gateway schools do attendance wise, and see if Indiana State makes any effort to make its football program into anything decent. If all of the Gateway teams (except for Indiana State) can get their averages close to or above 15,000 and if Indiana State can average 7-8,000 or so, then I think talk about the idea of moving up to FBS en masse would be a good idea. until then, let's just enjoy the FCS.

[BlueBisonRock]

I thought it would be nice to do a little comparison of the average attendances for all the Gateway teams (including us and SDSU) and with the two lowest attendance conferences in FBS. I know someone made a thread last week of Gateway attendance, but there hasn't been a comparison yet between us and the bottom-2 FBS conferences.



Nice analysis. Did you find any data comparing the average attendence to capacity for these team?

[TheBisonator]

Nice analysis. Did you find any data comparing the average attendence to capacity for these team?

I can do another list of stadium capacities for teams in the 3 conferences as well. It'll take me another few minutes...

[TheBisonator]

Here's the list of capacities. Some numbers are rounded, because not all schools have the actual seating number.

I got these off the NCAA website.

Gateway (2008 teams):

Youngstown State - 20,630
North Dakota State - 19,287
Southern Illinois - 17,324
Northern Iowa - 16,324
Missouri State - 16,300
South Dakota State - 16,000
Western Illinois - 15,168
Illinois State - 15,000
Indiana State - 12,764

Mid-American:

Temple - 68,532 (NFL stadium)
Akron - 35,202
Northern Illinois - 31,000
Bowling Green - 30,599
Kent State - 30,520
Eastern Michigan - 30,200
Western Michigan - 30,200
Central Michigan - 30,199
Miami (OH) - 30,012
Buffalo - 30,000
Toledo - 26,248
Ohio - 24,000
Ball State - 22,500

Sun Belt (incl. Western Kentucky):

Arkansas State - 33,410
Louisiana-Lafayette - 31,000
Middle Tennessee State - 31,000
North Texas - 30,500
Louisiana-Monroe - 30,427
Troy - 30,000
Florida Atlantic - 20,450
Western Kentucky - 17,500
Florida International - 17,000


This category is where the men are seperated from the boys. Only 3 of the stadiums from the FBS conferences are smaller than Youngstown State's, and one of them (WKU) is about to be expanded to around 25,000, and another (FIU) is building a 40,000-seat facility. When you look at these stats, you can clearly see how long of a ways off the Gateway is from becoming an FBS-style conference as far as fan base and marketing/publicity goes. A 30,000-seat stadium seems to be the industry standard for the bottom two FBS conferences. Could you imagine Indiana State, with its average attendance of 3,200 or so, expanding their stadium to at least 25,000?? I can't. I can't even see Western Illinois or Northern Iowa being able to play in places any bigger than what they currently have. I don't even know if WE could ever make the Fargodome ever seat more than 24,000 or so, and that would be a major overhaul.

As far as the facility issue is concerned, the Gateway is CLEARLY not anything like an FBS conference.

[BlueBisonRock]

I found this data to provide some interesting insight. Rep Points to Bisonator for pulling this data together!

I tossed out two outliers (Indiana State for capacity and attendance and Temple capacity), then looked at and compared conference averages and usage (percent of chairs with butts).

The Gateway has an average capacity of 17,000 (16,500 with IS), and average attendance of 14,000 (12,775 with IS) and a usage (percent of capacity) of 82% (77% with IS). NDSU leads the average attendance with 18,148, but is second in filling the stadium to UNI who fills 99.4% of the chairs while NDSU fills 94.1%. (Yes, the SUU attendance did make a difference). The Gateway has 5 of the 9 teams filling over 80% of the chairs with 3 teams averaging over 16,000 fans per game (one team - NDSU -averages over 18,000 fans). Indiana State does affect the stats as they are averaging 25% capacity of the smallest Gateway stadium. I was surprised to see that Southern Illinois - a top ten team only averaged 11,500 fans per game!

The MAC and Sun Belt average 17,000 fans per game (the Gateway capacity) with an average capacity of 29,000 (MAC - eliminated the Temple skew) and 27,000 (SB). Percent capacity falls off significantly as the two conferences average 58.5% and 63.4% usage respectively. The MAC has 8 teams averaging over 18,000 fans and three teams averaging over 22,000 fans per game. The Sun Belt has five teams averaging over 18,000 fans per game with one team averaging over 22,000 fans. Western Kentucky uses 95.6 percent of its seats while six other teams in these two conferences fill on average over 70 % of their stadium. Eastern Michigan and Florida International drag the averages down for these two conferences averaging only 7,650 and 8,960 fans respectively.

There are some pleasant surprises. The Bison lead the Gateway in average attendance by 2,500 fans (UNI is second) and put over 4,000 more butts in chairs than the conference average. Their are 11 teams in these three conferences that have a higher average than the Bison while 21 teams have a lower average attendance. Bison are in the top third!

Had the Bison had a sellout for SUU (didn't happen, but shows how the fan base can help position the team), there would be seven, not eleven teams with a better average attendance that NDSU in these three conferences. Matching the UNI results of filling their seats will make a difference.

There are a lot of numbers and inferences in the above discussion. The net statement is that NDSU has really stepped up with the move to FCS. It has taken a lot of planning, work, risk, and fan support to move to this level. A move to the FBS will take even more planning, work, risk, and fan support. A 'conference move’ will require Indiana State to step up or move out while the rest of the conference will need to add at least 3,000 additional tickets to each and every game. This new fan base will result in sellouts for every home game for each of the teams in the Gateway. Each team will then need to add capacity.

Bisonator, Thanks again for the data. It provided a diversion as I was dealing with all the little monsters that came to my door tonight. Only two as football players (and one Gopher hockey player).

[BisonNeil]

This is a great analysis, but then again, most of you would expect me to say that.

All during the discussion of going FBS after our heady wins over two FBS teams, I have maintained we don't have the fan capacity to entertain such a thought. Simply stated, our stadium is too small to financially support such a shift.

Thanks to all of you for making the point that I was too lazy to prove on my own. Kudos!

[Bison bison]

What I see in the data is that the BCS schools are in group 'A', Sun Belt, WAC, MAC, Gateway teams are in group 'B'.............

maybe the ncaa should ban movement of schools and take a couple of years to study this........................

[BlueBisonRock]

What I see in the data is that the BCS schools are in group 'A', Sun Belt, WAC, MAC, Gateway teams are in group 'B'.............

maybe the ncaa should ban movement of schools and take a couple of years to study this........................

Or perhaps, we can help establish the right objective with a supporting plan?

[fargocyclone]

BlueBisonRock, if I had 50+ posts I would give you some rep for that analysis! :blush: though I'm sure many other people have already done that....hint, hint.

Nice job!

[BlueBisonRock]

BlueBisonRock, if I had 50+ posts I would give you some rep for that analysis! :blush: though I'm sure many other people have already done that....hint, hint.

Nice job!

I'll take the phanthom points. However, I have not seen this type of analysis on this board. I agree with your hint. I do suspect that the Bison visionaries have taken this approach.