See how other Missouri Valley Conference teams announce their participation

Because the Missouri Valley Conference does not have a policy on how schools announce their participation in sporting events, member schools differ in their methods when their numbers are released.

There are several different methods by which Valley schools announce their numbers, leading to allowable inflated numbers and some that appear lower when avoiding estimates. The NCAA allows schools to advertise attendance based on turnstiles, tickets sold or estimates.

Here are some of the different methods used in the league:

Missouri Valley Conference Tournaments

A league spokesperson said the MVC calculates its attendance at conference tournament events by using digitized ticket data and adding credentialed media, school officials, staff and volunteers — and not by “distributed tickets.”

Belmont

A Belmont spokesperson said Belmont uses scanned ticket numbers and student IDs to advertise its home basketball presence. Belmont is a private school and additional data could not be collected.

By exclusively announcing the number of tickets and student IDs scanned, Belmont is reporting a lower number when it could be reporting more. Instead, advertised attendance is near the bottom of the league, when it is ahead of more than half of public schools in scanned tickets and turnstile counts.

Evansville

Evansville sells out and sells out tickets and then adds 500 to the announced attendance, according to an Evansville spokesperson. The spokesperson said the 500 represent non-digitized workers and individuals without fines. Evansville is a private school and additional data could not be collected.

Southern Illinois

Southern Illinois adds the number of tickets distributed to the number of unscanned workers. This method is permitted and causes the Salukis to announce a higher number.

If Missouri State announced its attendance in a similar fashion, it would have announced about 3,400 per game rather than the 3,000 it announced was its average attendance at the end of the year.

SIU was still among the best in the league in number of tickets scanned per contest. About 64% of tickets distributed throughout the year were scanned, compared to 50.8% in the state of Missouri.

UIC

Illinois Chicago adds up the total tickets distributed to staff, teams and officers, bands and spirit squads, and the student count to get the announced participation.

A pair of notable data obtained from UIC was the 1,908 turnstile count for the February 3 game against Southern Illinois, the highest of the year, while also surpassing any ticket sweep count for Missouri State. . UIC also differentiated between turnstile count and student count, having as many as 741 students present for its debut and only six for its December 21 game against Incarnate Word.

Valparaiso

A Valparaíso spokesperson said it takes the number of tickets sold and adds up the number of student IDs scanned for entry into games. It was not possible to collect additional data because Valparaíso is a private school.

Missouri Valley Conference digitized ticket data for 2023-24 season

2023-24 Missouri Valley Conference announced participation

Wyatt D. Wheeler is a reporter and columnist for the Springfield News-Leader. You can reach him by phone at 417-371-6987, by email at wwheeler@news-leader.com or X at @WyattWheeler_NL.

This article originally appeared in the Springfield News-Leader: How Missouri Valley Conference basketball teams announce participation