Attendance number continues to dip for UIL Boys, Girls Basketball Championships

Despite more state championship games, the attendance is about 40% less than it was when the tournament shifted to San Antonio in 2015.

During the first two weekends in March, the girls and boys basketball finals were held at The Alamodome.

This year, a total of 24 champions were crowned and nearly half of those went to teams in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, with 11.

The success of Dallas, particularly in the larger classes, was noticeable. In the last six girls titles, 4A to 6A, Dallas won five championships. On the boys side, the last 8 titles were won by DFW areas teams.

Longtime sports writer Clarence Hill Jr. quoted a tweet that probably resonated with some who made the 5-hour drive from the DFW area to San Antonio.

Damn

I didn’t know you did this

Great minds https://t.co/UEz2T9yV6a
— Clarence Hill Jr (@clarencehilljr) March 15, 2026

Drop in numbers

There has been more than 40% drop in numbers from the first year in 2015 to this past weekend. If you add in the pre-COVID finals in 2019, the numbers show an even bigger drop in attendance.

However, there are many reasons why the numbers are dropping, but if you award literally twice as many championships than previous years, shouldn’t there be a spike?

This is only the second year for two different champions per class. With that change last year, the state semifinals were played on neutral site locations.

Up until the 2024 state championships, you had semifinals at the Alamodome and then the finals. So, part of the reason for the decline is less people coming to San Antonio in theory, with only two finals, but with two championships per conference, you still have four from say Class 1A.

In 2015, the girls big schools — 4A to 6A — averaged 4,708 fans. That same year, for the boys, each of the three largest classes drew more than 10,000 fans.

The girls numbers went up slightly in 2019, but perhaps aided in some part by having a San Antonio team in the Class 5A finals. The average for the three largest classes was 4,728 and each of the six games drew at least 3,500 fans.

The 2019 boys finals include a pair of future NBA players in Duncanville’s Jahmi’us Ramsey (Sacramento Kings, Toronto Raptors) and Dallas Oak Cliff Faith Family’s Jordan Walsh (Boston Celtics). The Class 4-6A games averaged 10,985 fans, with the 4A and 6A games both eclipsing 11,000 fans.

This year’s finals were grouped by classes on the online box scores and the final four games totaled a little more than 14,300 fans.

Graph of fans — This chart shows the UIL attendance for UIL finals in 2015, 2019 and 2026. The girls are the first three numbers on the left and the boys numbers are on the right. | UIL/Flourish

Overall, there was 5,343 fans for the boys finals and 2,573 for the girls championships, according to information provided on box scores.

But, from 2015 numbers compared to 2026 numbers alone, the boys attendance is down 44% and the girls is down 42.4%.

So what?

Does the UIL need to explore looking at a new location? The finals were in Austin until 2014, so it would remove some of the drive for DFW fans. Should it be rotated to different big venues? Maybe rotate to different towns with big venues, think Big 12 or SEC schools, perhaps?

Or towns with big venues that double as a home for pro teams? Dickies Arena lost the American Athletic Conference Tournament to Birmingham after the 2025 season. They filled one of those dates of what would’ve been the American men’s conference with a Bow Wow and B2K.

Perhaps rotating from San Antonio to Dallas to Houston to Austin to Fort Worth could work. Or perhaps it’s just a sign of the times, where fans aren’t going to big events like they did in the past.

Attendance for the football went up 19.8% this year for 12 championships. But this was the third year in a row that fewer than 200,000 fans collectively attended the state finals.