With a recent record of declining attendance across the board at Penn sporting events, the Athletic Department's marketing staff has decided to aggressively promote Monday's women's basketball game against Ohio State. The department is well aware that the game is at noon during reading days, but students are not the main target of the campaign.
Instead, says Marketing Director Dan Flynn, Penn Athletics is hoping to "try to attract a different type of crowd than [they] normally get." The audience the department is trying to reach consists mainly of businesspeople and schoolchildren from the West Philadelphia area who are looking to take a couple of hours off and watch a basketball game for free.
"It [is] for students in K-12 outside of Penn as well as professionals in the workplace -- sort of like a businessperson special -- Penn community people on campus; grab your co-workers, grab something to eat, come to the game kind of thing," Flynn said. "And then try to get some school groups in to participate and do some other activities with them."
The school part is in conjunction with the "Penn Relays School Days Program," an educational initiative whose goal is to promote learning through sports.
The idea for the promotion, entitled "Lunchtime Hoops at the Palestra," was thought up over the summer when the basketball schedules were being finalized. There were two available dates, according to Flynn, where a noon game could be fit in, and the one that worked best happened to during reading days.
Other than a free daytime basketball game against a top- 10 opponent -- Ohio St. is ranked 10th in the nation -- the marketing department is also offering prizes for the best attendance by Penn offices, with free tickets to future men's games as the reward. Prizes will be given to the office with the largest turnout in terms of percentage and and the office with the highest attendance.
Without tickets being sold, the Athletic Department's only way of quantifying the winning department is to count people as they enter the Palestra.
This serves a side purpose of determining the effectiveness of the Athletic Department's effort, and Flynn has set the bar very high.
"Our goal is to have about 1,000 people," he said.
Subtracting the Nov. 23 game against La Salle, which directly preceded the men's game against Drexel, the Quakers have averaged a mere 638 fans per game at the Palestra.
Flynn added that he understands that the promotion is not directed towards Penn students, but that the marketing department has to work with three constituencies: Penn students, Penn alumni and West Philadelphia-area residents andbusinesspeople.
While this effort is directly tied to the last of these groups, Flynn stressed that Penn Athletics has other campaigns aimed at the remaining two constituencies. He cited the promotion involving men's basketball coach Fran Dunphy and a portable hoop on Super Block before the season-opening game against Qunnipiac, as well as season ticket brochures mailed to alumni in the Tri-State area.
"We try to attack each group in a different way that might interest those people," Flynn said.
He also said that he is not concerned that a game advertised like this is not against a top rival like Princeton. In fact, Flynn believes that the Red and Blue might react favorably to a good crowd and could even pull off an upset.
While Flynn had no answer for the declining attendance figures across Penn athletics, saying "It's hard to tell," he hopes that Monday will be a step in the rightdirection.
