Spring Break
Athletic Department and students discuss plans for the future
CSU looks to increase attendance at games
Matt L. Stephens
Issue date: 2/13/09 Section: Sports
On Thursday afternoon, members of the CSU Sports Marketing department as well as the CSU Sports Information Department met with representatives of various campus groups to brainstorm ideas that would help increase student attendance at both football and men's basketball games in the future.
The average student attendance for home games in football (six games) and men's basketball (eight games) this season has been 7,108 and 535, respectively. These numbers are up from 6,798 and 461 during the 2007-2008 school year, but are still considerably lower than most schools in the Mountain West Conference.
"We really just wanted to get feedback from students and hear their ideas on how we can successfully bring more of them to our home games," said Senior Associate Athletics Director Gary Ozzello. "I thought we had a lot of good ideas today."
Some of the ideas discussed at the meeting included an official CSU Rams Facebook group, informative text messages and e-mails on upcoming games and even having members of the athletic teams be on-call for Ram Ride.
The successful marketing of the volleyball team with their full-body cutouts in the bookstores was another thing the student representatives liked and thought it should be added for football.
New promotions were also discussed, such as textbook giveaways, $1 hot dog nights and even a university-wide $100 lottery that would be given away only if the randomly selected student were present at the basketball game. Should the student not be present, the jackpot would grow by $100 each game that it was not claimed.
"I really liked the student promotion ideas we came up with today for events at both the stadium and Moby Arena," Ozzello said. "We really want to make sure we do a better job communicating with the students in the future."
The Athletic Department encourages any students who have further ideas on how to drive student attendance to football and basketball games to e-mail Ben Chulick, Director of Marketing, at Ben.Chulick@colostate.edu.
Sports writer Matt L. Stephens can be reached at sports@collegian.com.
The average student attendance for home games in football (six games) and men's basketball (eight games) this season has been 7,108 and 535, respectively. These numbers are up from 6,798 and 461 during the 2007-2008 school year, but are still considerably lower than most schools in the Mountain West Conference.
"We really just wanted to get feedback from students and hear their ideas on how we can successfully bring more of them to our home games," said Senior Associate Athletics Director Gary Ozzello. "I thought we had a lot of good ideas today."
Some of the ideas discussed at the meeting included an official CSU Rams Facebook group, informative text messages and e-mails on upcoming games and even having members of the athletic teams be on-call for Ram Ride.
The successful marketing of the volleyball team with their full-body cutouts in the bookstores was another thing the student representatives liked and thought it should be added for football.
New promotions were also discussed, such as textbook giveaways, $1 hot dog nights and even a university-wide $100 lottery that would be given away only if the randomly selected student were present at the basketball game. Should the student not be present, the jackpot would grow by $100 each game that it was not claimed.
"I really liked the student promotion ideas we came up with today for events at both the stadium and Moby Arena," Ozzello said. "We really want to make sure we do a better job communicating with the students in the future."
The Athletic Department encourages any students who have further ideas on how to drive student attendance to football and basketball games to e-mail Ben Chulick, Director of Marketing, at Ben.Chulick@colostate.edu.
Sports writer Matt L. Stephens can be reached at sports@collegian.com.
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