When the University of Hawaii prepared to enact a mandatory athletic fee for students it braced for significant turnouts for football at Aloha Stadium.

The athletic department said it expanded the student section by more than 40 percent, setting aside 5,000 seats for football, and pledged to "try and find more when the demand is there," as an official told the Board of Regents in 2010.

But as UH prepares for a sixth season amid the lowest per game football attendance average, 907 in 2014, there is a renewed focus on trying to find ways to raise interest.

"I’m very excited about some of the efforts being put into increasing attendance by a lot of people," athletic director David Matlin said, citing plans for Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship, student and community involvement. "And we’ll continue to try and brainstorm on ways to improve in that area."

Students pay a $50 per semester athletic fee, the lowest in the 12-member Mountain West Conference, that, depending upon enrollment fluctuations, brings $1.5 million-$1.7 million to the athletic department annually. In return, the students may attend home football games or any other UH athletic event by showing an ID.

But since student seating was implemented in September 2010, four months before UH began requiring the athletic fee, student attendance for football has averaged just 1,023 per game.

On its best nights UH has needed little more than 2,000 seats for students. On its worst one, the penultimate game of the 2014 season against Utah State, just 198 students from a Manoa campus enrollment of 19,507 turned out in the 50,000-seat stadium.

Men’s basketball, which attracted an average of 315 fans per game in 2014-15, its second-best average in five seasons, and women’s volleyball, which drew 233, its third highest, have been among the most popular sports for student attendance.

"I’ve gone to several (football) games and have looked up at the student section…and there is nobody there," said Susan Yamada, a UH graduate and executive director of PACE at the Shidler College of Business.

"They have buses that will take them there and they can get in (through the athletic fee), but there is nobody there," Yamada said. "I’m sure the lack of wins has something to do with it, but I also seem to think that the students just aren’t in the habit of going anymore."

In some ways they mirror the trend among spectators as a whole. Into the early 1990s turnstile attendance routinely averaged more than 40,000, with student and faculty sales occupying an allotment of as many as 12,500 seats annually. In the 1980s the line to purchase student season tickets often snaked around Cooke Field, with some students camping out overnight.

But in 2014 overall turnstile attendance averaged 23,772 per game and the students averaged 907 per game.

The fear at UH isn’t just that low student turnouts will lessen the atmosphere at games, but also that students who don’t attend are not likely to become fans after they graduate.

UH isn’t alone in facing declining student numbers. The national trend has become such a concern that the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators commissioned its first study and spent much of its convention last month discussing the topic. Its findings showed that even marquee schools with successful programs are struggling to get students to the stadium and, in many cases, keep them there.

Two-thirds of students surveyed said watching games "is more comfortable at home" and a quarter said they leave before the game is 75 percent complete.

At UH the student-led Manoa Maniacs have been responsible for promoting athletic events among students with support from the athletic department. Eight percent of the proceeds from the student athletic fee is turned back to students, half to the Maniacs and half to the Student Athletic Fee Committee, and they decide how the funds are spent for promotion and student activities.

Genevieve Bradley, a championship diver and 2014-15 chair of the Manoa Maniacs, said "it has been a struggle reaching out to students who normally don’t attend athletic events."

So much so, Bradley said, that this past year members and some athletes went door-to-door in the dorms, "knocking on doors to try to get the word out and make people aware of the various events."

Bradley said social media is being increasingly employed and student tailgates in a student-specific area of the stadium parking lot were set up. "We got good feedback from the tailgates, so that is something that should be continued," she said.

The Maniacs set up a "UH Rewards" website where students earned points for attending events and bringing UH athletics to social media, including posting photos from athletic contests and using the #Manoamaniac hashtag. Points could be redeemed for prizes, including back packs and duffle bags.

The cost was $12,000 for the website.

"That was quite a chunk of change and, so, there is a leaning to do some other things with the money," Bradley said.

At PACE, this year’s Manoa club challenge — an annual competition open to clubs on campus — "is to come up with the most creative ways that they can attract more students to the game," Yamada said.

This year it will be focused on the homecoming game.

"What we try to do at the entrepreneurship center is to get students to think outside of the box," Yamada said. "So, if they can be stimulated to think about those ways in which they can get their fellow students out to games — or even fellow club members — it should be fun."

Yamada said, "The whole idea is that if (students) come and, if they have a good time, then it becomes something that they would want to do again and again."

STUDENT-FANS
Average student attendance at UH football, women’s volleyball and men’s basketball games