Study: 28% of College Football Tickets Distributed Go Unused

Turnstile data from 55 public FBS schools shows a large gap between announced attendance and fans actually scanned into stadiums during the 2025 season.

Announced attendance figures at college football games often overstate how many fans are actually in the stadium, according to research covering the 2025 season. Data obtained by David Covucci of FOIABall from about 55 public FBS schools compared scanned tickets at the gates against total tickets distributed.

Across 353 games in the data set, 28.4 percent of distributed tickets were never scanned. Announced attendance totaled 15.4 million, while scanners counted 11.0 million actual entries. The dataset included 13 Big Ten schools, with Penn State, Indiana and Purdue not providing data.

Michigan had the smallest gap in the Big Ten at 13 percent between distributed and scanned tickets, followed by Ohio State at 15 percent and Nebraska at 18 percent. Texas A&M was the best-reported SEC school at a 20 percent disparity, though only four SEC schools responded to the survey.

Rutgers sat near the middle of respondents with a 35 percent gap, matching North Carolina. A announced crowd of 43,000 at SHI Stadium could correspond to roughly 28,000 fans actually scanned in. Maryland was the lowest Big Ten school at 39 percent.

The largest gaps were at Group of Five schools, ranging from Central Michigan at 42 percent to Toledo at 68 percent, meaning the Rockets announced roughly three tickets for every fan who showed up.