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Part Three: The Constituents
Like a Venn diagram, the concentric circles of Georgetown fan support share disparate traits but converge around one scenario: winning.
It's the kind of scenario which hasn't come together since the 2006-07 season, when a Big East tournament win foreshadowed a run to the Final Four, waking up the echoes of what being a Georgetown fan once was. (The now-illusory 2021 title, seen by none in person, and its subsequent discharge in the first round in an empty gym in Indianapolis, counts for neither example.)
If winning is a habit, so is losing, and these last ten seasons have taken a visible toll on the fan base. Attendance at Capital One Arena is down by half from 2012-13, and vast swaths of empty seats are visible for all to see. If you remember when Georgetown was consistently ranked and could sell tickets downtown, you're likely, at least, in your mid 30s; those who once planned their March schedules around the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament, considerably older. In this sense, the ask before Ed Cooley and the greater Georgetown support network is different than what he inherited at Providence, where the Friars and the P-Bruins are the only games in town, and buying tickets for PC is an act of civic duty. Entering the 2023-24 season, what is now known as the Amica Mutual Pavilion is sold out for every game, joining sold out arenas at Creighton and Xavier. Entering the 2023-24 season, the Hoyas haven't sold out a game since Syracuse played in the Big East conference.
It's time for a serious and organized effort for Georgetown to reconstruct a relationship with its constituents, and not in the passive ways of the past. If Ed Cooley wants Capital One Arena to be a hotbed of support, he needs to be front and center in this reconstruction, and not coincidentally, to win big. For now, the former is easier than the latter.
Let's start with students. It's been a rough one, two, or three years to be a fan among the current returnees when it comes to basketball, and for the incoming Class of 2027, it's all new to them. Waiting until November to introduce basketball is too late. It needs to start the weekend they arrive, if not sooner.
Orientation Week is a blur for many inbound students. What was once a simpler three step process (move-in, figure out where things are, and meet girls) has become a four or five day event filled with convocations, events with parents, and all sorts of time commitments in the first week. Whatever the setup, basketball in general and Cooley in specific needs to be visible that weekend and evangelize the power of student support for 2023-24.
Maybe it's players helping with move-ins. Maybe it's a portable regulation hoop set up in Red Square where students can try a shot with the coaches. Maybe it's a free ticket with the purchase of a GUGS burger, with the new head coach cooking a few burgers on a Friday afternoon. Or maybe it's as simple as the staff visiting dorms, Yates, dining halls, or even a few classrooms with a message of welcome and a call to action--in this case, to be among what Cooley ambitiously has titled the "4100 Club".
That number wasn't pulled out of thin air--it was the approximate undergraduate population of Providence College when Cooley was coach there. While PC never filled the former Providence Civic Center with every student, it nonetheless built one of the best student sections in the conference. A sale of 4,100 student tickets would be remarkable at GU (that amount represents 60 percent of the main campus undergraduate population), but it would be a visible sign of support. Getting more students committed to attending, and incenting them with all matter of options - free food/drink, swag, giveaways, etc. are the table stakes. Building the base will take time, and that's why an early start is critical.
Let's not limit the 4100 Club to the main campus. The graduate and professional students may not have the schedule to attend games mid-week, but could be targeted to buy Saturday games. The vast School of Continuing Studies cohort, the working adults downtown who want that Georgetown degree in a unique way, study just a few blocks from Capital One Arena and can be just as loyal to the team as an economics major in New South. With as many as 20,000 students across the various campuses, suddenly the number 4100 isn't as daunting.
The same weekend-only or partial-plan approach could prove appealing to faculty and staff. These employees are no less loyal to the University and bringing them together for a weekend game or two offers opportunities as well.
Even in the halcyon days of fans at McDonough Gymnasium or even Capital Centre, the crowds were not merely students. Alumni have been part of the base for decades, but unless they are season ticket holders, recent seasons have seen a visible erosion in their turnout and in their contacts from and to the University. The DC area has over 40,000 Georgetown alumni, but fully 95 percent of them aren't season ticket holders. Simply sending them to the Ticketmaster web site won't cut it. There needs to be a pipeline by which alumni are cultivated, segmented, and driven to purchase tickets based in interest and affinity--if not for a season package, then for some combination of tickets which could grow as interest does. Whether that's through the Hoya Hoop Club, the DC Metropolitan Club, or the Alumni Association as a whole, this is an audience GU cannot ignore, but often does.
However alumni choose to associate--by school, by class, by affinity, or simply in small groups of classmates that have stayed connected over the years, attending home basketball games should be a frictionless process that is ultimately worth their time and cost to attend. More on this subject in the next part of this series.
So too, a further discussion is needed or reconnecting with the local fan base of the Washington area. For many years, the city fans for GU basketball were seen as from Northeast DC, Montgomery, and Prince George's counties, but that may not be the case today. A recent study on ticket sales through the VividSeats.com app identified a county by county rundown of which school sold the most tickets through their app. Georgetown was the top collegiate seller not in Montgomery or PG, but in Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William counties. Is there a messaging effort for Northern Virginia?
There are enough data sets available to the ticket office to know the ticket patterns, by sale and time of purchase that GU has access to, or could get access to where the local ticket holders are settled and when they are responsive to purchase tickets. The messaging may be different, but this is the time to make it clear that with new leadership comes new opportunity, and the local community is just as much a part of this rebuild as anyone else.
Sports habits for the area have changed remarkably since the days when this was a Redskins town and everyone else was an afterthought. Georgetown may be out of sight for right now, but it need not be out of mind as an affordable sports option to local residents. Messaging is the key.
Once Georgetown has sent the message, it needs to close the deal, and that means attendance. In Part 4 of this series, a candid view of the home court atmosphere: then, now, and in the years to come.
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