The Herald’s Data Desk analyzed average game attendance data from fall 2021 to spring 2025 across 13 varsity sports.
The attendance at the annual Harvard-Brown football game may give the impression of a die-hard Bruno fanbase, but The Herald’s Spring 2025 poll found that only 46.7% of students report attending at least one Brown Athletics match per semester. According to the Fall 2025 Poll, only 6.4% of students rated their school spirit at the highest level on a five-point scale.
“I wouldn’t say we have a strong sports culture at Brown,” said Isaac Lowry ’26. As a senior, Lowry said that he has attended all four Harvard-Brown football games, but no other Brown sports events.
The Herald’s Data Desk analyzed average game attendance data from fall 2021 to spring 2025 across 13 varsity sports. The analysis found that, generally, attendance at games is low.
The football team averages the highest home attendance of all sports with around 5,972 spectators per game, according to Brown Athletics data from the 2024-25 academic year.
“There’s a lot of hype around the Harvard-Brown football game,” Lowry said. “But other than that, I’ve never heard of a sports event really drawing in a large crowd of students.”
Opemipo Clement ’27 added that outside of the Harvard-Brown game, “people are kind of detached” from Brown’s sports culture. Clement added that he regularly attends men’s and women’s soccer games.
He said that the low attendance may be a reflection of the “quality” of the sports at Brown — and that winning titles may lead students to be more excited to attend sports events.
“We’re not exceptional at our sports,” he said. “So people don’t really show up for that.”
According to Deputy Director of Athletics and Recreation Ray Grant, the department has seen “continued growth in attendance” over the past few years. Grant credits this growth to recent “marketing initiatives and our efforts to remove barriers to attendance.”
“We are continually working to increase attendance at all of our athletics contests, both to strengthen the student-athlete experience for all of our teams and to increase community-building opportunities on our campus,” he wrote in an email to the Herald.
Out of the top five most watched teams of the 2024-25 academic year, the only women’s sport represented was soccer, who came in fourth with an average home game attendance of 748. That season, the women’s soccer team were runners-up in the Ivy League tournament.
Out of the analyzed teams, soccer was also the only sport where the women’s team had a higher average attendance across the past four seasons than the men’s team of the same sport. While men’s ice hockey and basketball ranked second and third in overall average attendance, the women’s ice hockey and basketball did not draw large crowds — pulling 33% and 39%, respectively, of the attendance of their male counterparts.
Softball player Jasmine Hsiao ’26 said that her team often shows up to support other Brown women’s teams including soccer, rugby, lacrosse and field hockey. The softball and baseball teams also often show up to cheer on each other, she said.
“(We) try to attend as many games as we can, just to support everyone in the Brown athletic network,” Hsiao said.
Hsiao said that athletes and their friends constitute a “network” that attend many games across different sports.
“That’s even more special, because you have a personal connection with everyone in the crowd,” she said. “You’re playing for your school, your school pride, and the people that come to support you.”
Overall, teams’ attendance was positively correlated with their reported expenses over the same year. Football received almost double the amount of funding than the next highest-funded team — men’s basketball — and also had an average attendance nearly six times greater.
Women’s soccer was also the only women’s sport to receive more funding than their male equivalent. Softball, field hockey and women’s volleyball were the three lowest-funded teams among the ones analyzed.
The funding gap between teams also manifested through discrepancies in athletic staff pay.
The University’s 2025 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act survey reported that the average salary per men’s team head coach was $196,372, while for women’s teams’ it was $121,503. The average salary per assistant coach was $63,595 for men’s teams, and $43,341 for women’s teams.
Additionally, total recruiting costs for men’s teams were over double that of women’s teams, at $868,042 and $404,733, respectively.
Across all analyzed sports, home matches against the University of Rhode Island drew the highest average attendance of 992, followed closely by Harvard with 933. In the fall 2024 season, the football team clinched their first win against the Crimson in 14 years in front of a packed home crowd.
Hsiao said the Harvard-Brown football game is “always a great time.”
“I love the school spirit that shows up there,” she said.
In contrast, Dartmouth drew the least attendance of all Ivy League opponents when they came to College Hill.
Lowry said his lack of interest in attending games is because none of his friends go to athletics events and he does not know many athletes.
Daniel Shin ’27 said he attends soccer games because he has friends on the team. But otherwise, he said there is not enough of a culture to attend sports events at Brown to encourage him to attend.
“If there was more hype around it, I would definitely … go more,” Shin said.
The Herald’s Spring 2025 poll backs up the fact that athletes attend far more Brown Athletics events than non-athletes on average — with 76% of varsity athletes and only 16% of non-athletes reporting attending at least one per month as a spectator.
“We would love to see even more engagement, and we continue to work with our student-athletes, student leaders on campus and community groups to” increase attendance at Brown sports events, Grant wrote.