Boston College v Georgia Tech @ Aviva Stadium 2016

Dodge

Great day out. Far more Americans travelled than I expected. The atmosphere was great too, particularly from the Georgia Tech crowd

A good tight ending helped. That's my 3rd NCAA game here and probably the most enjoyable

leinsterdude

Yes agree, was a good game, there was loads of Americans, especially GT, good day out.

helimachoptor

Was on the GT side and bumped into 3 people I worked with which was a nice surprise.

GT fans we sat with were in great spirits though about 6 of them went at half time

helimachoptor

Also Eddie george like my college football tweet .

Today is a good day for Heli.

Also heli is proper smashed

Kivaro

helimachoptor wrote: »

GT fans we sat with were in great spirits though about 6 of them went at half time

I can assure you that they didn't go home.

godtabh

never watched a full football match before (highlights plenty of times!). Game started slow but it was class ending.

Had americans with us (a work outing and big clients of ours) and they were calling it all game. One thing there were asking about was the fly by. Was there meant to be one?

jack presley

godtabh wrote: »

never watched a full football match before (highlights plenty of times!). Game started slow but it was class ending.

Had americans with us (a work outing and big clients of ours) and they were calling it all game. One thing there were asking about was the fly by. Was there meant to be one?

According to the program there was supposed to be a parachutist dropping the ball in but I presume the bad weather put a stop to that. No mention of a fly by though.

prinzeugen

jack presley wrote: »

According to the program there was supposed to be a parachutist dropping the ball in but I presume the bad weather put a stop to that. No mention of a fly by though.

Could not post up as this morning WiFi was off.

2 fly pasts were planned. Aer Lingus 41 secs into US anthem and Air Corp during Irish anthem.

Weather stopped both.

31,507 at kick off so about 33,000 attended if you include the late arrivals.

Shedite27

Loved the day, great setup with each team having a side, the bands were great. Well organized, of course we'd have loved bigger teams but that wasn't going to happen. Probably 35k there (based on years of going to Ireland matches). Less than usual due to a lot of factors.

Weather ruined the pregame, and probably the game if I'm being honest.

BC kicker lost it for them, should have been home and hosed much earlier. They were far better team, on both sides of the ball. The GT triple threat was well under control, but couldn't finish drives.

Final drive tho, what can you say. Converting a 4th and forever with the game on the line, ya kinda knew it was game over.

I was on the BC side of the field but the GT side looked livlier and move crowded. Had a great day. Hope it comes back, but not sure there's much more we can do to get back to the days of 52k fans (Notre Dame and Penn State)

Nervous Wreck

Great game. All in, I thought Boston had the better game but GT really worked in the last 10 mins. The 73 yard run from Boston was unreal.

okidoki987

My thoughts on the day:
Rain and cold, to a lesser degree, put a stop to a lot of the activities and would certainly have culled a lot of walk ups to the game.
The GT band were magnificent, BC were a lot quieter, maybe if they had a few more drummers?
The GT crowd were loud and vocal compared to BC and seemed to have a lot more seats filled in the stand Lower, Premium & Upper.
Good crowd for an over priced college game.
There's a limited number of people who would go to the game not knowing the rules but I'm sure a lot of these were put off at the prices €100 for premium, €70 for good seats mid stands etc.
I know there were tickets sold at €20 to get "bums on seats" but would think pricing it a bit lower would increase the audience.
Bit hacked off when I saw the there were tickets at over half the price during the week, 2 rows back from mine, compared to what I had paid.
Game was mainly a non event for 3 quarters due to both teams mostly playing a running game, to some poor kicking from BC and to poor kicking when on 4th downs from both teams, 4th Quarter was exciting for the non fans.
GT just about deserved the win overall.
Felt sorry for the cheerleaders as they were getting lashed on and the cold was tough to try and keep going for that length of time.
Overall well worth going to but tickets could be a little cheaper and that way the organisers could get more people in for a better atmosphere.

Killergreene

Incredible game . Hope it comes again soon
Where's the lemon who claimed it was going to be cancelled. Very quiet isn't he. Two fingers to the iAfa and all their money hungry cronies.

