The NCAA released attendance figures for the 2016-17 season on Tuesday as Kentucky, Syracuse and Louisville were the top three draws in college basketball last season.
Big Blue Nation came out in full force once again as the Wildcats averaged 23,461 fans per game. Syracuse averaged 21,181 fans per game while Louisville brought 20,846 fans to each home game.
National champion North Carolina finished fourth with 18,067 fans per game.
Men’s college basketball regular-season attendance was slightly down from the 2015-16 season as 24.4 million fans watched Division I games last season (down about 379,770 from the previous season). While the regular season was down, the NCAA Tournament sold 16,595 more tickets in 2017 compared to 2016.
The Big Ten led the conferences in overall attendance at 12,235 per game during the regular season, followed by the ACC (11,257), SEC (11,080), Big 12 (10,427) and Big East (10,014).
One interesting thing to note is that the Big Ten’s conference tournament attendance was sixth among conference’s after the league made the controversial decision to move to Washington D.C. for last season. The Big Ten averaged only 13,281 fans per session as the Big 12 (18,972), Big East (17,556), ACC (16,543) SEC (15,023) and Pac-12 (14,485) all had better conference-tournament attendance figures.