As you probably know if you are even a casual fan of high school basketball, attendance at boys state basketball tournaments in Ohio has taken a breathtaking plunge in recent years.
And it’s not just in Ohio. It’s a similar story in a lot of other states.
Ohio’s boys basketball state tournament attendance numbers are only a fraction of what they were even as recently as the early 2000s.
This year’s boys state tournament attracted 59,476 fans. Only 10 years earlier 128,507 were in the seats in 2013. Twenty years ago in 2003, it was showtime, with LeBron James in his senior season at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary, and the tournament set a record with a 12-game total of 197,515 at the Schottenstein Center.
In 1998, in the last year the boys tournament was played at St. John Arena, the total attendance for the 12 games was 147,674. The average attendance for the four championship games in 1998 was 12,027. This year it was 4,602.
The picture is about the same in Michigan. This year’s four state championship games’ average attendance was 2,582. In 1998, it was 8,386 per game.
But what about Indiana? It’s crazy about high school basketball, isn’t it? Yes, but the same thing appears to be happening there.
The most recent stats I found on the Hoosier state said that attendance from the sectional level through the boys state tournament fell 45 percent there from 1998 to 2019.
Iowa’s boys state basketball tournament attendance dropped 31 percent between 2000 and 2015, the last year I could find complete attendance numbers on it. And Minnesota’s boys state basketball tournament crowds are down 31 percent in the last 25 years.
There were a few states where there was a little bit of good news this year.
Wisconsin’s boys state basketball tournament drew 64,360 fans this year, up from 58,508 in 2022. But that is considerably below the 83,353 fans who turned out in 2019, the last pre-COVID season. And it’s far below the 100,132 who were at the 1998 Wisconsin tournament.
The Illinois state tournament was attended by 40,635 fans this year, up from 34,449 in 2022.
Kentucky, which uses a sweet 16 format for its one-class state tournament, had its biggest attendance numbers since 2014 this year when 99,565 fans turned out. But that was well short of its all-time record of 154,002 in 1987.
Looking at those numbers it appears Ohio and the other states probably will never return to the attendance levels of the past.
I’ve been to every boys state basketball tournament in Ohio since 1977. I’ve watched the crowds shrink.
Some of the reasons that has happened probably are sports specific. Others are probably cultural and societal.
Here are a few posssible explanations:
It has gotten more expensive to go to state tournaments. Adult tickets for this year’s boys and girls state basketball tournaments in Ohio cost $16. In Texas it cost $15 to park at the Alamodome, the site of the boys and girls state tournaments.
If you have the right cable system, you can watch the games on television in Ohio and quite a few other states.
What I used to call the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s season ticket holders (school superintendents, principals, athletic directors and coaches) and fans who would come for three days of basketball even if their team wasn’t in the tournament don’t buy as many tickets as they once did.
Maybe the product has become less interesting. Football and baseball have changed rules and how games are officiated to put more offense into those sports. Maybe basketball needs to do the same.
There are many more enterainment choices everywhere now. As I’ve said before, we carry around more entertainment options in our pockets with our phones than could be found in entire small towns 20 or 30 years ago.
Moving to Dayton has certainly taken a bite out of the attendance figures. In 2019, the last year the boys state tournament was in Columbus, the four championship games averaged 8,844 fans per game. That was nearly double the average championship game crowd this year.
It’s a different world than it was 10 or 20 years ago. And, no, taking the state tournament back to St. John Arena – the favorite suggestion of some sentimental fans – is not a realistic option.
If that ever happened without upgrades that would cost much more than Ohio State would ever pay for, you would have 200 to 300 traditionalists who thought it was great and the rest of the crowd who thought, “This place is a dump.”