Anyone reckon when we will get another one? Must be great income for are lingus

Nervous Wreck

Killergreene wrote: »

Incredible game . Hope it comes again soon
Where's the lemon who claimed it was going to be cancelled. Very quiet isn't he. Two fingers to the iAfa and all their money hungry cronies.

Anyone reckon when we will get another one? Must be great income for are lingus

It's an annual thing.

Killergreene

Is that confirmed ?
Do we know who is coming next year?

prinzeugen

Killergreene wrote: »

Is that confirmed ?
Do we know who is coming next year?

There will be a game next year. Venue and teams TBC..

Killergreene

prinzeugen wrote: »

There will be a game next year. Venue and teams TBC..

Any links to read about it.
Can't find anything on google

endacl

That explains all the Americans in town today!

Nervous Wreck

Killergreene wrote: »

Any links to read about it.
Can't find anything on google

It's not scheduled yet. It's an annual thing. Chill.

Killergreene

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

It's not scheduled yet. It's an annual thing. Chill.

But I'm just wondering when it got announced as being an annual event ?

It's been taking place every other year since 2012

Fr Tod Umptious

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

It's an annual thing.

I certainly don't believe that.

It all depends on whether the promoters made enough money from it and whether they or someone else reckons another game is feasible.

Would I be correct in saying that this is the third different group to organise this event since 2012.

Dodge

The other thing to note is that the crowd is somewhat secondary in terms of money making. There are loads of events aligned with the game at corporate and even political level. As long as the likes of Aer Lingus want to be involved, it'll keep happening

(And fwiw the crowd was pretty good yesterday)

GoldFour4

Enjoyed the game yesterday. I was in the GT section and it was quite lively. We were in the East stand close to the GT band and they really made it for me - were really giving it socks!

On an aside, it was my first one of these games in Ireland and it was so strange hearing Amhrann na bhfiann the whole way through without the shouting at the end!

jack presley

I have a vague recollection from around the time of the Croke Park game of it being said that it would be a bi-annual thing.

csirl

Attendance was reportedly less than 25k. RTE News announced it as c.20k last night. This is a big drop when compared with 55k for the last game. I don't think its down to the match-ups - it was expected to be a close game, which is what football fans want. The dominant team knocking up 50 points against a patsy opponent is not as attractive to fans. Given the rise in popularity of the sport, this game should have sold out or been close to a sell out.

A very big proportion of the core fan base in Europe is people who currently are, have been or are friends/family of people involved in the sport. These people should have been bankers for tickets sales. Many would go to whatever game comes regardless of the teams involved. Most didn't go this year. For the 2014 game, the game was pushed heavily by some the national federations around Europe, especially in central Europe where the sport is a lot bigger and in the UK as they are our nearest neighbours. This alone generated c.15,000 sales in 2014. This time around, football organisations refused to give information about the game to their members due to the way IAFA was treated by the organisers thus there were practically none sold to this market.

The market for these games is as follows (with the exception of ND who may bring more visitors):

15-20k visiting Americans.
20k European & Irish football enthusiasts.
10-15k Irish fans - people who watch football on TV or people who like the event/spectacle.

I think what we saw yesterday was the consequences of an organisation who alienated itself from a large part of the core fan base in Ireland/Europe by trying to ride roughshod over the sport locally rather than working with them. The compare and contrast with Croke Park could not be more stark.

We also saw this with the High school games - attendances dropped from the 1,500 to 2,800 per game range for similar events in the past to only 200-300 per game last Friday. Again, a high proportion of the attendees at these games would normally be people connected with the sport locally.

Unless the 'Aviva crew' starts reaching out and mending a lot of broken bridges (and I'm not optimistic that they have the ability to do so), future games in the stadium will struggle to attract viable audiences.

OU812

Game highlights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWyrkOUUXDg

Blut2

The weather put a bit of a dampener on arriving to the stadium, and its an awful shame the flyover wasn't possible because of it. The early kickoff wasn't great either. But otherwise that was a great day out. Really enjoyable second half, and a good crowd at it. I was in the BC stand but the GT stand looked fairly full, and there was certainly enough noise there to create a good atmosphere.

