My two cents worth. I am an older guy so the technicalites of today's social media and avenues of advertisement are way over my head. I've got to believe that there is a serious question of how proactivte those who should be marketing this team are really being.

That being said, from my old school perspective, at the very least this team's games should be being attended by a lot more students than we are seeing. As Shocky points out, start by allowing the students free admission or very, very inexpensive admission, and market from there. Just something like a free t-shirt giveaway is sure to work. Have you ever been to a Cal bball game when the people didn't go crazy near the end of the game when t-shirts are thrown out? Market the students and I think it results in a domino effect. Word gets out, both by mouth and social media how entertaining this team is and it results in attendance growing. Doesn't seem like this strategy is even remotely considered by the Cal sports marketing people. Sending routine emails to football season ticket holders with the usual jargon ain't gonna get it done. If it was, it would have happened by now.

CalWBB does produce more videos which I think are on TikTok and Instagram.
Those are nice promotions - but they should end with a plea to come to a game. Something like "Get excited in real time" or "Don't wait for the video. Cheer live" - yeah, neither of those are good, but some tag line other than just "Cal".
And, to reiterate Shocky's comments - is Cal working with the Valykyries to get access to their season ticket list and applicants? Those are 18kPlus people who want to see women's basketball.

HoopDreams said:

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I understand WBB tixs are free to students

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They are free. The trick is making more students aware of this--and of providing them with free food vouchers; college-age kids are still adolescents, and most hungry adolescents would sell the family dog for pizza. (Yes, yes-- joke.) Or making vouchers available to groups of 4 or more. Something like that; don't they teach this stuff to marketing majors?

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"So ask them and respond to the changes that they would like to see in the game day experience."

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Perhaps turn down the music at half-time so we can discuss the game?

annarborbear said:

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Even in a good year, we barely make $200,000 off of ticket revenue, against what is now more than $5 million in expenses. So the first thing to do is to give away as many free tickets as possible to students, families, and youth groups to fill more seats while forgetting about short-term revenue. Winning, plus a more exciting game day atmosphere, will then hopefully gain some more long-term paying customers. Also, remember that most of those who will pay and donate are the older fans. So ask them and respond to the changes that they would like to see in the game day experience. And actually return their calls and e-mails.

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P.S. Annarborbear, may I quote you, or at least paraphrase you, in my e-mail to Owen?

ncbears said:

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CalWBB does produce more videos which I think are on TikTok and Instagram.
Those are nice promotions - but they should end with a plea to come to a game. Something like "Get excited in real time" or "Don't wait for the video. Cheer live" - yeah, neither of those are good, but some tag line other than just "Cal".
And, to reiterate Shocky's comments - is Cal working with the Valykyries to get access to their season ticket list and applicants? Those are 18kPlus people who want to see women's basketball.

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^ the wbna is the best source to potential new fans that are willing to buy tixs to watch women's basketball in the bay area, the current number of valkyries deposits is now 20,000+!!!!

the bay area is starved for affordable (the golden state warriors are the exclusive domain of the 1 percenters) basketball & specifically women's basketball...cal wbb is a value play with fabulous personalities & remarkable human beings that are easily marketable!!

another list that needs to be accessed & then contacted is the departing oakland a's fanbase: contact these fans & set up an a's area behind the north basketball with free baseball hotdogs for anybody in this section wearing green & yellow

the possibilities are endless if your willing to work

the problem is that the worthless bureaucratic trio of markeisha everrett, jennifer simon-o'neil & jim knowlton (none of whom are berkeley grads) are passionless about building the women's basketball fanbase beyond sending quickly deleted emails to the existing cal athletics dept email list

and chancellor lyons can show up for a game or two but if he allows his employees to not innovate & do their jobs nothing is gonna change...it's that kinda of lazy azz culture ingrained in the cal athletic dept that allows lower level time clocking bureaucrats like owen kaminski to repeatedly ignore a fan's emails...if owen tried that **** in corporate america he would be fired immediately but in berkeley he can just continue to collect paychecks with a malaise attitude

there also needs to be outreach to every girl's youth basketball coach in the greater bay area & personal invitations for them to attend with their players & their families for free in a fun designated area...and by outreach i mean personal phone calls, not the worthless generic email spams currently sent out

and charmin needs to be a better job in personally cultivating potential nil dollars, shocky had never been to a women's basketball game at any level his entire life so he wuz sitting in his floor seats during the cal's monster class era during the 45 minutes prior to the game warm ups when lindsey gottlieb came over to me & introduced herself...we talked for 20 minutes about hoops & when we wuz done shocky had bought 2 floor seats for cal's wbb for that season & the next season!!...a couple of games later lindsey introduced me to sabrina ionescu's immigrant parents & the 4 of us had another nice conversation

