New Mexico State men's basketball forward Kaosi Ezeagu stepped to the free-throw line at the KFC Yum! Center on Nov. 26 with two chances to put the Aggies in front of Louisville in the final 1.5 seconds of regulation.

He missed them both.

Maybe it was bad form — Ezeagu is a career 50.4% shooter from the charity stripe, after all. Maybe it was the timeout his head coach called before he approached the line. Or maybe it was the noise.

"We just prayed that he missed those free throws," U of L guard Skyy Clark said after the Cardinals (5-6, 0-1 ACC) emerged with a 90-84 overtime victory. "The crowd was the (thing) that got him off his game."

Going off scanned ticket numbers obtained via an open-records request, that crowd was, at the time, the smallest of second-year head coach Kenny Payne's tenure: 4,473.

Now, imagine what the arena would have sounded like had even half of its 22,090 seats been occupied.

That kind of showing would have been considered underwhelming in the days of yore. That it has only occurred once during Payne's first 24 home games at the helm of his alma mater — when 11,077 tickets were scanned for a Feb. 18 win over Clemson — does a lot of the heavy lifting in explaining why the 57-year-old Mississippi native's future with the program is uncertain heading into 2024.

The crowd for Thursday's rivalry game against No. 9 Kentucky (8-2) should be the largest since Payne started his quest to restore Louisville to national prominence. But there's a decent chance blue will be the dominant color in the Yum! Center with the Wildcats playing like a team primed for a deep NCAA Tournament run and the Cards about as far as one can get from doing so — sitting third to last among high-major teams on the NCAA's NET rankings.

Don't get it twisted; attendance for teams across the country hasn't been what it used to be in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite all of the success U of L football enjoyed during head coach Jeff Brohm's stellar first season, it sold out L&N Stadium (capacity: 60,800) only twice, ending a four-year drought in the process.

And yet, the uncharacteristically poor turnouts for the athletics department's flagship program — one that was, for years, atop Forbes' lists of the most profitable in college hoops — are directly tied to the uninspiring performances that have become commonplace under Payne's guidance; with six of his 15 home losses coming at the hands of mid-major opponents and seven being decided by double digits. The impact goes beyond just empty seats, too.

"When we win, they're going to come; and then they'll get to see the real Louisville," Payne said after a victory over Coppin State on Nov. 15, for which only 4,699 tickets were scanned. "But we got to do our part. I embrace that."

Louisville basketball attendance, by the numbers

Across the first 24 home games of the Payne era, U of L averaged 6,434 tickets scanned. When subtracted from the average announced attendance (12,046), you get an average difference of 5,612 tickets.

Only seven games during Payne's tenure have had announced crowds of 12,000 or more — this despite a May 2022 report from The Courier Journal that said Louisville had sold 539 new men’s basketball season tickets for his inaugural season, up 25 new sales from May 2021.

The largest crowd of the 2023-24 campaign thus far was 11,583 (6,447 scanned) for a Nov. 29 win over crosstown foe Bellarmine.

Not every ticket is scanned at the Yum! Center, but most are at this point of the digital age.

U of L Athletics spokesperson Zach Greenwell said the department announces its attendance based not on tickets scanned but tickets sold, which is a common practice among NCAA Division I programs.

"Both numbers remain vital data points for us financially and as a gauge of the current fan experience," Greenwell wrote in a statement sent to The Courier Journal via text message.

Neither number accounts for non-ticketed attendees, including the pep band, game operations staff and media.

What do you think of Kenny Payne? Submit your letter to the editor here.

Louisville averaged 5,257 tickets scanned through its first six home games of the 2023-24 season. It did not respond to an open-records request for the scanned ticket attendance of Sunday's rout of Pepperdine before this story published; but the turnout was more of the same, which is to say it wasn't great by the Cards' old standard.

Between the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, the last before COVID-19 restrictions limited capacity to 15% at the arena until the start of the 2021-22 campaign, announced attendance never once dipped below 14,000. The fewest tickets scanned during that stretch was 8,930 on Nov. 13, 2018, vs. Southern.

During the 2021-22 season, which saw the university part ways with head coach Chris Mack after an 11-9 start only to have Mike Pegues go 7-11 in an interim capacity down the stretch, there were only two announced crowds smaller than 12,000 — although the Cards were averaging 7,553 scanned tickets heading into their final three home games.

Through the first six home games of 2023-24, average announced attendance (10,769) is down 1,728 from 2022-23 (12,497) and 2,457 from 2021-22 (13,226).

The Courier Journal sought comment from Louisville athletics director Josh Heird for this story. Greenwell said via text Heird did not have any at this time.

When Heird was asked after U of L parted ways with Mack about the role attendance played in making the decision to do so, he said, "Everything's a factor when you make a decision of this magnitude.

"As you look at just the tenor of the program and what was transpiring, you take all of that (into account)," he added. "You take all the information that you have to make the best decision that you can."

Assessing Louisville basketball attendance's financial impact

Patrick O'Shea has been "just an employee here, man" at the O'Shea's near Second and Main streets, less than a block from the Yum! Center, since the Irish pub opened in 2010.

A lifelong Cards fan, whose livelihood is impacted by the performance of the teams that call the arena home, O'Shea has seen the good, the bad and, most recently, the ugly as far as men's basketball attendance is concerned.

Patronage on game days, he said, is "down from years past — about the same as (it was) last year, which was pretty low."

According to a recent study by Chicago-based Hunden Partners commissioned by Louisville Tourism, the Yum! Center has generated nearly $942 million in total spending within the Louisville economy, or an average of nearly $122 million per year when excluding the years impacted by COVID-19 pandemic (2020-21), between the 2015 and 2023 fiscal years.

