Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 31, 1992 TAG: 9203310082
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On the Friday night a couple of weeks ago that the Metro Conference Tournament opened in Louisville, 15,900 people bought tickets to the first clutch of games in Freedom Hall.
About 2,200 seats were empty. Though the University of Louisville sold out virtually every one of its home basketball games during the season, it did not sell out the Metro tournament.
Miller, an assistant athletic director at the University of Louisville, says that Freedom Hall would have been rocking Saturday and Sunday had the hometown boys won. They didn't. On the first night of the tourney, Louisville lost, and was eliminated.
That left the tournament to teams from Charlotte, Richmond, New Orleans and Hattiesburg, Miss. - a tough sell even in basketball-crazy Louisville.
"People here in Louisville are very knowledgeable about basketball," he says. "They were in the wait-and-see mode. If we had won, they would have come to the games."
When "we" didn't win, they didn't come.
Though about 10,000 tickets were sold in advance for games on Saturday and Sunday, the Louisvillites quickly lost interest. They didn't show.
Only 5,247 dedicated fans watched the team from Charlotte beat the team from New Orleans for the championship Sunday.
Miller, mind you, wasn't complaining. He was able to muster a bit of faint praise for the tournament: "We met our budget."
Last year, the tourney was played in Roanoke. We didn't have a cavernous Freedom Hall to fill - just the modest Roanoke Civic Center. We are neither basketball-crazy nor endowed with a traditional basketball powerhouse as the hometown school.
The civic center seated 9,348. We sold an average of 7,018 tickets for the seven games.
We almost met our budget.
The Roanoke tourney was hailed as a technical success. The arena was well-appointed, the city was hospitable, the service was impeccable.
But there was plenty of background grumbling about the lagging ticket sales: Roanoke's a lousy sports town, or, the people here are tightwads.
Indignities were foisted on us that perhaps weren't fairly aimed.
Louisville's tickets were cheaper (their prices ranged from $10 to $80; ours ranged from $15 to $87) and the population of Louisville is about three times the population of Roanoke.
They didn't sell out. We didn't sell out.
Sounds to me like, given the prices, the size of the city, and the quality of the product, we held our own pretty well against Louisville.
Miller says Louisville, which will host the tourney again next year, came away from the tournament vowing to lure more out-of-town visitors.
"Otherwise, if it's just us going to our own tournament, we're just recycling money," he said.
Roanoke reached the same conclusion last year, about this time.
When Roanoke hosted the Metro tournament 12 months ago, we didn't disgrace ourselves. We just didn't jam into basketball games we didn't much care about.
They don't do that in Louisville, either.
by CNB