Two teams reached the pinnacle of college basketball this week, but there were many winners across the country all throughout the year – even if they didn’t play right up to the very end. With the most extensive fan data in the college sports industry residing with Learfield, let’s look back at the numbers behind the 2025-26 season.
College Basketball Viewership and Fan Growth Trends
College basketball is garnering more eyes and gaining more fans all over the nation, and not just in the postseason. Regular season TV viewership was up 17% per game for nearly 1,400 Nielsen-rated broadcasts across both the men’s and women’s games during the 2025-26 season.
On social media, Big 10 Men’s Basketball programs had a particularly exceptional year, with four of the top five increases in YoY impressions belonging to teams within the league that led the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in total participants and provided its 2026 National Champion.
The top two in that list, Michigan and Iowa, proved that posting more can pay off. Michigan Men’s Basketball used a 28% increase in social media posts to find a 70% increase in impressions and 34% increase in engagement while Iowa Men’s Basketball experienced a 77% lift in impressions and 41% rise in engagements behind 24% more posts than a season ago.
Several teams and conferences experienced solid increases in home game attendance as well as primary and secondary ticket sales throughout the season as well, with the ACC and Big 10 standing out on the men’s side while SEC women’s basketball neared an impressive 15% increase in total attendance in 2025-26.
Power conference rivalries between elite programs proved to be the driving force on the secondary market, as shown by average sale prices through Paciolan’s secondary ticketing platform partnership with SeatGeek. Across the 2025-26 season, the Duke at North Carolina men’s basketball contest and Tennessee and South Carolina’s women’s basketball road games at LSU were the hottest tickets on the market.
The rise in demand is just one indicator that college basketball continues to grow. Paciolan schools onboarded more than 685,000 new accounts across men’s and women’s basketball in 2025-26, created through first-time buyers and ticket transfers. Some of the nation’s top programs led the way in new accounts as over 258,000 new accounts belonged to the 22 Paciolan schools who reached the Sweet 16 in one or both of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. That amount accounts for nearly 40% of the 685,000 new accounts across the country, which brings us to our next point…
How Winning Drives Attendance, Ticket Sales, and Engagement
As we mentioned, 22 of the 28 schools that made a Sweet 16 appearance in one or both of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments partner with Paciolan as their ticketing technology provider, and their success wasn’t limited to March. During the regular season, the 22 athletic programs increased total attendance more than 9% compared to the prior season, while those competing in the men’s Sweet 16 experienced an 8% lift in single-game ticket sales in 2025-26.
A few standouts in ticket sales growth in 2025-26 include Arizona Men’s Basketball as it returned to national prominence with its first Final Four appearance in 25 years, Nebraska Men’s Basketball during its rapid rise that led to a first ever NCAA Tournament victory, and Miami (OH) Men’s Basketball as it enjoyed an undefeated regular season and earned an at-large bid into the big dance.
Arizona Men’s Basketball’s return to national title contender status provided for more than just fans in the stands, leading to an incredible 75% lift in web traffic this season compared to last, one of the largest lifts in the nation among SIDEARM school partners. For those teams who advanced to the second weekend of their respective tournament, postseason success was crucial in driving significant web traffic gains, as the men’s group saw a 147% lift in average daily web traffic while the women’s teams landed a 162% increase since Selection Sunday compared to the regular season.
First-time national champion UCLA continues to ride the rise of women’s basketball and its own rise to national power. The Bruins experienced a massive 710% lift in web traffic in the postseason, by far the largest increase among women’s programs from SIDEARM partner schools in the Sweet 16, and garnered more webpage views in the 21 days since Selection Sunday than in 126 days of the 2025-26 regular season.
The social media darlings of the 2025-26 season were a pair of perennial powers as Duke Men’s Basketball and UConn Women’s Basketball led the nation in social media impressions throughout the season and postseason. The pair combined to account for 9 of the top 25 posts of the year in impressions; it was UCLA’s National Championship celebration post that topped them all with the most impressions of any post this college basketball season.
On the women’s side of the sport, several programs proved to be on the rise this season, not only on the court, but on your social feeds as well.
That said, the programs weren’t the only ones to have highlights on social media this year…
How Star Players and NIL Drive Fan Engagement
Star players drive fan engagement into a frenzy, and not many stars were bigger in 2025-26 than some of college basketball’s top freshmen. A select group of 12 of the nation’s elite freshmen hoopers – hailing from programs such as Arkansas, Duke, North Carolina, Illinois, Tennessee, Houston, Louisville, Kansas, Arizona, and UConn – tallied a combined total of nearly 98 million impressions on social media this season from posts referencing their names alone.
No one had a higher rate of impressions throughout the year than SEC Rookie of the Year, SEC Player of the Year, Bob Cousy Award winner, and consensus First Team All-American Darius Acuff Jr. of Arkansas. Posts related to Acuff’s name alone generated almost 29 million impressions for Arkansas this season, nearly double that of any other freshman in the country.
While Acuff was the freshman sensation on social media all year long, it was UConn rookie Braylon Mullins who stole the show in the final days of the postseason. In UConn’s Elite 8 game against Duke, Mullins knocked down “The Shot” – a 35-foot game-winner at the buzzer – and ascended to new heights on social media.
Star power doesn’t only play on social media, however. As the affinity fans have for star players grows with every elite performance and legendary moment – such as “The Shot” – NIL merchandise trends upward with it.
Many schools who added elite new talents to the roster before tip have also seen a massive lift in NIL merchandise sales during the 2025-26 college basketball season. Oklahoma, who added star freshman and SEC All-Conference selection Aaliyah Chavez to its women’s program, has experienced an 850% lift in units sold across all NIL merchandise purchased this college basketball season compared to last. Michigan, who added star transfers Yaxel Lendeborg and Elliot Cadeau to the men’s basketball team in the offseason, has seen a 516% increase in units sold across all NIL merchandise during the current campaign.
That’s just the beginning of the proof that fans continue to grow more connected to their favorite players through NIL merchandise, with many schools doubling or even tripling their NIL merchandise sales revenue this basketball season.
There’s no fanbase in the country as passionate as college sports fans, and across the board, the numbers continue to prove that men’s and women’s college basketball is no exception.
*All data powered by Learfield’s Fanbase, Paciolan’s PAC iQ, and CLC’s Insights.