"Over said period," the study says, the arena "on average generated $29.1 million in annual earnings supporting an average of 584 full-time equivalent jobs annually just within the Louisville Metro area."

When success was more abundant on the court, O'Shea said, the pub would have all three of its floors opened for men's games — even on weeknights. When he spoke with The Courier Journal ahead of Louisville's Nov. 29 matchup against Bellarmine, which tipped off at 8 p.m. on a Wednesday, it had two floors open on account of the Knights' local appeal.

"Times are definitely different," he said, pointing specifically to the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on fans' viewing habits. "People get a 70-, 80-inch TV at home and (don't want to) spend the money to park and all that other jazz.

"There’s a lot going into it; but, at the end of the day, the fans are going to come out if they win," he added. "Once that happens again, I think we’ll reap the benefits, for sure."

Until then, O'Shea's and other establishments along Whiskey Row can survive on other events happening at the Yum! Center. According to Hunden Partners' study, the arena's total number of events has "rebounded to 84% of pre-pandemic levels."

Overall attendance has not, however, with numbers from FY2022 and FY2023 at 64% and 68%, respectively, of FY2019 attendance. "This is largely due," the study says, "to reduced attendance per game for University of Louisville men’s basketball games, which is often tied to each season’s team performance."

The Yum! Center generated $9,059,111 through men's basketball ticket sales and $2,222,326 via in-arena spending during FY2023. Taking the pandemic-influenced FY2021 ($1,542,151, $347,218) out of the equation, those were the low-water marks of the study's revenue breakdown dating back to FY2015.

Coming in second to last was FY2022, which generated $9,588,957 in ticket sales and $2,509,311 via in-arena spending from men's games. Between FY2015 and FY2020, the venue raked in, on average, $11,719,178 in ticket sales and $4,494,539 through in-house spending.

The Louisville Arena Authority assesses a $2 surcharge for most tickets sold to every men's basketball game, according to a lease between the two parties amended on July 20, 2017. The lease says U of L Athletics can increase the surcharge to no more than $8 per ticket.

The first $2 of the surcharge falls under tenant payables. The department retains any amount between $2.01 and $8.

Copies of U of L Athletics' operating budgets for 2022-23 and 2023-24 obtained by The Courier Journal reveal its take.

In the 2022-23 budget, the department proposed $10,114,200 in men's basketball ticket sales based on a projection of $9,720,470 from 2021-22. In the 2023-24 budget, it proposed $9,762,200 based on a projection of $8,924,105 from the year prior.

This year's budget forecasted a 2% ($315,800) decrease in men's basketball revenue — from $24,285,100 (21%) in 2022-23 to $23,969,300 (19%) in 2023-24 — but said it would be offset by a $376,800 increase from women's basketball, a $112,000 increase from volleyball and a $54,000 increase from baseball.

Volleyball, specifically, has been a boon to downtown businesses, O'Shea and Lissa Ramos, the general manager of Sidebar At Whiskey Row, told The Courier Journal. Across five matches at the Yum! Center during the 2023 season, coach Dani Busboom Kelly's team, which typically plays at L&N Arena (capacity: 1,331), averaged an announced attendance of 8,909.

Louisville earned the right to host two of those games by securing for the second straight year an NCAA Tournament regional site, which brought three other teams, and their fans, to the city with money to spend.

"Volleyball games have done the best (business) for us as far as a sporting event goes," O'Shea said.

Added Ramos, "Volleyball is absolutely insane."

Football, meanwhile, had the department proposing $15,985,800 generated through ticket sales in the 2023-24 budget based on a projection of $10,732,790 from 2022-23. Its slice of the revenue pie jumped from 39% ($45,287,600) in the 2022-23 budget to 44% ($54,436,100) this year.

The intangible impact of Louisville basketball attendance

Clark couldn't explain it.

During a postgame radio interview after Louisville's win over New Mexico State, Cardinal Sports Network analyst Bob Valvano asked the sophomore transfer guard why the team could play so inspired during an 0-2 run in the Empire Classic at Madison Square Garden but come out indisputably flat and need to rally from eight points down with 1 minute, 18 seconds to go in regulation to force overtime against a mid-major opponent on its home court.

"Something just — I don’t know if it was because we were in the Garden, the bright lights," Clark said. "We just all felt good; we all just felt confident. We were energized, ready to play."

Look past the Cards' 21-game road losing streak and their most recent performance away from the Yum! Center, an embarrassing loss at DePaul, and you'll see a team that, in Year 2 under Payne, has looked more comfortable at a neutral site or in enemy territory.

"There are no excuses about why you don't play with a fire, why you don't play disciplined, why you don't play together," Payne said Nov. 28. "From my standpoint, I don't care where we play. We better play hard; we better play together; and we better play disciplined basketball."

When asked about the fight he and his teammates showed during the first half of a 75-68 loss at Virginia Tech on Dec. 3, Mike James credited Cassell Coliseum's announced crowd of 8,925.

"It creates excitement for the game," the redshirt sophomore told The Courier Journal. "Seeing all the people out there, how loud the gym is, makes you want to play (hard)."

Ten days later, U of L fans who stuck around until the bitter end of a lopsided loss to Arkansas State erupted in a chorus of boos as the final seconds ticked away. If Payne was the primary target of their jeers, it was lost in translation.

The moment stuck with Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, who was visibly emotional afterward and said Sunday he used it as motivation to post a second consecutive double-double during the bounce-back win over Pepperdine.

"That’s something I've never experienced," he said. "I never want to feel that way again."

Reach Louisville men's basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville basketball: KFC Yum! Center attendance under Kenny Payne