Uneven Crowds: Women’s Wolf Pack Basketball Struggles to Fill Seats as Men’s Team Does

by Maddie Gomes

A sparse crowd at a recent women’s basketball game. Photo by Maddie Gomes.

It’s November 4th at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night, and Lawlor Events Center is filled with 7,144 of the University of Nevada, Reno students and Wolf Pack basketball fans as the men’s basketball team win their first home game of the season.

Just the night before there was another exciting win at 6:30 p.m. However, for that game, at Lawlor as well, only 1,432 got to experience seeing the women’s basketball team win their first game of their season, 70–53 against Cal State San Marcos.

Nationally, the sport of women’s basketball has grown exponentially, even in the college world, thanks to what many call “the Caitlin Clark effect”. In her collegiate career, the former Iowa guard Caitlin Clark drew huge crowds setting attendance records, and creating a ripple effect of interest.

That ripple has not reached Reno or has stopped.

Besides last season’s 10,689 fans who showed up for the When I Grow Up game against Fresno State, where many of the attendees were students from local elementary schools, the average attendance for women’s home games was between 1,200 and 1,500.

The men’s team at Nevada in comparison averaged between 7,500–11,000 attendees during their 2024–2025 season.

In terms of records, the Nevada women’s basketball team ended their 2024–2025 season going 6–12 in conference play, while the Nevada men’s basketball ended their 2024–2025 season going 8–12 in conference play, so the teams were more or less having similar outcomes, just with widely different interest from the campus community.

“The girls play just as hard, they just don’t seem to be as celebrated,” Whitney Welker, my roommate, and a sophomore cheerleader at Nevada said.

Welker who attends nearly all sporting events at Nevada gets to see and feel the difference in atmosphere based on the audience.

“Overall the attendance is obviously less but it’s also the energy that’s brought to [the games],” Welker said.

Graphic by Maddie Gomes.

If the team’s records prove performance isn’t less, what other factors could lead to a lack of attendance?

The sports editor of The Nevada Sagebrush, James Wolfgang Perez, suggests it could be caused by the scheduling of the games.

“In comparison with the men’s team, your men’s team usually gets the prime time slots,” Perez said.

These “prime time slots” described by Perez include the typical Tuesday night at 7 p.m. or Saturdays at 2 p.m.

“Those are the prime times where people are typically available to go to a game right?” said Perez.

However, Nevada’s Faculty Athletics representative, a journalism professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism, Paul Mitchell disagrees.

“If you’re not coming at 7 p.m. on a Friday, you’re not coming to 7 p.m. on a Thursday, that’s true,” Mitchell said. “Prime time slots” or not, Mitchell doesn’t believe lack of attendance is derived from lack of care, but rather the students’ priority.

“This [Nevada] is an institution where the bulk of our students have to work,” Mitchell said. “Your time is very limited as students who attend this institution, I think that is a huge thing that is overlooked.”

The media table at a recent basketball game. Photo by Maddie Gomes.

Understanding not only the schedule of the games, but the schedule of students who make up the majority of attendance, draws the question of how could more fans be enticed to attend women’s games. Media and marketing are two of the biggest interest generators for sports.

Starting at the university level, teams need to market themselves, whether it be partnerships, sponsorships, or even social media fan engagement.

The Nevada men’s basketball team’s official instagram @nevadahoops has over 24,000 followers. The Nevada women’s basketball team’s official instagram @nevadawbb has just over 6,000 followers and their content is roughly the same as each team has Nevada Athletics professionals doing photo and video for each game.

If the content being produced is the same, but the women’s team engagement is still drastically lower, what more can the university do to bring attention to the team?

“What the university is going to have to do is, they’re going to have to get creative,” Mitchell said.

Athlete fan interaction could prompt more overall engagement because when a person feels connected to a particular program, person, or sport they prioritize supporting that even before the season starts.

If a connection between the women’s basketball team and fans can be built before the season, it could help increase the number of season tickets which almost guarantees a consistent attendance.

This 2025–2026 season, 4,368 people hold season tickets for men’s basketball games, but only 528 people are season ticket holders for women’s basketball. Assuming that each season ticket holder attended the home opener game for each team, a big majority of attendance is made up by them.

A much fuller crowd can be seen at a men’s basketball game. Photo by Maddie Gomes.

“I’d say it’s always been important to cover women’s sports ,” Perez said. “We [sports reporters for The Nevada Sagebrush] treat athletes with the same amount of respect across the board.”

Perez explains how The Nevada Sagebrush is able to send more reporters to women’s basketball games because other media outlets tend to not show up, it opens space for these volunteer reporters to attend and report on the games.

This can be true for The Nevada Sagebrush because the reporters are volunteers. The work done by them does not generate revenue or require expensive resources to go and report. This isn’t true for bigger media outlets and could be the reason behind their lack of attendance for women’s games.

“When it comes to the media side, it’s more because they know what gets clicks and what doesn’t,” Perez said. “So why would you want to spend labor [on] something that will get less clicks,”

Revenue is important to any media company, but staying behind now may do harm in the future. Perez, being a sports editor of a student newspaper and studying sports journalism, recognizes trends that make covering sports that may not get much attention now more of a long term investment.

“If you watch where the money is going, there’s a greater investment going into watching, attending, and reporting on women’s basketball, especially at the professional level,” Perez said. “So if you want to take advantage of that, you should start covering it for the college level,”

As assistant sports editor of The Nevada Sagebrush–and a woman– I have witnessed the pronounced difference in attitudes towards women’s sports.

My first assignment as a sports writer for the paper was coverage of a women’s basketball home opener against Bushnell, a game they won 70–48. I was thrilled to be able to provide coverage on this game as both a former athlete and female journalist.

However, this excitement didn’t seem to be shared. As I provided coverage for men’s basketball as well, the contrast became noticeable. The engagement my stories on men’s basketball received were drastically higher, giving me a firsthand look at the unequal interest given to coverage of a game depending on what gender is competing

Putting my best effort in sports coverage no matter the gender of the sport and still not receiving equal attention made me question how we as journalists can be successful in the coverage of women’s sports.

An increase in the university’s efforts and enhanced creativity around marketing and promoting women’s basketball games, with media providing equal coverage, with stories where fans get to know the coaches and players are better, are simple ways to fill the stands of Lawlor Events Center and support women’s athletics in general at the University of Nevada, Reno.