Friday Night Lights-WVU Game Moved

[JoeB]

Wooly you are forgetting the people who work on the weekdays.  Many people have weekends off for a reason.  WVU is a great draw, but attendance will suffer, there is no doubt about it.  Maybe a different story if the game were later in the year and we were 8-0 or something, but this will be early in the year and won't get the type of walk up crowd that a normal Saturday night game attracts.    

[USFan]

nice, better than a thursday

I disagree... there is too much going on Friday night.

I believe a Thursday night game would draw more than a Friday night game.

[JoeB]

How many bay area high schools are there?  Lets say each high school has roughly 40 players and 10 coaches that equals 50 per school plus another 80 in parents and maybe another 60 in siblings that attend their games.  That brings the total to 190 people per school.  If there are 20 schools in the area, multiply that by 190 and you get 3800 potential customers that you automatically cancel out by having a Friday game.  This is a rough estimate, but these are the types of customers that you are looking for.  They already enjoy watching football games.  Of course attendance will take a dive........How can it not?

[BullyPulpit]

Wooly you are forgetting the people who work on the weekdays.  Many people have weekends off for a reason.  WVU is a great draw, but attendance will suffer, there is no doubt about it.  Maybe a different story if the game were later in the year and we were 8-0 or something, but this will be early in the year and won't get the type of walk up crowd that a normal Saturday night game attracts.    

My guess is that there aren't many who work on a Friday night at 8 pm (save kids at the mall and movie theater)

[JoeB]

Wooly you are forgetting the people who work on the weekdays.  Many people have weekends off for a reason.  WVU is a great draw, but attendance will suffer, there is no doubt about it.  Maybe a different story if the game were later in the year and we were 8-0 or something, but this will be early in the year and won't get the type of walk up crowd that a normal Saturday night game attracts.    

My guess is that there aren't many who work on a Friday night at 8 pm (save kids at the mall and movie theater)

Maybe not many, but more than people who work on a Saturday night at the same time.

[BullyPulpit]

How many bay area high schools are there?  Lets say each high school has roughly 40 players and 10 coaches that equals 50 per school plus another 80 in parents and maybe another 60 in siblings that attend their games.  That brings the total to 190 people per school.  If there are 20 schools in the area, multiply that by 190 and you get 3800 potential customers that you automatically cancel out by having a Friday game.  This is a rough estimate, but these are the types of customers that you are looking for.  They already enjoy watching football games.  Of course attendance will take a dive........How can it not?

Now lets assume that half of those you listed would actually have attended this game, but for the fact that it is being played on a Friday night (probably a high number). Now the number drops to 1900. Lets multiply that by and average of $30/fan (ticket plus concessions and or parking) and we get a financial impact of $57,000. I would venture to guess that the national exposure on ESPN2 and the additional television revenue we are likely to get will more than make up for the high school no-shows.

[Mag Pie]

Thursdays would not work.  It's college night in most places and we know how students are.  However, it is on ESPN, so I think that that cancels it out.  I prefer friday over thursday anyday.  Sure people work friday, but they also work thursday.  Besides, the game is a 8PM, great time.  I think we'll have a really good crowd for this one.  I'm so glad I got my season tickets and don't have to run 1.5 hrs before the game to get my seats.

[WoolyBully]

It's all about your lifestyle.

If your schedule is so tight that it only allows 7:00 - 10:00 on Saturday night

to take in USF football...well, them's the breaks.

On the other hand (as one who nine-to-fives weekdays), there's no difference between Friday

and Saturday night. Whatever activity I do on one, can easily be flipped to the other.

The only thing about a Friday night game is it may clip my tailgating a bit (but that's not

necessarily a bad thing in the grand scheme of things).

So instead of coming home on Friday night and parking in front of the TV, or going out

to eat...that gets shifted to Saturday. It's pretty simple.  8-)

[Mag Pie]

Well said Wooly.  I just don't see why some complain that it would be hard to attend the game on friday instead of saturday.

Just pray it's never played during Americal Idol night...I've read on here about a few people that can't miss that show for anything.

[JoeB]

I'm not complaining.  I'll be at the game, I'm just saying attendance will take a hit.  Also, I said nothing about the economic impact.  Of course we'll clear more money now that it is on TV, I never questioned that.  You can't have both at this point in our program, when you move a game to a Friday night.