Frontline Tonight - Report on the NCAA

[SoCalDukeFan]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifest...s=rss_wellness

Should be an interesting show.

SoCal

[AZLA]

This looks really interesting. A side question -- is it me or does it appear that all this mega-sized venues for Sweet 16 / Great 8 Regionals had vast amounts of empty seats? I may be crazy, but I seem to recall packed venues in the not too distant past. Also, I was traveling but maybe thinking of getting out to Anaheim to watch Duke play, but the ticket prices were getting to be ridiculous for a good lower level seats. At least on Stubhub, et al, so imagine my surprise that a lot of those seats I looked at (with high prices) were empty for both games. I thought there was demand to support those prices. For the average student, those prices are a fortune. Which begs the question are these NCAA tourney TV contracts and business arrangements killing the spirit of the tourney? More students should be near the floor. What's causing this spike in prices, yet their remains many empty seats? I don't know the particulars, but if anyone can speak to this trend in more detail, it would be greatly appreciated.

[HaveFunExpectToWin]

Thanks for the heads up, I've scheduled it to record.

[SCMatt33]

This looks really interesting. A side question -- is it me or does it appear that all this mega-sized venues for Sweet 16 / Great 8 Regionals had vast amounts of empty seats? I may be crazy, but I seem to recall packed venues in the not too distant past. Also, I was traveling but maybe thinking of getting out to Anaheim to watch Duke play, but the ticket prices were getting to be ridiculous for a good lower level seats. At least on Stubhub, et al, so imagine my surprise that a lot of those seats I looked at (with high prices) were empty for both games. I thought there was demand to support those prices. For the average student, those prices are a fortune. Which begs the question are these NCAA tourney TV contracts and business arrangements killing the spirit of the tourney? More students should be near the floor. What's causing this spike in prices, yet their remains many empty seats? I don't know the particulars, but if anyone can speak to this trend in more detail, it would be greatly appreciated.

NCAA attendance at large venues can be heavily contingent on a local team being involved. For example, last year's Elite 8 between Duke and Baylor drew almost 50,000 because many Baylor fans lived close enough to Houston to drive to the game and back home in the same day without having to worry about overnight accommodations. It didn't fill the stadium, but it's very tough to get 70,000 people to show up to a regional site for what is really a quarterfinal match-up at best. I'm not sure specifically what you mean by "mega-sized," whether that just refers to the center court placement, or traditional football stadium set up (meant for about 45,000) as well. The center-court placement has only occurred three times for a regional round (once each in 2008, 9, and 10). Each instance was merely a dry run for the next year's Final Four. This did not take place this year due to renovations at the Superdome. Of the three, 2009 in Indy had the worst attendance, but those games still drew around 35,000.

The only football stadium used at all this year was the Alamo dome, and the attendance was pretty poor, which I think was in part due to three double digit seeds, two of which were mid majors and the other a football school. This is pure speculation, but I would guess that once the regional was set, many Kansas fans were hoping for a Final Four and didn't want to fly to Texas on consecutive weekends.

You mentioned Anaheim being a hard ticket. This was also greatly affected by local fans. San Diego State fans could easily drive to Anaheim and back in the same day, while Arizona fans were close enough that even though a hotel would be necessary, a plane ride wasn't. One important thing to remember with empty seats is that other than the Regional Final and National Championship, all tickets are for a two game session. In Anaheim, SDSU fans weren't going to stick around and watch Duke after they lost and Arizona fans weren't going to show up for a Thursday afternoon (local time) game. Just because the seat was empty doesn't mean that the ticket wasn't sold. Of coarse, secondary market ticket prices are completely unrelated to anything the NCAA does, so their can't really be a correlation between them and the "business" of the NCAA.

[uh_no]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifest...s=rss_wellness

Should be an interesting show.

SoCal

by the look of that article, it seems to be enormously biased...but that could just be the article on it...we'll see

[cruxer]

Here's a link to the segment; everyone can judge for themselves. It's really quite interesting. I'm a huge college sports fan, but there's the unavoidable fact that something's amiss in the way that economy works. It simply can't be denied.

-c