Women’s college sports fans are getting more avid: report

It’s officially the post-Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Paige Bueckers era of NCAA basketball, but college fans still have an appetite for women’s sports.

More than three-quarters (78%) of US college sports fans said they followed at least one women’s college sport last year, according to new survey data that marketing analytics company Big Chalk shared exclusively with Marketing Brew. Of those fans, 87% watched at least two.

Though basketball remains the “crown jewel” of the women’s college sports ecosystem, there are opportunities for brands to tap into this increasingly engaged audience by working with other sports and athletes as well, according to the report.

“College sports as a media property are becoming more compelling in general, and it’s not [because of] any one thing,” Big Chalk partner Rick Miller said. “It’s not the Caitlin Clark effect. It’s not the move to a 12-team College Football Playoff. It’s lots of little things that are building interest in this medium…People are looking at sports as the last real reality TV.”

Jumping through hoops: Women’s college basketball has the largest share of audience, with 64% of women’s college sports fans saying they follow the sport, according to Big Chalk’s 2026 College Sports Perception survey, which ran last month among a random sample of 2,575 US consumers.

• Gymnastics, volleyball, softball, and running sports (track and field and cross country) rounded out the top five women’s college sports.
• Soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, golf, and hockey made up the rest of the top 10.

Though basketball is quite far ahead of the other sports—about 38% of women’s college sports fans said they follow gymnastics, the next most-popular option—Miller said he’d recommend advertisers evaluate sports like volleyball and softball, especially if they’re looking for more affordable opportunities.

Two years back, CPMs in women’s college basketball were about $10, and by last year, that number had more than quadrupled to about $52, Miller said, with ad inventory in the 2025 NCAA Women's Basketball Championship game selling out by the end of 2024. Non-revenue sports (meaning sports that don’t bring in significant revenue from sources like ticket sales or sponsorships) are also likely to have highly loyal followers, he added.

“The people that follow those sports, they’re really passionate, [and] less likely to be casual fans,” he said.

Superfans: Women’s college sports fans also seem to be getting more passionate over the years, Big Chalk found, with a growing share falling under the company’s “avid sports consumer” classification, meaning they watch at least 10 events per year.

• About 12% of women’s fans watched 10-20 events in 2024.
• In 2025, that share rose to more than 16%.
• About 20% of women’s fans watched more than 20 games last year, up from about 15% in 2024.

At the same time, the shares of fans who said they were unable to watch a game, or only watched one game, declined slightly from 2024 to 2025.

Fans of women’s sports at the college level averaged 11.9 games per year, according to the report, compared to 11.4 games for the general college sports fan. That’s up from 9.3 in 2024, and Big Chalk predicts the average will top 13 games this year.

“The number of avid fans that are women’s college sports fans has really grown,” Miller said. “These people who were really only tuning in for one game or two games, they’ve dropped off, and the people who are really in it and watching a lot of games, they’ve stepped up.”