Here are how other Missouri Valley Conference teams announce their attendance

With the Missouri Valley Conference not having a policy for how schools announce their attendance at sporting events, member schools differ in their methods when their figures are released.

There are several different methods Valley schools announce their figures leading to permissible inflated numbers and some that look lower when avoiding estimates. The NCAA allows schools to announce their attendance by turnstile account, tickets sold or estimates.

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

Missouri Valley Conference tournaments

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

Belmont

A Belmont spokesperson said Belmont uses the scanned number of tickets and student IDs to announce its home basketball attendance. Belmont is a private school and additional data could not be collected.

By exclusively announcing the number of scanned tickets and student IDs, Belmont reports a lower number when it could report more. Instead, its announced attendance ranks near the bottom of the league when it ranks ahead of more than half the public schools in scanned tickets and turnstile counts.

Evansville

Evansville uses tickets out and sold and then adds 500 to its announced attendance, according to an Evansville spokesperson. The spokesperson said the 500 represents unscanned workers and non-ticketed individuals. 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 permissible and leads to the Salukis announcing a larger number.

If Missouri State announced its attendance similarly, it would have announced around 3,400 per game instead of the 3,000 it announced its average attendance was by the end of the year.

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

UIC

Illinois Chicago adds the total tickets distributed to the working staff, teams and officials, band and spirit squads and the student count to get its announced attendance.

A pair of notables in obtained data from UIC was the 1,908 turnstile count it had for its Feb. 3 game against Southern Illinois, its highest of the year while also beating any ticket scan count for Missouri State. UIC also differentiated between turnstile count and student count, having as many as 741 students in attendance for its opener and as few as six for its Dec. 21 game against Incarnate Word.

Valparaiso

A Valparaiso spokesperson said it takes the number of tickets sold and adds the number of student IDs scanned for entry at games. Additional data could not be collected because Valparaiso is a private school.

Missouri Valley Conference scanned ticket data for the 2023-24 season

Missouri Valley Conference 2023-24 announced attendance

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

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: How Missouri Valley Conference basketball teams announce attendance