Unpopular Sports

There is much conversation about how we can get more fans to certain sporting events and how the majority of people flock to the main four events; Men’s Basketball, Football, Hockey and Baseball. I can tell you about this first hand as I played Women’s Lacrosse through high school and college. At the high school level, my team was three time state champions and ranked second among western states. I can remember about 20 of my friends coming out to watch me in the State Championship but other than that, we had about 40 fans per game, our parents. As a coach the same fan support is still around. We were an unranked team and made it to the state tournament- at our semi-final game we had no media coverage and maybe 200 fans combined for both teams come out to watch. When I got to college it did not get any better, in fact it probably got worst because most of us on the team did not have our parents at all the games. We had a car wash one year to gain interest and we all wore our lacrosse jerseys (which were tank tops and skirts) to get people to stop by. The game following the carwash brought in no new fans but instead attracted a large crowd at our next fundraising party. At a school when we have an average basketball team, a slightly disappointing football team, I figured we could gain fan support since we went into my second season ranked # 21 in the nation. The Arizona State football team was ranked #21 at the start of this season and it was the first time in a few years that they filled the student section. When our football had the most losing season that ASU had ever seen, we (the Lacorsse team) was ranked # 21 and we could not get fans to come out to our games. As much as we want to blame it on the success of the team- that is not what was attracting fans to a sport that is not too well known of. We have talked about how we can get more fan support for sports that people just do not really care about, and I do not think the athletes are the ones to make the sport more popular. My personal thought is that everyone needs to be involved. We used to host clinics for youth players and so on a few occasions we had at least 100 kids and parents come out to watch our game. There are ways that players can promote their sport but also administration needs to get involved. Maybe promote incentives for going to the less popular events, or selling tickets in packs. For example one women’s lacrosse ticket, one softball ticket and a football ticket at a discounted price. Maybe if people were more aware of a sport and had more knowledge about the sport it would gain more interest.

Alexandra Mitchell
KIN 577