How much did a smaller Rupp Arena change things for UK basketball and its fans?
Kentucky’s stunning, come-from-ahead loss to Rick Barnes and the Tennessee Volunteers on Tuesday night closed out the 2019-20 UK men’s basketball home season.
Going from a 51-34 Wildcats’ second-half lead to an 81-73 Rocky Toppers victory left the home fans with a rather sour taste.
Looking forward, whatever postseason fate ultimately awaits John Calipari’s Cats, the current Kentucky season is assured of having been historic.
This was the first UK season since Rupp Arena’s seating capacity was reduced from the traditional 23,489 to the new 20,545. The reduction was due to the installation of chair-back seats to replace bleachers on the sides in the upper arena.
In a year when empty seats in Rupp were a predominant early-season story line, this seems an appropriate moment to look at what the reduction in seating changed in the Kentucky basketball experience and what it did not alter.
Changed: As one would expect playing in a smaller venue, Kentucky’s average home attendance for 2019-20 was down from last season.
UK averaged 20,160 fans a game this year for 18 home games (not counting exhibitions).
In 2018-19, Kentucky’s average crowd was 21,695 for the same number of home contests (UK crowd numbers reflect “tickets distributed” for events, which is a standard industry metric).
Not changed: Even playing in a smaller facility, early-season UK games against teams from outside the major-six basketball leagues (think the football Power Five plus the Big East) continued to feature substantial numbers of empty seats.
UK’s first six regular-season home games — Eastern Kentucky, Evansville, Utah Valley, Mount St. Mary’s, Lamar and UAB — were all played in November. Those games drew an average announced crowd of 19,821.
That figure, of course, does not reflect the seats that were purchased but not used for those games. There appeared to be more of those early this season than any time in my memory.
This year was the second straight season that the average announced attendance for the November part of the Kentucky men’s hoops home schedule was below 20,000. It was 19,699 last year.
Bottom line: Fewer tickets were available, yet the phenomenon of Rupp Arena being automatically full for Kentucky games regardless of the perceived quality of the opponent was not restored.
Changed: In the first 43 seasons after UK moved into Rupp Arena in 1976-77, the Wildcats led the NCAA in men’s basketball attendance 28 times.
That will apparently not be the case for 2019-20, although Kentucky is closer than one might have expected.
With the reduction in Rupp Arena seating capacity, there are now four college programs that play in larger arenas than does Kentucky.
Tennessee plays in the 21,678-seat Thompson-Boling Arena; the Volunteers are averaging 18,854 entering Saturday’s final home game against Auburn.
North Carolina plays in the 21,750-seat Dean E. Smith Center; the Tar Heels averaged 20,103 fans this season (starting with UNC, all teams mentioned have completed their home schedules).
Louisville plays in the 22,090-seat KFC Yum Center; the Cardinals averaged 16,658 fans this season.
Only Syracuse, which averaged 21,992 fans a game this year in the 34,616-seat Carrier Dome, has beaten UK’s home average of 20,160 fans.
Not changed: Two factors independent of the seating capacity in Rupp Arena continue to predict Kentucky home attendance.
One is the conference pedigree of the opponent.
UK’s average attendance for home games against major-conference foes in 2019-20 was just below capacity at 20,352.
For non-major conference opponents, Kentucky had an average attendance of 19,858.
The second factor that most influences UK attendance is what day of the week a game is played.
For games on Saturday, UK drew an average crowd of 20,372. On games played on all days other than Saturday, Kentucky averaged 19,990.
This continues a trend. In 2017-18, Kentucky’s average attendance for its five Saturday home games was 23,253. For 2018-19, the Cats averaged 23,288 for seven home, Saturday dates.
Changed: Last season, Kentucky announced four crowds above Rupp Arena’s then-capacity of 23,489 — Kansas (24,387), LSU (23,490), Tennessee (24,467) and Florida (24,456).
Counter-intuitively, this season in a 20,545-seat Rupp, UK only announced one crowd higher than official capacity — Auburn (20,638).
Not changed: Common sense would tell you that an arena that can hold “only” 20,545 would not be as loud as one that had room for 23,489 screaming fans.
Well, maybe.
But maybe not.
Admittedly I did not compare decibel-meter readings of Rupp Arena crowds from before and after the seating reduction.
What I know is that when Kentucky unleashed that withering 20-3 run to erase a 20-11 Auburn lead in the first half last Saturday, the “Rupp roar” sounded as robust as ever to me.
