Many Pac-12 Men's Basketball Teams See Attendance Down Despite Strong Play

Attendance for seven of the men’s basketball teams in the Pac-12 is down despite this being a season in which “half a dozen teams are popularly projected into the NCAA-tournament field,” according to Bud Withers of the SEATTLE TIMES. Crowds are down “dramatically in several cases,” as five schools have seen drops from a year ago of 8% or more. Utah is the only school in the conference that is “up by double-digit percentage points.” Some of the attendance problem “has to do with the competitive state of those programs.” However, there is “clearly more than that, as fans wrestle with Wednesday- and Sunday-evening games and inconsistent starting times.” UCLA is down nearly 18% as the “novelty from moving into renovated Pauley Pavilion last year has apparently dulled,” while Oregon State is down a similar percentage despite being “more of a force on the floor than it has been since the mid-1990s.” Oregon is down nearly 5%, but the school “faces some serious issues, ranging from donor burnout in Matthew Knight Arena (seats behind the benches cost $25,000 for a five-year right to buy tickets) to parking charges to the here-and-gone nature of its recent transfer-laden teams.” Washington and Washington State have the two “biggest decreases in the league.” WSU is down an “alarming” 41.2%, while UW’s 20.1% decrease “follows two straight years of roughly 9 percent drops” (SEATTLE TIMES, 2/12).