Wisconsin Football, Basketball Both Among Big Ten's Elite in Attendance Despite Down Seasons

Despite fielding a football team that just had its worst season since George H. W. Bush was in office and a basketball team that hasn't made it out of the first weekend of March Madness since 2016, Badger nation remained extremely faithful throughout the 2025-26 campaigns for both programs.

Wisconsin football ranked fifth in average attendance in the Big Ten last season at 76,057 behind Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State and Nebraska.

Wisconsin basketball, meanwhile, checked in at second in average attendance in the conference at 15,230, behind only Indiana. Illinois, Purdue and Michigan State rounded out the rest of the top five.

Wisconsin is the only Big Ten school to rank inside the top five in average attendance in both football and basketball during the 2025-26 seasons.

Why it's impressive

Wisconsin's basketball program should always draw a sizable crowd. The Kohl Center is a proper arena, the 18th-largest in Division-I and the fourth-largest in the Big Ten behind Ohio State, Maryland and Indiana.

What's more, the Badgers have been fun to watch on the hardwood in recent seasons. Their new brand of up-tempo, three-point barrage offense is one of the best watches in the nation, and there's been no shortage of stars to come through head coach Greg Gard's program as of late.

Still, as opposed to some of the other schools that populate top of the conference's average attendance list, Wisconsin isn't exactly a "basketball school" the same way that Indiana, Illinois, Purdue and Michigan State all unequivocally are.

Football is another story. Not only has the Luke Fickell era been an abject disaster in Madison, it's not even like the Badgers have lost games in entertaining fashion. Wisconsin has gotten blown off the field more times than I can count off the top of my head under Fickell, and last season, it had the fifth-worst passing offense in the entire nation. Three of the four teams with worse passing yards per game marks deploy triple option offenses.

Fans were actively and audibly chanting "Fire Fickell" every chance they got last season. And Camp Randall did look bare at times; Wisconsin's attendance dropped 7.43 percent last fall. Even so, Wisconsin ranks near the top of the Big Ten and inside the top-20 nationally.

Why it matters

Wisconsin football fans storm the field after their team beat #23 Washington. | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Football and basketball, colloquially referred to as the "revenue sports" at D-I institutions, fund the entire athletics operation. Sure, Wisconsin gets a lot of money from the Big Ten's TV partners, but physical ticket sales are a serious source of revenue as well, especially for football.

When the football program plays poorly, it becomes a negative feedback loop for attendance. The team is worse, so less fans show up, so less money is made, so less can be spent on the roster, so the team gets even worse...and so on.

Programs need to scrape together revenue any way they can in this day and age, with the price of a competitive roster going up every single year in both football and basketball. Wisconsin athletics has a myriad of problems at the moment — many of them fiscal — but it's at least nice to know that comparatively, the Badgers are still among the class of the Big Ten in football and basketball attendance.

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