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One way to boost ticket sales at Mizzou? Win early, win often

Here are today’s Mizzou Links.

By Pete Scantlebury

The offseason is as good time as any to look at Missouri’s recent attendance woes

And Dave Matter did just that, breaking down the, ahem, precipitous decline in average attendance since the 2015 season. These numbers have been out there before, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less jarring to see each time:

Since 2015, four SEC schools have seen a decline by more than 10 percent: Kentucky (10.1), Arkansas (11.1), Vanderbilt (12.7) and Mizzou, at a whopping 21 percent decrease.

There are bright spots or reasons to hope for this season, as the article points out, like a higher-than-usual season-ticket renewal and the new amenities added by the South Endzone Project, as well as (potentially) alcohol sales at the stadium.

But there’s one really easy way to boost ticket sales: Start winning at a high level again.

Missouri hasn’t won its first conference game of the season since 2014 (that 21-20 ugly thriller against South Carolina). It hasn’t emerged from its first six games with fewer than three losses since 2015.

By no means am I ignoring the possible impact the 2015 boycott has had on attendance (very, very unfortunately), but if Missouri also hadn’t simultaneously falling on its longest stretch of losing football in a decade.

So, yeah, we can get into cheaper ticket prices and more amenities for fans as potentially boosting attendance. But winning early and often, especially during the first half the 2019 season, would certainly go a long way in driving butts back into Memorial Stadium.

As a nice coincidence, Gabe DeArmond kind of pointed out the same thing in his most recent mailbag over at PowerMizzou:

The truth is, Missouri has been awful in the first half of the season the last three years. Under Barry Odom, Mizzou is 10-2 in November...and 9-15 in September and October. It creates this weird dynamic where fans finish the season thinking, “Man we’ve got a lot of momentum, I think next year is going to be a big step forward” and then Missouri destroys that momentum in the first half of the season before rebuilding some of it in the last month.

Missouri can’t be out of the running for anything meaningful on October 10th again.

Give the fans reasons to keep coming back this year.

More Links:

  • The news came in late from the West Coast — coming at roughly 1 a.m. — but Mizzou made the cut for Joshua Christopher, a five-star prospect and leading target in its 2020 recruiting efforts. The rest of the list makes sense, too. Christopher’s older brother is committed to Arizona State. UCLA is in his backyard. And Kentucky has been an offer he’s openly coveted for a while. As far as official visits go, he’s already been hosted in Columbia and Tempe.

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