Faced with a sharp decline in men’s basketball attendance, University of Louisville athletic director Vince Tyra is in the market for new marketing initiatives.

He would prefer something viable but also vetted, a way to fill seats that has already produced results somewhere else.

“Pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land,” Tyra said Sunday evening, a few minutes before the Cardinals' 90-73 victory over Miami. “I’m looking to see what every school is doing and trying to figure out if it would work (here) or not.”

Tyra is not panicked, but he is plainly concerned by a national trend that has been felt disproportionately on the local level. While attracting live spectators has become a growing challenge across the sports spectrum, the problem has been more pronounced of late in U of L’s revenue sports of football and men’s basketball.

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Some of this surely reflects the recent competitive slippage of Louisville’s bellwether sports programs. Some of it can probably be traced to the scandal fatigue of local fans and national trends that include tax reform, cultural change, advances in television technology and expanding entertainment alternatives. Possibly, the KFC Yum Center has lost some of its showroom sheen after eight years of operation.

Yet while the specific impact of individual causes can be difficult to quantify, the overall direction is indisputable. Last season marked the first time in 23 years that Louisville failed to rank among the NCAA’s top five schools in average home attendance for men’s basketball. The Cards’ announced average of 16,883 was the school’s lowest since 1983-84.

This season, thus far, has been worse.

Through its first 10 home games, which included rival Kentucky and Big Ten power Michigan State, U of L’s announced attendance averaged 15,816 per home game. At that rate, Louisville would record its lowest home attendance average since the 1980-81 season, the first year of the post-Darrell Griffith era.

And though many major sports have experienced erosion in their in-person audiences — MLB attendance has dropped 11 percent since 2008; Football Bowl Subdivision attendance slipped 10 percent from 2008 through 2017 — U of L basketball’s decline has been more dramatic.

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Six years since U of L averaged 21,571 spectators during its (vacated) 2012-13 championship season, the Cardinals have experienced an overall attendance plunge of more than 26 percent per game. Put another way, for every four fans who followed Russ Smith, Peyton Siva and Luke Hancock en route to their net-cutting ceremony in Atlanta, fewer than three remain.

Just two years ago, the last season of Rick Pitino’s coaching tenure, the Cardinals averaged 20,846 at home. That was the eighth-straight season U of L ranked third nationally in average home attendance, trailing only Kentucky and Syracuse.

Last season, with an interim coach and an ongoing FBI investigation of recruiting irregularities, Louisville ranked No. 6 nationally. Not bad, all things considered. But not nearly the same level of support U of L players have come to expect.

“I’m sure there’s a percentage of fans who we may have lost,” Tyra said. “It’s obviously going to be a challenge to find our way back from that. ... We’ve got to be better. I don’t think there’s ever a time when you can take people for granted. You’ve got to be a program that fans can engage with.”

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To that end, Chris Mack and Scott Satterfield, U of L’s first-year men’s basketball and football coaches, respectively, have both shown a welcome instinct for inclusiveness. Until they win big, however, filling seats could be a struggle.

U of L has tried to reverse the trend through a variety of initiatives including the sale of partial season packages and the implementation of dynamic pricing policies in which customers pay a premium for high-demand games and can buy tickets to less desirable matchups at a relative discount.

New this year is a Perfect Attendance Perks loyalty program. Season ticket holders who have at least one ticket scanned at all 18 home games are eligible for a 10 percent discount on 2019-20 season tickets. Additional incentives are available to those who have tickets scanned to at least 15 games.

Still, the slide continues. Except for the Dec. 29 rivalry game against Kentucky, Louisville’s largest announced crowd for a nonconference game was 16,249 for Robert Morris. Sunday's ACC opener drew only 15,050.

Vince Tyra, accordingly, is open to suggestion.

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Tim Sullivan: 502-582-4650, tsullivan@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @TimSullivan714. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/tims.