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Early Season Attendance Analysis

Early Season Attendance Analysis

Whose got fans showing up in droves this season, so far?

October 07, 2025

After a week of the shivers and more coughing than I care to share, I’m back on the wagon and here for some college sports finance analysis. Appreciate those of you that reached out with well wishes. I’m not letting those 3 kids of mine keep me down. So we back up.

Today we’re looking at:

Home attendance - I got ahold of attendance data! I’m going to do some basics here, but it’s a building block for the future
Football Sankeys - you asked for more team’s football operating budget sankeys. And I’m gonna deliver. B1G & MAC Conference team sankeys are at the end.

Pour a drink. Get comfortable. Let’s get into it.

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Attendance Data

I have to give a shoutout to KC Smurthwaite on Twitter, who started sharing some game attendance data. He helped me find this data and I’ve been playing with it. https://x.com/KcSmurthwaite/status/1973569202096316756

NCAA Stats.
— KC Smurthwaite (@KcSmurthwaite)
2:02 AM • Oct 2, 2025

Considering that ticket revenue is one of the 4 major revenue categories that make up pool revenue (ie funds that count towards the salary cap and can be distributed to student-athletes) attendance is a very important metric. Now that I have this current/historical data, I’m going to start digging into some in-depth analysis. For now, I have a quick bar chart on this past week’s attendance.

What I see in this chart is that, unsurprisingly, the big programs draw the most fans. I’ve got to start coloring these charts by which schools are in the AP 25. I had to go all the way to #7 on the chart, Nebraska, to find a game that didn’t have a top 25 school involved. I think, obviously, we’d have to start looking at what % of the stadium is filled as schools breaking 75k-100k are just plainly playing in stadiums that dwarf many of the other schools. That doesn’t let some of those schools on the bottom off the hook (how is NIU so low when they’re supposedly so big/important they’re abandoning the MAC!?)

Next week I’ll start looking at week-over-week, year-over-year, season leaders, and other disaggregations so we have a real clear picture of which schools are the biggest draws. Consider this an appetizer.

Sankeys, sankeys, more sankeys!

I’ve also continued, at many reader’s requests, producing sankey charts of football program’s operating budgets. This week I made the charts for the Big Ten & MAC. I posted them on X just now but you can also scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see them too (CTRL+F the school name if you want to skip ahead to a specific school). Here’s the X post if you want to go there:

After last week's first release of football operating budget sankeys, readers requested more. Who am I to say no? Here are the charts for @bigten and @MACSports.
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— NILnomics (@NILnomics)
3:30 AM • Oct 7, 2025

🔉 What I’m Listening To 🔉

I’m always on the lookout for anyone breaking down college sports and especially the business side of the industry. Here’s this week’s best listens:

Sportswise - this episode had the former Executive Director of the NFLPA De Smith on. I found his thoughts at the end of the episode around college sports to be interesting. Worth your time.
Trustees and Presidents - caught up on two episodes this week that I think you’ll want to hear. This episode with the CBO of Elevate will - cause a reaction in you. Whether you think college sports is overdue for commercialization or are afraid it’ll end the sport as you know it - this is worth a lesson. I shuddered a bit when he spoke about ‘leakage’ and what to do with student sections. The next episode was with some lawyers advising colleges on NIL. I found the part about school’s hesitance to put liquidated damages into student-athlete contracts (ie buyouts) eye opening.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading this week’s issue.

I was still sick for a bit of this week so it was a long recovery. Appreciate the kind words from many of you. I’m coming back with more articles this week and next to make up the lost time. Keep an eye out! Thanks again for your time. Now finish your beverage 😀

Until next time,

Greg Chick, PhD

Data Analyst

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NILnomics is an independent data-driven newsletter uncovering the real numbers behind college sports finances with sharp insights, clear visuals, and exclusive datasets. Please send any thoughts, questions, or feedback to me at [email protected] and please follow me on X @NILnomics. Don’t forget all our data is available on Kaggle, code on GitHub, and FOIA documents on GoogleDrive. See you next week!