Cal basketball holds the worst major program attendance by wide margin at 2155 fans a game

More fans attended Stanford, St. Mary's, UC Irvine, and San Jose State games than Cal games in 2023, dropping them to tenth in the state of California.

The California Golden Bears have shown a stunning lack of interest in their men’s basketball program the last several years, and now the lack of interest has been entirely reciprocated by its fanbase.

Cal is now the worst attended program among major college basketball programs, and it’s not even close. Cal averaged 2155 fans a game this year in an arena that can seat 11588, which would probably be one of the worst capacity percentages of any major program.

Conference by conference, looking at the bottom-dwellers in attendance, Cal lags far behind everyone.

• ACC: Georgia Tech at 4713

• Big East: DePaul at 3881

• Big Ten: Northwestern at 4614

• Big 12: TCU at 6067

• Pac-12: Cal at 2155

• SEC: Ole Miss at 6097

The four worst major programs in fan attendance all live in the Pac-12. In terms of the bottom five Pac-12 programs, Cal averaged over a thousand less than its nearest competition.

• Cal: 2155

• Washington State: 3470

• USC: 3510

• Stanford: 3518

• Oregon State: 4107

• Colorado: 6159

Cal was even passed by California mid-majors in overall attendance. St. Mary’s, a program which seats only 3500 in McKeon Pavilion, drew a higher fan attendance per game this season than Cal at 3197. NCAA Tournament bound San Diego State is drawing 12,251 a game this year.

San Jose State, which is 5th place in the Mountain West and has very little shot at the NCAA tournament, outdrew Cal this year at 2170 a game. Fresno State is now doubling Cal attendance at 5056. California Baptist, a .500 WAC program, is averaging a thousand more fans than Cal.

Cal was very close to drawing even with local Bay Area mid-majors Santa Clara (1604 a game) and University of San Francisco (1363 a game). Cal State Bakersfield (1247), San Diego (1313), Long Beach State (1650), Pacific (1556) are in arm’s length.

Cal wasn’t even the second highest UC in men’s basketball attendance. That honor belongs to the distinguished Anteaters of UC Irvine.

• UC Davis: 1037

• UC San Diego: 1447

• UC Santa Barbara: 1586

• Cal: 2155

• UC Irvine: 2533

• UCLA: 8927

So if you were to rank all the Division 1 California programs, Cal once a fixture for 3rd-best attendance, is now in tenth place in the state.

1. San Diego State: 12251

2. UCLA: 8927

3. Fresno State: 5056

4. Stanford: 3518

5. USC: 3510

6. California Baptist: 3367

7. St. Mary’s: 3197

8. UC Irvine: 2533

9. San Jose State: 2170

10. Cal: 2155

If Mark Fox continues on as head coach, who knows how much further down we can go.