The gap between the top conferences and everyone else has never been wider.
By every measure, the distribution of women's basketball attendance across Division I conferences is more unequal today than at any point in the past 40 years. The HHI, a concentration index that measures how evenly attendance is spread across conferences, held stable between 500 and 675 from 1983 to 1984 through 2018 to 2019, then jumped sharply to 717 in 2023 to 2024. The Gini coefficient, a standard measure of inequality, reached 0.509 in 2023 to 2024, up from 0.446 in 2018 to 2019. The top 5 conferences now account for 54.3% of all D I attendance, up from 46.8% in 1999 to 2000. And in 2023 to 2024, not one of the 27 Non Power conferences exceeded the average attendance of a single Power conference program.
HHI is a standard concentration measure. Lower scores mean attendance is spread broadly. Higher scores mean a few conferences dominate. It held stable for 35 years, then jumped sharply after 2018 to 2019.
Each line shows the average share of total D I attendance held by a single conference in each group. Power conferences hold 5 to 6× more per conference than Non Power, and that ratio has grown from 3.0× in 1983 to 1984 to 6.4× in 2023 to 2024.
The data confirms it: the Power conference advantage is real, consistent, and getting bigger every year.
Statistical analysis of 1,242 conference season observations, covering every D I conference from 1983 to 1984 through 2023 to 2024, confirms that the top heavy pattern is not random variation. It is a systematic, measurable, and slowly widening feature of Division I women's basketball. Three findings stand out.
- 1 Power conferences hold about 7 percentage points more of total D I attendance than Non Power conferences every year, regardless of overall growth, COVID, or any other factor. This is the single largest driver in the model. It holds across every season in the dataset.
- 2 That gap has widened by roughly 2 percentage points over the past 40 years, slowly, but consistently, one year at a time. The model estimates the Power conference advantage grows by about 0.05 percentage points per year. Across four decades, that adds up to a meaningful and measurable structural shift.
- 3 COVID did not cause this trend. The analysis shows the gap was already growing before 2020 and continues growing independently of the pandemic. COVID made the gap more visible by temporarily collapsing Non Power attendance more severely, but the underlying trend predates it.
OLS regression · R²=0.648 · N=1,242 conference season observations · 1983 to 1984 through 2023 to 2024
COVID hit Non Power conferences twice as hard and widened the gap it was already creating.
The pandemic did not affect all conferences equally. From 2018 to 2019 to 2021 to 2022, Power conference attendance declined 12.9%. Non Power conference attendance declined 26.9%, more than double. The conferences least able to absorb the disruption lost the most ground. Both groups have recovered strongly since 2021 to 2022, but Non Power conferences started their recovery from a deeper hole, and the concentration numbers reflect it.
The asymmetric COVID collapse is visible. The Non Power layer drops more steeply in 2021 to 2022 and recovers more slowly. 2020 to 2021 is absent from the dataset because the NCAA did not report attendance that season.
Growth rates are measured from total attendance at start and end of each era. COVID period bars are shown in red. The early expansion era remains the dominant visual, a reminder of how far the sport has come.
The growth is historic and that makes the top heavy story more important, not less.
Total Division I women's basketball attendance grew from 1.1 million in 1983 to 1984 to more than 10 million in 2023 to 2024, an 835% increase. Average attendance per game rose from 525 to 1,912. This is genuine, remarkable growth that reflects an expanding fanbase and growing cultural significance. But growth alone does not tell the full story. When the sport was growing fastest, Non Power conferences were growing alongside Power conferences. In the most recent era, Power conferences are capturing a disproportionate share of every new fan gained. The question for the sport is not whether women's basketball is growing. It is who that growth is reaching.
2020 to 2021 is absent from the dataset because the NCAA did not report attendance that season. The gap in the line reflects that missing season. The 2023 to 2024 total of 10.1M is the highest on record.