AD Tom Bowen on Memphis football's declining attendance, fans' complaints, schedules

In his seven years as Memphis athletic director, Tom Bowen has seen the Tigers football team go from afterthought to one of the nation’s rising programs.

The university extended coach Mike Norvell’s contract through 2023 this month after the Tigers won their second consecutive AAC West championship and reached a bowl game for a fifth straight year.

While the program has risen on the field, it hasn’t reflected that in the stands. In 2018 Memphis' average attendance declined for the third consecutive year.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Commercial Appeal, Bowen discussed issues regarding attendance as well as his optimism for the Tigers' upcoming schedule.

Memphis football attendance concerns

Bowen made waves before this past season when he said his goal was for Memphis to average between 40,000 to 45,000 fans.

He clarified the number was not something he expected to achieve in a year but a long-term goal he's had since he arrived. Yet since Memphis averaged 43,802 fans in 2015, the Tigers have slipped further from that goal.

The Tigers averaged 30,178 fans, their lowest since 2013. According to actual attendance with tickets scanned, Memphis averaged 17,806.

“We’re always concerned about the fact that attendance isn’t growing the way we want it to grow. But at the end of the day, we got to continue to put the best football team (on the field),” Bowen said. “I think what we’re building is tradition and we’re building excitement and it’s going to take a little more time but I think people are really starting to get behind us.”

Memphis is coming off its best five-year stretch in program history, which includes an AAC championship in 2014.

Success, however, hasn’t kept the program immune from attendance problems that have plagued college football. While NCAA attendance figures haven’t been released from 2018,  attendance in 2017 had its largest drop in 34 years.

It’s something Bowen knows firsthand as a member of the NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee. While he felt this season was a solid year attendance wise, he knows that Memphis and other schools are competing with fans who seek cheaper options to watch games and have more games to watch on television.

He added there have been discussions about bringing back pregame activities to add to the Tiger Walk and continuing to push fans to purchase season tickets. Bowen did not say what those activities would be.

 “It’s critical for us to keep aggressively marketing, aggressively pushing forward, re-evaluating what worked and what didn’t work,” said Bowen, “We’re going to do some dynamic ticket pricing this season which we haven’t done in the past which we’ll announce soon.”

Declining attendance is another reason the AAC has pushed for a better media rights deal when the current one expires in 2020. Memphis president David Rudd is a part of the negotiations with AAC commissioner Mike Aresco, and the conference is in an exclusive negotiating window with ESPN, according to an interview Bowen did with Sports56 WHBQ on Monday

With seven of the 12 AAC schools reporting a decrease in attendance from the 2018 season, there’s hope that revenue from a new deal will easily exceed the $2 million each school is currently receiving.

"If you’re going to have a situation where you sell all your media rights, you need to be compensated in a way that it helps offset loss of ticket revenue, so that’s why our media deal is really important for the AAC because my colleagues are seeing the same thing," Bowen said.

Are there problems at the Liberty Bowl?

After the season opener with Mercer, some fans took to social media to complain that their tickets weren’t scanned. Some also said similar issues occurred at other games.

Bowen said it’s something the school is taking a closer look at, especially with a large crowd expected for the 2019 opener against Ole Miss.

“I think it’s the use of the scanner and everybody trying to get in the stadium at the exact same time,” Bowen said. “Imagine 40 people with their ticket out trying to get scanned, you got one person there with a scanner trying to scan them in. It was clearly just a lot of people trying to get in at the same time and people just said hey and didn’t get their tickets scanned, just walked in and sat down.”

Liberty Bowl Stadium and Fairgrounds general manager Thomas Carrier said it's something he's worked closely with the university on.

"I wouldn’t say we saw it firsthand but when issues are reported, we’re always going to address it," said Carrier, adding that he became aware of it through complaints on social media.

Carrier added that his staff is maxed out based on the number of scanners handed out by the university, which owns the ticketing equipment and maintains the system.

Still, it's doubtful that unscanned tickets alone account for a gap of 86,604 between tickets sold and scanned in 2018. According to documents obtained by The Commercial Appeal, it's the smallest gap between scanned and sold tickets over the past five seasons.

In 2016, the difference was 115,727 but that number has declined over the past two seasons  Tickets scanned in 2018 were 59 percent of Memphis’ announced attendance, which is the second-highest in the last five years after the 2015 season (59.5 percent)

Part of the problem, Bowen said, is the Liberty Bowl only having four entrances. When fans try to enter, it puts a greater demand on the ticket scanners.

The Liberty Bowl is the third-largest stadium among AAC schools with a capacity of 58,318 but has the fewest entrances among the five biggest stadiums used by conference teams.

ECU, which seats 50,000, had nine entrances available last season, and UCF had 18 for a stadium that seats 44,206. USF and Temple, which both use NFL stadiums that seat over 65,000 fans, have six and four entrances, respectively.

Memphis has the same number of fan entrances as UConn and Houston, both of which have stadiums that seat 40,000.

For the Ole Miss game, Bowen said the plan is to open the Liberty Bowl entrances earlier to better prepare for a larger expected crowd and count tickets accurately.

“We’ve gotten better and better every year since I first got here (in 2012),” Bowen said. “I feel like whatever snafus we had last year and people getting into the game and either their tickets getting scanned or not getting scanned, we believe working with Thomas Carrier and the people there it will all be corrected.”

Future Memphis football schedules

Memphis’ 2019 schedule, which was released last week, should offer an early boost to attendance opening with Ole Miss. When the teams met four years ago, over 60,000 tickets were sold and it remains one of the 10 largest crowds in Liberty Bowl history.

Although the Tigers will host Navy on a Thursday night and face Cincinnati in their regular-season finale on Black Friday, both games could attract strong crowds. Memphis sold over 40,000 tickets for Navy in 2017 and Cincinnati is coming off an 11-win season.

Bowen said on Sports56 this week that he was pleased with scheduling 10 Saturday games after playing a nation-leading four games on Friday. But he’s said there's a  challenge of putting together attractive non-conference games now that Memphis has risen in prominence.

The Tigers will host SEC teams in 2021 and 2023 in Mississippi State and Missouri, respectively. Bowen said he’s been trying to schedule aggressively for 2024 and beyond but like most top-tier Group of Five teams, it's been tough finding Power Five opponents willing to come to Memphis.

“When we first got here (in 2012), everybody wanted to play us. People aren’t really raising their hand to come play us,” Bowen said. “So that’s the other challenge is when you start to really build a very good football team and a very good program and a very good coaching staff, a lot of coaches don’t want to come to Memphis and get beat.”

Scheduling quality opponents can help reverse attendance issues as can as the Tigers remaining one of the AAC’s top teams. But ultimately, Bowen said it’s up to him and his marketing staff to bring more fans to the Liberty Bowl.

“We have to do a better job of making it very fun to be there and be part of the crowd bigger than yourself to enjoy being among thousands as opposed to among a few friends,” Bowen said.

More:Memphis football: Mike Norvell completes coaching staff for 2019 season

More:How Memphis football's 2019 recruiting class addressed key needs

DOWNLOAD THE APP:Get more Memphis Tigers news from the Commercial Appeal on your mobile device

You can reach Tigers football beat writer Evan Barnes on Twitter (@Evan_B) or by email at evan.barnes@commercialappeal.com