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UCLA Basketball: With the team struggling, UCLA is giving away tickets

By Mike Regalado

WESTWOOD, CA - JULY 17: View of atmosphere at 50K Charity Challenge Celebrity Basketball Game at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion on July 17, 2018 in Westwood, California. (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images Idol Roc)
WESTWOOD, CA - JULY 17: View of atmosphere at 50K Charity Challenge Celebrity Basketball Game at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion on July 17, 2018 in Westwood, California. (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images Idol Roc) /
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The UCLA basketball team is going through a bad stretch, especially head coach Steve Alford, which has caused fan outcry for his termination. In the meantime, UCLA is trying to entice fans to watch the Bruins by giving away free tickets and it does not look like it is working.

UCLA basketball is in the midst of a three-game losing streak and because of that, fans are apathetic to show their support for the program which has not been living up to expectations… for this season and the last five.

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The Bruins are 7-5 right now. They lost by double digits to Michigan State, North Carolina, at Cincinnati (by 29, the third-worst loss in Alford’s tenure), and against Ohio State this past Saturday at the CBS Sports Classic. Four nationally televised games.

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The Bruins also lost by two to Belmont in their last home game, which not many saw because it was on the Pac-12 Network. Still, it speaks volumes about what is happening with UCLA basketball, whether you have seen them or not.

With UCLA progressively getting worse as the season rolls on, it will be hard to get fans to Pauley Pavilion to watch a product that is not worth the price of admission and that says a lot, especially since UCLA is giving out free tickets to the Bruins’ next game against Liberty on Saturday.

Chances are, you might have received one of these via email. This is because UCLA is having a hard time getting people to watch UCLA basketball, even before this three-game skid started.

Here are the attendance averages from the previous three seasons: 8,620 (2017-18), 11,183 (2016-17), and 8,073 (2015-16). Attendance at Pauley Pavilion this season has been well below that: 7,673. If you subtract the 12,985 that went to the Notre Dame game (which still couldn’t fill the 13,800 seats), the average drops to 6,913.

Clearly, fans are not rushing to watch this team and it looks like it is getting worse. The fact that it is winter break and a lot of students and fans are out of town did not bode well for attendance to begin with, but now that the Bruins are having trouble finding success, added with fan disapproval of the coach, the house that Wooden built could be a ghost town through the rest of the season.

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Unless something drastically changes (massive improvements in production or a certain termination), UCLA will not have a lot of fan support in the near future.