Value City Arena atmosphere needs improving, Ohio State’s Ross Bjork says

• Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork knows “the atmosphere can be better” at Value City Arena.
• The future of the arena, as well as that of St. John Arena, are long-term questions for the athletic department.

There is work to be done to get Ohio State men’s basketball to where the program believes it should be, and it’s not strictly tied to the on-court product.

Amid a stretch of three straight years without appearing in March Madness, the Jerome Schottenstein Center will open its doors this year for its 27th season as the home arena for the Buckeyes.

To a degree, the lack of recent success and the condition of its home arena are connected.

Last year, the Buckeyes saw a slight uptick in attendance, ending a three-year trend of diminishing numbers. Still, it ranked ninth in the Big Ten with an average announced crowd of 11,578. That put OSU behind, in order, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Purdue, Michigan State, Maryland and Michigan.

Ohio State was also ninth in 2023-24 with an average of 10,938 fans per home game. That made it the least-attended season in Value City Arena’s 26-year history.

That contributes to a sense of growing apathy that athletic director Ross Bjork said he’s aware of.

“Yeah, we sense that,” Bjork said. “We know we can be better. We know the atmosphere can be better. It’s all about (on-court) consistency. The fans … when they come to a game, they’re going to expect consistency in the performance.”

The Buckeyes are investing in changing up the in-arena experience. They will play on a newly designed, predominantly gray court this year, and a new scoreboard is also in the works. Lighting changes are being made to further put an emphasis on the hardwood, and Bjork said the department is studying what can be done from an in-game promotional or simply a musical standpoint to liven up the atmosphere.

“What we have to do is, separate from the game itself, have the atmosphere in the Schott just be better again,” Bjork said. “We’ve got to just make Ohio State basketball exciting and fun. Of course, winning helps, and that’s a great marketing plan, but at the same time, there are some elements that I think that we can do that make the atmosphere better.”

The size of the arena doesn’t help. Value City Arena can be loud when it’s packed to the rafters, but those types of crowds have become the exception to the norm in the last decade. There’s no way to make the arena smaller, and the Buckeye Nuthouse student section will remain behind the team benches, but Bjork referenced more choreographed roles for them as one possibility to create a better home-court advantage.

“I think it has some good, really, really good bones to it,” he said of the arena. “Now we just need to tweak around the edges, and I think we can make it a lot better.”

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Improving the in-arena experience would also help Ohio State improve its bottom line. In the new revenue-sharing era of collegiate sports, the Buckeyes will be paying out the maximum of $20.5 million in the form of increased scholarships and direct payments to student-athletes in four programs: football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and women’s volleyball.

Putting more fans in seats would help the department’s financial stability. Last year, Bjork said the men’s basketball program had around 9,000 season-ticket holders.

“Every dollar matters,” Bjork said. “We think we can have better attendance and be more consistent. A good season ticket base, could we get that over 10,000? Can we get that up to where you know it’s just more of a built in revenue stream?”

Any sort of return to the former home of St. John Arena is an impossibility. Not only is the playing surface permanently unsuitable due to a water leak during the COVID-19 pandemic, but university development plans for the future no longer include the historic arena.

Bjork said there’s no new update on the arena’s fate but added that what eventually happens there could have ramifications for Value City Arena, which houses the men’s hockey program. The women’s hockey program plays at the OSU Ice Rink adjacent to St. John.

“We definitely need and we’re pursuing a new ice hockey arena that would be 4,000-5,000 seats that would be for men’s and women’s (hockey),” he said. “Once you get that project off the ground, then then that’s where you can really look at, OK, what happens?”

Removing the need to play hockey inside Value City Arena would open up some more seating possibilities that could help create a more natural basketball feel, but any such developments are nothing more than concepts and projections at this point.

Ohio State men’s basketball beat writer Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @cdadamjardy.bsky.social or on Twitter at @AdamJardy.

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