Every time someone tells me they tried and failed to market Gymnastics, I respond: “Greg Marsden did. Why can’t you?”
JOHN BRANCH reports:
Utah’s Huntsman Center holds 15,000. But more than that were squeezing in to watch what was, on the schedule, just an ordinary conference dual meet with Stanford. The standing-room-only attendance was announced at 15,202.
The night after the gymnastics meet, Utah’s women’s basketball team played No. 7 Oregon State in the same arena. Official attendance was 788.
Utah gymnastics has the highest average attendance in women’s college sports nearly every year, beating out the likes of Tennessee and Connecticut basketball, Nebraska and Hawaii volleyball, and Alabama and Georgia gymnastics, most of them quite easily. It vaults past professional women’s sports, too, like the W.N.B.A., where top teams hope to draw 10,000.
The gymnastics team, ranked fourth this season, is averaging 14,682 through four meets. That is on pace to break the team record of 14,376 last year, when only 18 Division I men’s basketball teams regularly played in front of bigger crowds. …
… if Utah can sell 7,500 season tickets (ranging from $30 to $120), attract 15,000 fans to a two-hour meet, and essentially break even financially, why don’t more universities do the same thing? …
Alabama’s Sarah Patterson:
“Greg started earliest, and he set the standard,” said Patterson, who started coaching Alabama in 1978. “There were two people I took great advice from at the start of my career. One was Pat Summitt. The other was Greg Marsden.”
Both Marsden and Summitt, the longtime Tennessee women’s basketball coach, stressed the value of marketing the program. …
Georgia’s Suzanne Yoculan:
“If Greg and Sarah and I could stand up and speak to everybody who is a decision-maker at other schools, I think we could convince them to add gymnastics,” said Yoculan, who retired from Georgia in 2009.
Utah gymnastics, with a $750,000 budget, breaks even, the university said, thanks mostly to arena revenues from its meets and booster contributions that cover the 12 scholarships. …
NY Times – At Packed Utah Women’s Gymnastics Meets, Marketing Earns High Scores, Too
Gymnastics Coaching.com 