the apathy of the worthless trio of bureaucrats (who are intensely disliked internally be a vast majority of their employees) charged with selling the wbb program is shocking: knowlton has zero social presence, markeisha has deleted her twitter & simon-o'neil is most famously known in intercollegiate athletics as the piece of **** person who enabled mckeever to relentlessly create a women's swimming team culture of suicidal iderations along with racial harassment

my monster thread on the football board is read several thousand times a day & ima promoting the wbb team right now...will be interesting to see the turnout for thursday nite vs north carolina in basically a playoff game for a #4 seed with the loser outside looking in...hopefully charmin has taken my suggestion to hear & personally called coach wilcox inviting him & his team to sit in the south bleachers behind the basket to bring energy to haas & also confirm to male berkeley students that being a wbb fan is a cool thing

THIS IS WHAT WE DO!!!

There are two primary sources for attendance: People who can walk to the games, and people who have to drive.

Given the parking and traffic situations, the latter group is going to be much harder to attract. (Yes, if you know what you're doing, you can park/take BART/whatever, but the initial barrier of driving into Berkeley on surface streets, finding a parking spot and walking to Haas is significant if you aren't familiar with the process.)

And as for the 20,000+ deposits on Valkyrie tickets, I'm not convinced. If the Valkyries average 10,000 a game, it would be absolutely stunning, and unprecedented in WNBA history. 7,500 would be dazzling.

In short, I don't really believe that there really are that many fans out there.

As for youth and high school teams, they are playing games and practicing during the Cal season. Time is a huge issue for kids, given academics, social life and basketball, so I really don't see that as a market that can work -- and again, getting a team to a Cal game is a logistical nightmare, starting with carpools and parking.

Casual adult basketball fans will be attracted by steady winning and elite stars. Though Puff Morris is really good, I'm talking about a JuJu Watkins-level player if you want to get a generic basketball fan to come.

As for people who can walk to games, that's students. And the student body has changed drastically over the years, but still, there are lots of sports fans. But at every level, men's sports are more popular than women's, for a variety of reasons. The number of female students at men's games compared to the number of female students at women's games is proof.

I try to watch college women's games on ESPN+ whenever I can, and there are no fans anywhere (except for the very few elite programs). Students simply don't come, and as Yogi Berra said, "It the fans don't want to come, you can't stop them."

Sadly, everybody doesn't watch women's sports, especially live. The best course, it seems to me, is to somehow get a critical mass of students to start attending women's basketball games, but really, I don't think that's ever happened at the vast majority of P4 schools. It's much more than a Cal problem, though that doesn't mean Cal couldn't do a better job.

The big problem with attendance begins at the high school level. Schools like Mitty steal players from other schools. Do you think the students of that school want to go to a game. Most stuff on Nor Cal Prep has to do with players. but no one talks about the fans. So if a school like Albany finally has a good team, then the next year their players will transfer. And Albany UC students can walk to the game. I've never heard you feel sympathy for those fans.

At a certain level, stealing players is a problem, but Mitty, for example, is only poaching P4 kids -- and there aren't many around.

To take Albany, it's possible to build a competitive team despite O'Dowd and Salesian scooping up players, but even good high school girls' teams don't draw. The students go to the boys' games, which are usually on the same night at the opposite site.

(And I don't know about walking from San Pablo Avenue to Haas -- that seems like a trek to me.)

I don't live on san Pabl Ave. Try Curtis St. a lot closer by a mile. and you can get closer. There are streets further East than me.

https://instagr.am/p/C95qL3mSzyN
agree with clay k re: the importance of student attendance but disagree re: the vast # of women's basketball fans in the san francisco bay area that would view cal wbb as a value play if innovatively marketed by an incompetent cal athletic department...fun fact: the valkyries 20,000+ direct deposits require UPFRONT prepayments, that's a biz economic engine sign of fan engagement/future attendance

the bay is starved for affordable women's basketball!!...the upcoming wnba attendance #s are gonna be staggering!!

is markeisha everrett & her marketing team making any community outreach efforts like the one above to youth basketball groups in oakland or building trusting relationship with professional sports organization such as the valkyries (it's in their best interests to grow the bay area colleges wbb fanbases)??

parking/transportation in/to berkeley is NOT the problem, the men's team averaged almost 11,000 fans at haas pavillion during the cal's monster class era

I think the Bay Area might be starved for Professional Women's basketball, but here's the average College Attendance so far this year:
Stanford: 2032
Cal: 1340
Pacific: 452
San Jose State: 412
St. Mary's: 246
Santa Clara: 182
USF: 150

^ woodacre, and this is why partnering with the valkyries is so important for building the cal wbb fanbase/attendance...and appreciate the wnba needs these abysmal college #s to increase in order for them to build out their fanbase of potential pipeline fans too

it works both ways but cal wbb has had zero deals done with the valykries, markeisha is probably waiting for them to call her just like kevin kennedy did asking for assistance with the national cal football billboards which she then tole him she wuz "too busy" to help out

When I went back to my 60th reunion, I mostly hang around women. And all of them follow sports, both female and male. I mean in a big way. Our high school had great basketball teams and we had 500 students for 4 grades. and everyone came to the games. We did not have any out of district players. just home spun. We got our habits to watch live games in high school.

