But as has been discussed all year here, attendance is down at regular high school games. There is significantly less interest from the public at large (not necessarily from people on here, although I would be curious if Yappi has any numbers about active users/threads for this past fall as opposed to previous years)
That would be cool. But, I definitely think Yappi's demographics are going to skew gray.
Weather, game location, or ticket price isn’t all of a sudden going to influence a person to attend who isn’t currently going to their local high school game drive to see their own team play (or two teams they don’t have ties to).
I think it affects more people than you think. If it was a home playoff game, I got to imagine a much bigger crowd as many will be in a short drive or walk from the school. While, a neutral site means both sides need to travel. Sure, the road team might not travel as much as the home side, but I think those same limiting factors that make road fans fewer also affect neutral site games for both sides.
I’ll use myself as an example. I’m in my mid 40s, and between work and kids activities, by Friday nights at 7pm, I am beat. I’m either relaxing at home, enjoying a rare evening out with my wife (if she’s not exhausted also) or stopping over a friend’s house. I didn’t attend one of the local school’s games this year and I live about 8 blocks from the stadium. I’d check in on social media and see how they were doing, but going was not on my priority list. 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have missed a game.
I totally understand that. A bit younger than you (40), but with my daughter if she went with me, it definitely lessens which game I could go to and weather would definitely affect it more. I think a big factor for younger fans is cost. I had a job 20 years ago roughly that paid $9.24/hr. With no experience or college degree. And yet, it's hard to find that now with those parameters. So, $10 tickets (if more than one going) start becoming a pricy night out. We've seen social outings drop among younger populations thanks to things like streaming video, social media, better/more popular video games, etc. $20 for two plus parking, plus travel cost, plus lost time, etc... going to a high school game in that 18-32 age range is probably not going to rank high for 'money well spent' to them.
At our age? It's everything else. It's more the energy and desire to go.
Life changes, and the younger people who grew up going to games every Friday/Saturday night like I did, aren’t as interested anymore for a variety of reasons.
Both PA and OH have done a bang up job at making attending a high school game as boring as possible. In PA, there's no noise makers, can't be shirtless, can't have signs, etc. Ohio is a little less restrictive, but if you ever listen to that opening PA announcer screed they basically expect a golf crowd.
Go to other states, and games still have the lively exciting atmosphere that are becoming harder to find in Ohio. And nearly extinct in much of PA.
Even New York has a better 'per person' atmosphere. And their solving of it is that most schools have free admission. You want to go, go. No ticket cost. No parking cost. Just go. But that's because in NY State they mostly adhere to the idea that Ohioans try to espouse as sports being 'educational' and in NY if it's educational the state will pay for it. So, it's a cost of education, not a sunk cost looking for reimbursement. Though the crowds in NY are smaller for various reasons (a lot of them are very tiny schools that co-op together that you'd rarely see in Ohio try to play individually), but the crowds are far more 'into it' even for a regular season game. And their playoffs are about as 'open' to everyone as they're now in Ohio.
