Marketing staff working overtime

Iowa's marketing strategy for men's basketball has struggled to find traction, regardless of the team's Big Ten position.

Iowa ranked among the nation's top 25 in attendance from 1978 through 2006. But those numbers have fallen. Average paid attendance this season was 9,550, about 1,200 worse than the low set two years ago. Actual attendance hovered barely above 5,000 for the season.

Whether it's on-court performance, ticket prices or a stale game atmosphere - a topic Virginia Tech Coach Seth Greenberg raised in December - fans continue to stay away.

“On the issue of marketing, what are we doing? How are we marketing the program? What are we doing to try and get fans in here?” Rick Klatt asked The Gazette in 2005, when the program then was setting lows for attendance.

Klatt, associate director of athletics for external affairs, asks those same questions five years later.

“What can we do to get people in those seats?” he asked. “It's a lot of things. It's pricing it aggressively. It's doing all the things we keep hearing people talking about better than we are. It's a little bit of being a lot better ourselves and having better opponents.”

Desperate for fans, Iowa discounted tickets to $10 for the final five games in early 2009. The move boosted paid attendance from 9,858 before the change to 10,861 for the season. Iowa averaged 13,258 in paid attendance for those five games.

That's a move Iowa refused to duplicate after several season-ticket holders felt the price-cutting devalued their tickets.

“While it put people in the seats - because it clearly did that - it strained relationships with people who make the investment in our program both financially and emotionally,” Klatt said. “We lost our focus. We let a situation get away from us. In retrospect, it was one of those where it was the short-term solution that had the potential to lead to long-term problems.”

Winning is the ultimate step toward curing attendance woes, but this year Iowa has set a season school record for losses. Iowa tried varied marketing efforts to lure and retain fans with mixed results. The school discounted tickets depending on the opponent and cut season-ticket prices across the board.

“Success leaves clues,” Coach Todd Lickliter said. “Right now, we're ninth in the Big Ten, I think, in attendance, so what's the No. 1 team doing? Well, they're winning, I understand that. But Indiana, they're able to have a high attendance. OK, so what is it? I could blame somebody, or they could blame me.”

“We've had free nights for students, we've had groups in, group sales opportunities for all sorts of groups,” Iowa Athletics Director Gary Barta said. “I can go down a list of 37 things we've tried. Again, until the arena fills up, we're not going to stop trying. We can't stop trying, and we won't.”

Student involvement remains a major issue. Twice, students got free tickets. The first time drew a meager turnout of 600. The second was stronger at about 1,500. Iowa sold nearly 1,400 student season tickets but barely one-third showed up. Klatt said he plans to meet with students to find ways for more students to attend games.

“Students more than anybody can be difference makers,” Klatt said. “I can't put that responsibility on the students. But there is that opportunity for them.”

Veteran broadcaster Mac McCausland cites cable television, specifically the Big Ten Network, as a source of dwindling interest. The network tries to show every men's game in its own time slot, which shifts schedules to odd times and nights. The network debuted in 2007, but Iowa struggled that season, and the network's distribution feud with Mediacom put the Hawkeyes “out of sight, out of mind.”

“Ten years ago, I would have calls from ... groups that wanted to know the Iowa schedule literally in August so they could plan events around the holidays,” McCausland said. “They wanted to make sure games didn't conflict because they knew the audience would hurt in having events while Iowa was playing. For the last four or five years, no calls. That's been going on since before Lickliter was here.”