Miami basketball attendance is better than ever, so why move the arena?

COLUMN

When I became sports editor two years ago, I took on most of the men’s and women’s basketball coverage. Since 2023, I’ve covered nearly every home game for both teams, as well as countless interviews for both basketball teams and the volleyball team.

Needless to say, I’ve spent a significant amount of time at Millett Hall as a student at Miami University.

Yes, the arena is rundown and in serious need of a makeover. And yes, it’s not exactly located at a hotspot of campus. Most importantly, at least when I first seriously started covering Miami athletics, neither basketball team put out a good enough product to attract students to games.

However, something changed last year. The men’s team played its best season in 27 years and went nearly undefeated at home. The RedHawks made it to the Mid-American Conference (MAC) championship for the first time since the 2006-07 season, and the hype on campus was reflected by the attendance numbers late in the year.

Since 2014-15, Miami men’s basketball has ranked in the bottom half of the MAC for average attendance per home game. Last year, Millett saw an average attendance of 2,655 at home men’s basketball games, ranking fourth in the conference.

So far this season, the RedHawks have performed even better than last year’s magical campaign. Miami remains the only undefeated team in the nation at 24-0 and ranks No. 23 in the AP Poll.

As a result, attendance has skyrocketed this year. The RedHawks average 3,349 in turnout at home games and recently broke the record for attendance at Millett, when 10,640 congregated for the men’s game against Northern Illinois University on Jan. 31 for One Miami Day.

I’ve been to games at Millett with less than 500 people in the crowd, and I’ve now been to ones with more than 10,000. There is no doubt that the energy, the electricity and the noise has a huge impact on Miami’s success.

Last year, the university announced plans to build a new arena on Cook Field, citing Millett’s location as a reason for low attendance in recent years.

Again, Millett’s location is usually not attractive. One would have to drift away from any significant building in Oxford to enter the nearly 60-year old building, where they’ll be cramped in too-small seats and see a deteriorating building that needed renovations 20 years ago.

However, this season has proved that the location of Millett does not have as significant an impact on attendance as winning does.

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For the first game of the spring semester with students back on campus, the university needed to transport students with buses from campus to Millett. Despite the freezing temperatures, the stockpile of snow that cancelled the first two days of classes and the already-long trek to Millett, more than 9,000 people — mostly students — packed the stands on a Tuesday night to watch Miami take down the University of Massachusetts Minutemen.

Even more people filed into Millett the following Saturday. The women’s basketball team set a program record with a crowd of 5,034, and the 10,640 people that came for the men’s game surpassed the previous attendance record at Millett by six.

With the team shattering attendance records seemingly every game, it’s weird to me to continue seeing plans for the new arena on Cook Field.

It’s already an unpopular location given the significance and use of Cook by students, but both teams’ successes this season have also shown that the university’s reasoning is wrong. The location of the arena where the basketball teams play doesn’t have as big of an impact on attendance as we thought.

Instead, the university and athletic department would be better served directing their attention to the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) of the basketball teams to afford better athletes. If the basketball team is able to continue on this impressive trajectory, Miami will continue to pack Millett, increasing the revenue the team brings for the University.

While I don’t think the RedHawks needed a national ranking and an undefeated status this late to deserve their attendance numbers, it makes sense that more people will go to games if the team is doing well, particularly since it has won more games than any other team in the nation.

@kethanbabu_04

babukc2@miamioh.edu