Friday Night Semis / Saturday Title Game at BET - MSG

[BigEastPhil]

The crowd was about 16,000 for Friday's semis.

Good crowd but nowhere near a sellout as the corners in the 200's were empty

Crowd was loud during the Nova - Providence game however about 1/2 the crowd left early during the GTown game.

It's nice the BE is drawing decent crowds to the BET - however should the ACC or Big 10 penetrate MSG - I would be shocked if the place wasn't sold out.

Furthermore, the crowds at the BET will be nice and intense if the core schools -Nova; GTown; St Johns etc are involved - however the BE's biggest nightmare will be a Friday semi or Saturday final which stars Creighton; Xavier; Butler; DePaul etc - for which the fanbase just isn't there - though my understanding is that Creighton had several thousand fans last year for their inauguaral visit to MSG and to see McDermott in his senior year.


This post was edited on 3/14 11:58 PM by BigEastPhil

 

[bac2therac]

Re: Friday Night Semis at BET - MSG

I bet the secondary market has taken a huge hit. Probably plenty of tix available tonight for Villanova fans to make the place Mainline North

 

[RUfinal4]

Re: Friday Night Semis at BET - MSG

this hurts. In the days when the BE was 14 + teams the Semi's was the biggest night for drawing fans since you had 4 fan bases that were into it. With a smaller league where the teams are more geographically dispersed, it is tougher. They really need St John's, Seton Hall, and Nova to represent in order to draw fans. If St Johns had beaten Providence and played last night they would have helped get a sell out.

In the old BE you had the Cuse, Notre Dame, and UConn fans showing strongly. Plus Rutgers and Pitt fans helped with selling tickets too. Replacing with Dayton, Creighton, Xavier, VCU, and Butler doesn't really help in selling tickets in NYC.

 

[BigEastPhil]

Re: Friday Night Semis at BET - MSG


Actually Providence had a lot of fans last night and I would say they had more fans than St Johns on Thursday.

When Providence is good, they bring down fans to MSG...always have.

 

[bac2therac]

Re: Friday Night Semis at BET - MSG

How were the concessions

 

[BigEastPhil]

Re: Friday Night Semis at BET - MSG


Concessions at Barclays are much better.

Saturday Night crowd at MSG for title game was very disappointing.

My guess was 13,000 - 14,000.

With crowds like this, I cannot see MSG renewing with the BE once the contract terminates.

I can see MSG rotating with the ACC; Big Ten and maybe BE every three years as the ACC and Big 10 should sell out MSG.

Only way I can see MSG renewing with BE if crowds stay consistent with what I witnessed this tourney is if UConn somehow rejoins the BE - then MSG will sellout for sure.