Attendance for the WIAA State Boys Basketball Tournament was up about 10 percent from last year’s historic-low figure.
According to the WIAA office in Stevens Point, the 2023 tournament, which took place March 16th through the 18th at the Kohl Center, drew 64,360 fans, compared to 58,508 attendees in 2022.
That includes three sessions, Friday evening for the Division-1 semifinals, Saturday’s D-5 and D-3 championships and Saturday night’s D-2 and D-1 title games of at least 10,000 fans.
Last year’s boy’s state tournament failed to draw 10,000 fans for any session for the first time since 1945.
Meanwhile, the news was less encouraging for the State Girls Basketball Tournament on March 9th through 11th.
The preliminary 3-day total attendance at the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon was just 27,859.
It represents a 15 percent drop from the 2022 total of 32,889, which also happened to be the lowest number since the WIAA moved the girls state tournament out of Madison in 2013.
