Mike Lewis
Mike Lewis

Goizueta Business School’s Mike Lewis, associate professor of marketing, and Manish Tripathi, assistant professor of marketing, have again made headlines for their research on sports marketing. U-T San Diego recently published an article titled “Aztec football fans best in non BCS world” which highlights Lewis and Tripathi’s ranking of the best football fan bases from all the non-automatic qualifying conferences.

The article describes how the home crowd always appears sparse at San Diego State University football games due to the size of their stadium. Despite averaging 20,560 in turnstile attendance in 2012, two-thirds of the  60,000-seat Qualcomm Stadium remained empty.

Manish Tripathi
Manish Tripathi

Lewis and Tripathi surprisingly found, however, that Aztec football fans are more enthusiastic than most people might think. SDSU’s fanbase came out of their study ranked No. 1. based on a model that “measures fan support over the last 10 years, while controlling for team quality”.

With regards to business and marketing, the pair concluded, “The thing about San Diego State is that it receives fairly consistent support even when the team struggles.  The best and most illustrative comparison is between Boise State and San Diego State.  Over the last decade, Boise State has won about twice as many games as San Diego State, but only has a slight advantage in terms of attendance and revenues.  What does this mean?  It means that San Diego State has a very valuable asset in its customer base (and could likely benefit by investing more in the program)…Boise fans should probably be grateful for the program they have, and should provide more support.”

Click here to read the entire article in U-T San Diego.

-Meredith Farahmand