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Username Post: Tournament Attendances
dperry 
Postdoc
Posts: 2214
dperry
Loc: Houston, TX
Reg: 11-24-04
03-14-22 11:44 PM - Post#339225    
    In response to palestra38

  • palestra38 Said:
Let's face it---it's ridiculous to charge $50/$75 each for a "day-night" Ivy league tournament setup.

Play the games at a minimum 5000 seat arena near whichever school has home court that year and charge $35/50 for a doubleheader and people will attend. Moreover, playing the tournament a week later than it should be played at the beginning of Spring Break means you get zero students.


It just amazes me how the Ivy League created a concept of Ivy Madness to stoke a Kumbaya vision of Ivy students and alums sitting together and drinking mead by the fire after a day of hard competition among our alma maters and we ended up (as usual for the Ivies) insisting on fairness and equality in having the opportunity to host, which negates everything the Tournament was intended to be. But it's typical. There is no reason this could not have been played at BU, the Yale tournament at Bridgeport or Fairfield and Brown's at the Dunk. Charge less and promote more. Playing at Lavietes at a price no one but an Ivy fanatic will pay and playing on Selection Sunday to get ESPNU is counterproductive.



The problem with all of this, however, is that to make a neutral site successful and to create a collective league atmosphere (even assuming the latter is even doable--as far as I can tell, only the HBCU conferences really try for it), requires hard work, marketing skill, and money. I see no evidence that the Ivies have any desire to expend any such effort or resources on this, or that they have the talent in marketing required. They talk a great game, but they are not putting any money (literally or figuratively) where their mouths are.

With respect to students, while competing with spring break doesn't help, I'm pretty sure that you're never going to have significant numbers of students coming from the teams that aren't home. There aren't that many students right now who are even that interested, and many of the ones who are can't afford it. If you're concerned about fading student interest, and there is very good reason to be concerned, devaluing the regular season games that are actually easy for them to attend is a bad idea.
David Perry
Penn '92
"Hail, Alma Mater/Thy sons cheer thee now
To thee, Pennsylvania/All rivals must bow!!!"

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