Well that’s it college basketball fans. March Madness has finally come to a close and what an epic finale it was. Virginia took home their first ever NCAA Championship title after defeating Texas Tech in a battle of defense requiring overtime. The game was played at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis which holds a staggering 65,000 fans. That number is actually 20 times the attendance of your average NCAA game according to research done by GCU. Which begs the question. Which colleges have the best and biggest fan bases across the league?
Grand Canyon University
When it comes to the teams with the highest attendance per game, the University of Kentucky was the leader for men’s basketball, reaching a stadium high of 23,207 between 2011 and 2018. Syracuse also ranked at the top of the list with almost 23,000 fans coming out to show their support. And when it comes to women’s basketball, Tennessee was the pack leader filling the stadium with 11,024 fans on average. Louisville was also in the top three attendance leaders for both men’s and women’s teams.
Grand Canyon University
Now, just mentioning total attendance isn’t really fair because some teams have a much bigger student body and much bigger stadiums. So what about teams that reach or even exceed stadium capacity? For men’s basketball, Wichita State, exceeded their max capacity by 119 fans on average. . No women’s team exceeded their capacity, but several came close. Teams like Notre Dame, UConn, and DePaul had an average percentage of over 88% capacity.
Grand Canyon University
Overall, men’s teams did bring in more fans than women’s, but they also had more teams and played 336 more games each year. When combining the two leagues, we see an average attendance of 3,357 fans across 10,658 games played. One thing is clear from these numbers. No matter the league or where you’re from, college basketball fans love coming out to support their favorite teams.