Villanova Attendance Drops 20 Percent From 2023-24: What’s Next?

Although they played two more home games, Villanova Men’s Basketball saw their attendance fall sharply between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 regular seasons.

After an average ticketed attendance of 9,410 fans per game last season, the Wildcats saw their numbers dip to 7,483 fans per game this year. Total attendance dropped from 141,143 fans to 127,214, a 9.87 percent total decrease. Per game attendance saw an even more marked drop of 20.48 percent.

With head coach Kyle Neptune’s future already in doubt after two seasons without an NCAA Tournament bid — and a high likelihood of that turning into a third straight season spent watching the Big Dance at home — is lowered attendance another indicator of the sky falling for Villanova Men’s Basketball as fans look for other forms of entertainment to spend their hard-earned dollars?

Partially.

Beyond the raw numbers, it’s important to note an outlier. The Wildcats played at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center on Sunday, Feb. 9, hosting Xavier on what just so happened to be the day the Eagles played in the Super Bowl, an understandable preoccupation for much of the city.

Ticketed attendance sat at 8,462 that day, down from an average of 11,413 fans per game in the three other home games played in South Philly. However, that’s still a marked drop from the average of 15,227 fans per game at the Wells Fargo Center in 2023-24.

While Villanova played one less game there this year than they did the previous season — important to note, given a capacity roughly three times that of the Finneran Pavilion — they played two more home games total and still saw their total attendance drop. That’s a problem.

Student Section Shows Up

One place where attendance didn’t lag was the on-campus Finneran Pavilion.

Head coaching woes? Quadrant four losses to teams like Columbia? Villanova students seemed not to care, showing out in force on the way to 13 straight sellouts. That’s nothing new, as they have every season tickets were sold dating back to 2001, Jay Wright’s first season (with the exception of the COVID-19 altered 2020-21 campaign)… and it’s important for it to stay that way.

The Wildcats’ attendance issues stem from games at the Wells Fargo Center, then, not all of which can be explained away by a city holding its breath ahead of the Super Bowl. That’s probably some combination of Villanova students not wanting to brave the Main Line or drive all the way down to South Philly (ditto for alumni fed up with the coaching staff in an up-and-down year for the team) and the casual fan or outsider being less interested in a program no longer at the height of its power.

A 20 percent drop in attendance is precipitous. Worse still, those games at the Wells Fargo Canter are important, giving players a chance to set foot on an NBA court and fulfill childhood dreams, putting a spotlight on the program and its fans for an ability to pack a big league arena, an easy sales pitch for prospective recruits.

With the offseason fast approaching, we’ll soon learn how Villanova plans to remedy the issue.