I think they probably could have had a sell-out with better weather, it not being held on the weekend of Electric Picnic, and slightly cheaper tickets. Tickets were priced just slightly too high to get the casual viewer and the other two were a bit unfortunate.

Pretty funny csirl is still putting out negative propaganda, though. Must have been annoying to see the game pulled off successfully after all that time spent on the internet arguing it wasn't going ahead!

MoyVilla9

csirl wrote: »

Attendance was reportedly less than 25k. RTE News announced it as c.20k last night. This is a big drop when compared with 55k for the last game. I don't think its down to the match-ups - it was expected to be a close game, which is what football fans want. The dominant team knocking up 50 points against a patsy opponent is not as attractive to fans. Given the rise in popularity of the sport, this game should have sold out or been close to a sell out.

A very big proportion of the core fan base in Europe is people who currently are, have been or are friends/family of people involved in the sport. These people should have been bankers for tickets sales. Many would go to whatever game comes regardless of the teams involved. Most didn't go this year. For the 2014 game, the game was pushed heavily by some the national federations around Europe, especially in central Europe where the sport is a lot bigger and in the UK as they are our nearest neighbours. This alone generated c.15,000 sales in 2014. This time around, football organisations refused to give information about the game to their members due to the way IAFA was treated by the organisers thus there were practically none sold to this market.

The market for these games is as follows (with the exception of ND who may bring more visitors):

15-20k visiting Americans.
20k European & Irish football enthusiasts.
10-15k Irish fans - people who watch football on TV or people who like the event/spectacle.

I think what we saw yesterday was the consequences of an organisation who alienated itself from a large part of the core fan base in Ireland/Europe by trying to ride roughshod over the sport locally rather than working with them. The compare and contrast with Croke Park could not be more stark.

We also saw this with the High school games - attendances dropped from the 1,500 to 2,800 per game range for similar events in the past to only 200-300 per game last Friday. Again, a high proportion of the attendees at these games would normally be people connected with the sport locally.

Unless the 'Aviva crew' starts reaching out and mending a lot of broken bridges (and I'm not optimistic that they have the ability to do so), future games in the stadium will struggle to attract viable audiences.

It's simple for me, I was priced out of the game so I decided to watch on TV instead (I know there was 30 or 35 euro tickets but from what I could see they were the tickets on literally the back row of the upper tier). The Croke Park game had 20 euro tickets which made it a no-brainer to me, especially when I'm paying for the significant others ticket as well.
On top of that (and I know I'm going to get blasted for this), I didn't think product from the Croke Park game was all that great. The game was good in the second half, but you couldn't hear what the refs were saying, the game was lost on the massive pitch and maybe I was in the wrong part of the stadium but there wasn't an amazing atmosphere. All in all it was hard to justify going from paying 40 euro for two tickets to up on 100 euro.

GoldFour4

Yeah I've no doubt it would have sold out next weekend for example. This weekend you have EP and the AI Hurling final so that's a lot of locals possibly out this weekend. Add in the bad weather and I don't think they'll be overly annoyed with the attendance. Seemed to be a good atmostphere to me anyway.

jack presley

malistheman wrote: »

Yeah I've no doubt it would have sold out next weekend for example. This weekend you have EP and the AI Hurling final so that's a lot of locals possibly out this weekend. Add in the bad weather and I don't think they'll be overly annoyed with the attendance. Seemed to be a good atmostphere to me anyway.

I think the 20k is an underestimate of the crowd too. I was surprised whenI heard that figure on the news last night. There definitely seemed more than that there.

I wasn't at the high school games but were there really only 200-300 people at those as csirl says?

csirl

Pretty funny csirl is still putting out negative propaganda, though. Must have been annoying to see the game pulled off successfully after all that time spent on the internet arguing it wasn't going ahead!

???? When did I say the game was never going ahead??

In the end of the day its all about bums on seats. The game was unsuccessful from that perspective and is the least successful of the six big NCAA games played by a considerable margin. Do you think Croke Park would have had such a low crowd?

As they say, "the customer is always right" - and the customer decided to say away from this event.