How waning Wisconsin football fan interest impacts Badgers’ next budget
Wisconsin is budgeting for another decrease in ticket sales in 2026-27 following the Luke Fickell-led Badgers' 4-8 season in 2025.
MADISON – Wisconsin football’s downward slide (and the subsequent drop in fan interest) has impacted the Badgers ’ budgeting for the next academic year. The 2026-27 budget that the UW athletic board approved at its April meeting projects $33. 7 million in ticket sales – an 11.
6% drop from the $38. 1 million that UW budgeted for 2025-26. That comes as UW is slated to fall well short of its budgeted ticket sales number in 2025-26 amid a disappointing 2025 football season.
The Badgers averaged only 49,063 fans per game, according to tickets-scanned data obtained via an open records request , with another 17,757 distributed-but-unused tickets per game. Wisconsin lowered the price of season tickets and extended the deadline ahead of the 2026 season, which also coincides with UW playing six home games instead of the usual seven home games. The lack of the seventh home game in 2026 is due to the Badgers’ neutral-site game against Notre Dame at Lambeau Field, which is more financially advantageous for the athletic department.
Adam Barnes, the athletic department’s chief financial officer, said in a UW athletic board committee meeting that the Badgers are “effectively through season-ticket renewals” and have seen sales that are “in line with what we were expecting” when creating the budget. “The mix between season tickets and single-game tickets I do expect will shift,” Barnes said. “And with that success on the field that we’re expecting, I do expect that we’ll exceed that.