Fan Support

[norcalfanParticipant]

These are great ideas. Thanks for the post.

"True Colors" wrote: I have no intentions of being a regular poster but this topic is important. I do enjoy reading most of your insights.

Attendance will take an administration focus. It can not be done unless there’s focus on it. Strangely, there is money that could be made; particularly with a good team so I don’t know why they wouldn’t jump on it. I know we’re an academic school but that doesn’t mean you have to have one or the other or should be against making money. You can still make money in sports and be an academic school. My input follows:

You have three targets: the students, commercial businesses and the community.

You need to find out what’s important to the targets. For the students maybe it’s housing, concerts tickets, food, movie tickets for dates, shopping. Then, you start rewarding those areas.

Students:
• Housing & Concerts
o I’ve seen other colleges and universities use a systems called “spirit
points”. These spirit points become very valuable because those
students with the highest points get first crack at housing, concerts or
food. Lafayette versus Lehigh sporting events may be a great motivator

o Lehigh uses a lottery system for housing. If the students with the
highest spirit points get first shot at housing, they will show up for
games.

o Spirit points are bigger then men’s basketball. Points are earned by
attending all events. It should include everything; girls basketball,
soccer, baseball softball, guest speakers, etc.

o There are people with scanners that scan student ids in and out. You
can make them stay to half time to get their points or make them stay
for an hour or two. These systems and programs are available for
colleges.

o Making it easy to get to the games is important. This needs to be a
focus.

o I noticed Lehigh now rents cars. Maybe a free car rental for a student
for a day would be important to students; maybe that’s something to
promote

Commercial Businesses:
• Offer food & activities such as Movie Tickets; it’s a strange concept but it’s
important that the university help the local commercial businesses
grow. Then they’ll support Lehigh Athletics.

o Food can be done within Lehigh Food Service, floor pizza parties or with
local restaurants and sponsors.

o The Goose is a place all Students like

o Blue Moon is a Great breakfast place

o Theaters
 1st 100 students attending get movie tickets;
 Or every other student gets tickets; you may bring in 200 students
 The first 100 get breakfast at Blue Moon.
 I bet they don’t go to the movies or breakfast alone

o Some of this is should be sponsored by the school to get it going and
some should be sponsored by the commercial businesses. As these
commercial businesses start seeing increased student traffic, they’ll
continue the sponsorship and others will want to get involved. But it
takes time and effort.

o A couple bucks at these places may go a long way with students

o It may take several one on one sales visits to these establishments to
get it going; that’s part of the admin commitment. But it’s important
that we help the local businesses Grow not just ask for
advertising

o A mall night where the local mall sponsors a gift certificate may bring
the students to the game and the mall.

o All ideas don’t work unless marketed, promoted and communicated
properly

Community:

•Service is a great way to get the community involved.

o The youth basketball games are a great idea

o Free tickets or ½ priced tickets on a designated food night. All you
need to do is bring a can of food for the food pantry.

o The athletes are very busy but they need to be in the community
making friends with the elementary kids and businesses. The athletes
have a responsibility filling the seats as well. Not that there’s many but
a few less F-bombs on the court will also make sure this is a G rated
family event.

o Elementary nights where specific elementary schools with a certain
amount of attendance can get a donation from Lehigh for books,
computers, etc. $500 -$1,000 means a ton to these schools.

o If you give the schools a buck or two for everyone that shows up from
that school including parents, you may just bring in 500 to 2,000 ticket
buying concession purchasing fans. You’ll probably make it up in pizza
sales and they’ll likely come back for the cheap quality entertainment.

o There are plenty others needing help in the community. If we put our
minds to it, the athletic department can help them. It’s not bad PR for
the school either; that word gets around.

o You must show you’re interested in them in order for them to become
interested in you.

Just some thoughts but it’s important to figure out what’s important to your targets and then help them get it. The commercial businesses want to grow. The community wants deals and will get involved in service projects and the students have lots of needs that can be filled. Sorry for the long post

[lfnadminKeymaster]

o I noticed Lehigh now rents cars. Maybe a free car rental for a student
for a day would be important to students; maybe that’s something to
promote

I like all the suggestions, but this one I think has a lot of potential.

The new thing these days is to have green solutions for driving like zipcar – i.e. rent a car instead of owning one on campus. Maybe have that be something that kids can buy with "spirit points", or perhaps organizing a "zip car" trip to Stabler with fans would give students spirit points, free pizza, or something like that.

I know as an undergrad I would have killed for something like that. Go to a couple games that I would have gone to anyway; and earn a zipcar trip to Philadelphia some weekend.

[StablerBumParticipant]

Another idea is to try to link athletics – and supporting athletics – with academics.

Maybe a professor would be willing to incorporate promoting Lehigh Athletics attendance into a Marketing or Business class, or if there is a Marketing Club or group on campus. The project would have groups of students run different promotions and advertisements to try to get other students out to the games. It’s essentially free labor and the students would be highly motivated if their grade depended on it. Not to mention that at least the students in the class would be directly exposed to the contests and we might bring in some new fans right there.

I’m sure if you put 30-40 undergrads to the task of increasing attendance/support – they would come up with our ideas and many many more and hopefully execute them.

[True-ColorsParticipant]

Interesting to see that Marist is offering a free soft drink and hot dog to anyone that comes to the Lehigh game if they bring an unwrapped gift/toy for a kid for Christmas.

Not sure it’ll bring’em in but it’s a great effort.

[LU65Participant]

Chris Courogen, Hoop Time Editor, published an interesting story yesterday entitled, " Hoop Time Notebook: Winless teams and empty gyms edition." For a complete reading, check out the link below.

http://news.hooptimeonline.com/post/214 … empty-gyms

Chris is quoted as saying, "Across the valley, the Leopards arch-nemesis, Lehigh, ranked third-to-last in attendance last season (1,285 per game) despite a championship season. Despite having the Patriot’s top player, C.J. McCollum, as a draw, the Mountain Hawks have drawn an average of just 834 to four games in Stabler this season (-35 percent)." All true, but as bad as that sounds, remember the 1,285 figure includes all home games last year – OOC and PL alike. If we were to compare our home attendance this year to that of last year and look only at the first four home games, we’d find – believe it or not – an increase in attendance from an average of 634 (last year) to 834 (this year), or a gain of 35%. So, while the numbers remain bleak, perhaps there’s hope yet.

Again, thanks everyone for your input. The ideas have been great. Like so many sports message boards, there are many more readers to the Lehigh Sports Forum than contributors. I encourage everyone with an interest in Lehigh basketball to become an active contributor to these discussions. Simply register and make your voices heard. It’s simple.

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