Imagine if we had a great team and then some big school poached them. If they were successful then attendance would decrease. People would lose interest in sports. And not go to college games. You have to cultivate your high school fan.

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Yes, if you know what you're doing, you can park/take BART/whatever, but the initial barrier of driving into Berkeley on surface streets, finding a parking spot and walking to Haas is significant if you aren't familiar with the process.

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Driving in downtown Berkeley is slightly hellish these days; this is why I'm so grateful to live in the central flats, with A.C. Transit's #51B bus two blocks away; it bears us, so to speak, within a few blocks of Haas.

I did write Owen, and will post whatever useful info he might communicate. Anyone else want to e-mail him?

owenkaminski@berkeley.edu

(If he mentions "unlocking prizes," do let us know! BearBloke's eyebrows rose three inches when I told him about this offer; being a Brit of a certain age, he was not impressed.)

it's not a big issue, but there is no where in Albany that is in walking distance to Haas

I think Cal still sells 10 packs of 10 tickets for $100 (20% discount)

In the past I've donated 10 packs for School Haas Rock and other groups (e.g. Healthcare workers) and Cal athletic dept distributes them to schools or the groups.

I haven't done this in this season because no one has contact me (they had every year in the past)

If anyone is interested in doing so please PM me

Partnering with the Valkyries is not nearly as easy as it seems. Golden State is not fully staffed up, and their bandwidth is focused on their product. They have little or no incentive to work with Cal or anyone else, and at this point, even if they did want to work with Cal, they do not have the staff to do so.

And again, we'll see what the attendance is when the games start.

As for parking, etc., if 5,000+ fans came from outside Berkeley to a Cal game, I don't think street parking would be easy to find, nor would traffic flow smoothly. But really, the natural fan base is students, at Cal and at other schools, and in very few places do students flock to women's games. (Watch an ordinary women's game on TV and see how many students are there ...)

clay, 100% partnership with any professional sports organization is not easy (fyi, one of my clients is an nba franchise) but that's what professional athletic & marketing directors do, that's not happening with the do nothing staff in the cal athletic department

and 5,000+ or even 10,000+ more fans will not be a parking issue in berkeley, espn football gameday this year vs miami wuz 60,000+ fans with no discernible traffic flow issues

bear bins, has owen kaminski responded to you??

hoop dreams, who specifically in the athletic dept contacted you in the past re: your generous donated tix purchases??

it's sad/disappointing that chancellor lyons is allowing this to happen on his watch & that this special wbb team is not getting the gameday attendance they so richly deserve

I've walked to a game when I was younger. Too old now. so I park in the underhill lot. i pay for it. For the season but you can park there for one game. a lot of visiting teams fans do.

RedlessWardrobe said:

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"As for parking, etc., if 5,000+ fans came from outside Berkeley to a Cal game, I don't think street parking would be easy to find, nor would traffic flow smoothly."

Not trying to pile on Clay, but this is really weak stuff. If you've gone to the men's games when attendance ranges from 5000 to 10,000, parking is NOT that difficult. Numerous garages within 3 blocks of Haas. I've been doing it my whole adult life, it's not that big of a deal.

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He must think a football Saturday is Armageddon.
"How do I say I don't really like the Cal women's hoop program without saying I don't really like the Women's hoop program."

mbBear said:

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RedlessWardrobe said:

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"As for parking, etc., if 5,000+ fans came from outside Berkeley to a Cal game, I don't think street parking would be easy to find, nor would traffic flow smoothly."

Not trying to pile on Clay, but this is really weak stuff. If you've gone to the men's games when attendance ranges from 5000 to 10,000, parking is NOT that difficult. Numerous garages within 3 blocks of Haas. I've been doing it my whole adult life, it's not that big of a deal.

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He must think a football Saturday is Armageddon.
"How do I say I don't really like the Cal women's hoop program without saying I don't really like the Women's hoop program."

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Honestly, mbB, that might not be fair. But again, like anything else, false narratives about anything, even Cal Basketball parking, need to be put to rest.