So being an European I really only look at and follow the professional leagues, but I’ve been told that actually college leagues like football and basketball are super huge. If I even looknat the statistics, of the 10 largest arena’s in the world, 7 or 8 spors are taken by college football stadiums. So just wondering, how big is it? Would you say bigger than the professional league (in a sense of viewers and attendance).
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I’ve heard it compared to the football clubs in the UK. Living in Ohio, it’s easier to get tickets to a local professional game than it is for a OSU game. It really depends on the college division too.
College sports are huge. Especially in certain places. Places that don’t have professional teams are often where college sports are especially big. It’s a very cultural thing I think, with the rivalries, the pageantry, the traditions, etc. Nobody I know is a big fan of the NFL for example, but lots of them scramble to buy season tickets for their college team.
Edit to add: go buckeyes!
Answering as someone from Texas who worked in sports broadcasting at the high school and college levels for close to a decade.
Yes the college level is huge not as big as the pro level but I would say pretty close. And yes the stadiums are quite large. You could be forgiven for mistaking them for pro level stadiums.
In the Southern US, its more popular than the NFL
College football and basketball are massive – right in line as far as popularity with the pros. And depending on location, the college teams are even more popular than the pros.
Nobody I know talks about them. But they don’t talk about professional sports either. Guess they’re just not big sports fans
Totally depends on the region. In the southeast college football is the most popular sport by a significant margin, generally speaking. There’s a saying down here, “Football is our religion and the Stadium is our Church”. Check out this clip from just a couple weeks ago of the University of South Carolina’s pregame to get an idea of the spectacle https://youtu.be/jy3bYArtSLg. The stadium seats 80,000 fans and we routinely sell out our games. This is but just one example though, given that there are better teams and bigger stadiums out there. College football viewership numbers are only surpassed by the NFL. I’m pretty sure a few *regular season* games every year beat out NBA Finals and the World Series.
In North Carolina and Kentucky college basketball reigns supreme.
In *most* of the rest of the country pro sports are more popular. The northeast for sure.
More Viewers- rarely except in a state or regional context because the attention is very divided for concurrent games. Playoffs and National Championship are competitive with pro sports in general in Football and Basketball, not other sports. More Attendance-all the time.
>Would you say bigger than the professional league (in a sense of viewers and attendance).
Nation wide? No.
But Regionally? Yes in some cases.
As to how big is it?
The Conference (think League) that my Alma Mater is part of just signed a 7 year $8 Billion. Yes Billion. Dollar media contract. Where a football game will be played every week on 3 of the 4 major T.V Networks in the country (CBS, Fox, NBC).
That’s more money (yearly and per school) than most European football leagues/teams make.
Likewise ESPN currently holds the rights to the 4 team College Football Playoffs which determines the National Champion.
They pay $460M a year for the 3 games. That’s $150M+ A GAME.
The contract is up for renewal soon and they will expand it to include more teams (from 4 teams to 12).
That new deal is projected to go for $2.2B a year for the 11(?) matches. That’s $200M a game.
For the record the NCAA already makes $870M a year from their basketball tournament. Which they then distribute to the participating conferences/teams.
All in all, in the future, my University’s sports team is expected to make around $120M a year from media rights alone.
That doesn’t include sponsorships, apparel deals, ticket sales, etc.
tl;dr : It’s MASSIVE
I’m from Minnesota, and for us college hockey is a huge deal. Hockey is to us what football is to Texas and the South. More pro hockey players have come out of Minnesota than any other state in the U.S. Minnesota colleges have produced more pro hockey players than any other state. There are currently 45 players in the NHL that are from Minnesota. The #2 state is New York, with 22 players. HALF of what Minnesota produces. A total of 292 Minnesota-born players have gone to the NHL.
Minnesota colleges and universities hold more national hockey titles than any other state in the US, and it’s not even by a close margin. The most heavily scouted single event in all of amateur hockey in North America is the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament.
Edina High School, is considered to be one of the biggest hockey dynasties in the state of Minnesota. Their new high school hockey arena complex is being built for $30 Million, and that’s on top of $12.4 Million in upgrades in the last decade. All told that’s over $42 Million spent just on hockey for one metro suburb with a population of 53,318 residents. There are very few sports teams in the US for any sport that have their own $42Mil stadium. The few that do are probably select football teams in Texas or the South.