Game in/game out, PC puts on a better show period. A lot of it is outside of their control - it's easier to draw a crowd when you're in a city and near bars/parking/work. PC games are an event, regardless of who the opponent is.
Their gameday experience in the arena is better. The sound is modulated better. They have replays. They have WiFi. They have cell service. They have beer. They have food options. Their camera people do better work (zooming in on individuals, kiss cams, etc) It operates as a professional arena no matter what opponent is coming to town.
Obviously, they get the advantage of playing probably 5-10 marquee names/ranked teams in their building a year, and being good.
URI top end is a louder building and a better building to watch a game at. It just doesn't fill up as often.
You need a heavy draw to get people to commit to driving all the way down to Kingston on one lane roads, in cold dark winter, and walk across the parking lot and snowfields to the Ryan Center.
Starting from the top, and the topic. What marketing draw is there to get into the building?
Yes, you're obviously going to get a banged-out sellout when your team is good and playing a good team - so let's ignore that.
How do you get the crowds there when you don't have those games? How do you get the crowds to come back? That's why you have marketing.
Ignoring the team's performance, think about it from the walk-in:
Security lines are a JOKE. That tent is pathetic - use the lobby for security check-in? Find better equipment or more people or better people but I have NEVER experienced the delays to get into an event like I experience at the Ryan Center. It baffles the mind.
When you get in there - you're hungry. Say you're not a donor in the alumni lounge (not that the food there is worth writing home about), but what do you go and get? Reheated frozen crap? Stale popcorn or pretzels? The pizza is legit (shoutout pizza gourmet), but everything else is legitimately bad food unless you're in the suites eating the catering. And - there are like 2 concession stands open with only 2 registers. Get more registers?
You get to your seat. Now at least the advantages of the Ryan Center come in - amazing view, not a bad seat, bright, video boards..everything.
But after that? Want to get a beer? Hope you're prepared to wait 1/2 of a half to get a drink.
"Hey look at that sick play, can't wait to see it again! Oh...guess they don't do replays. OK that's fine I'll just check twitter to see if they have it. Oh. Guess I can't do that."
"Hey does anyone have a 1st half stat sheet from the alumni lounge? I can't get my ESPN app to load."
"Wonder how the kids are doing at home - let me shoot a text...oh guess I need to walk away from the court to the concourse to hope for service."
Etc, etc, etc. There are too many detractions for the Ryan Center experience when the team is playing poorly. We need to work harder because of the disadvantages of our location, regardless of the team's performance.
Make it an event. Some ideas that don't take a lot of money:
Open the doors earlier and get some legit food cart options from local vendors. Call it indoor food truck night. Center them around the north and south end zone pubs.
How about a beer-fest event? Have a game where all of the local RI breweries do a stand up at the pubs. Tasting flights and what not.
I mean you could probably do those type of things every night and at least get some kind of a draw there. At least it's an "event" to get people in the door.
Partner with the bars down the line - set up busses from wakefield near the bars. Get mews/chop house/or any other sponsored bar to give a burger and beer discount with a ticket and have a bus go to and from the bars to the Ryan Center. (that idea got shot down 14 years ago when I had it, because it makes too much sense to do it).
Someone needs to start recognizing these opportunities and pushing to make these games "events" - certainly in the interim of not having a good team.
Once you have people in the building for an event, you need to be sure that you can keep up an experience for them.
https://www.ubersignal.com/blog/sec-emp ... -stadiums/
There's an article from 2012. In technology years that might as well be 50 years ago. The SEC was putting cellular repeaters in all their stadiums to address poor cell service. Where are we at? If everyone had cell service you really wouldn't even need to address the WiFi (properly doing that is several hundred thousand dollars with switches, routers, access points, SD-WAN, etc).
Replays. This boggles my mind. I heard something about it costing a lot of money to put a replay system in - but here's a wild idea.
Take the video feed of the game. Find the hole on the video panel that says "output" and plug in an HDMi cord. Then, locate a similar hole that says "input" for the video board. Plug the other end of that cord in there. Just play the live broadcast of the game, and then you'll get the replays that the TV shows. Then you don't need to worry about any expertise or technical management.
And the security people always looking for people being too rowdy or drunk. Stop. Unless there's a fight going on, let it go. I've never seen any sporting event where people were more on-edge for being loud and crazy. That's literally what everyone wants to see and for some reason the RC has always had a problem with it.
I don't think any of this would cost too much, just takes a willingness to do things differently - which is probably the hardest thing at URI to get accomplished. Very ironic for the "think big, we do" moniker.
TL;DR - everyone knows you'll get a loud arena if your team is good and/or they are playing a good team. Marketing is for the games in-between those games where you need to sell people on your experience beyond basketball. PC has a lot of advantages - location, conference, etc - but they consistently deliver a better experience on an average game day than URI does.
It would not take much (cell repeater, video live feed on jumbotron, earlier opening foodtruck/beer tasting events, more lax fan behavior regulation) for URI to deliver a good experience outside of basketball.
