Even OHSAA is seeing a decline in attendance for all sports.
http://www.cantonrep.com/sports/20180416/canton-still-waiting-on-status-of-2018-high-school-football-state-finals
“The overall trend — not just in high school sports, but in college and pro sports — is the number of people buying tickets is going down,” said Stried, who said Ohio’s attendance numbers are still among the best in the country. “I don’t think there’s just one reason for that. It’s a combination of several factors and we’re trying to identify things that we can do to help attendance. It’s still up to the consumer about where to go out that night, but we’re asking ourselves, ‘What are the things we can do to make it easier for them?’”
Digging deeper, there are two really troubling trends from the OHSAA’s perspective.
One, high school attendance in central Ohio is down in every sport, not just football. This is a bad sign considering it’s also the part of Ohio that is growing the most. (In general, northeast Ohio and southwest Ohio typically draw the largest crowds, Stried said.)
The second troubling trend is that student sections are getting smaller.
“There are exceptions — like (Cincinnati) Moeller at this year’s state basketball tournament — but overall, it’s kind of a trend that mirrors the overall attendance,” Stried said.
The 2017 state cross country tournament actually posted the second-highest attendance in history at 12,054, but the OHSAA’s two biggest revenue sources are ticket sales from football and boys basketball — and both are trending down.