Which sport draws a better crowd to games? The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a top conference in both sports so it is a good place to evaluate. Soccer is played in the fall and lacrosse is played in late winter and the spring. ACC member Syracuse won the Soccer National Championship in the Fall 2022 season. (against Indiana in front of an attendance of 4,010 at WakeMed Soccer Park in North Carolina on December 12, 2022) The ACC 's Notre Dame won the Lacrosse National Championship (against Duke in the spring 2023 season at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field before a crowd of 30,462 on May 29, 2023 .)
Outside of the bright lights of Championships, this review will focus on home games in the regular season, the ACC tournament, and NCAA tournament games.
This first part of the analysis covers home attendance for the five universities in the ACC that play both lacrosse and soccer. (Syracuse, Virginia, Notre Dame, North Carolina, and Duke) Lacrosse had higher average home attendance at the same University five out of five times. Five of the top six programs for average home attendance conference wide were lacrosse programs.
The second part of the analysis covers these five universities but also includes the ACC programs that only play soccer and not lacrosse. There are no ACC Universities that play men’s lacrosse but do not play men’s soccer. ACC Schools that only play soccer were added. They are Wake Forest, Louisville, Clemson, Boston College, NC State, the University of Pittsburgh, and Virginia Tech.
Adding the ACC Universities that only play soccer, but do not play lacrosse reinforce the data that ACC men's lacrosse has higher attendance than men's soccer. ACC lacrosse programs have 4 of the top 5 average attendance and all five lacrosse programs are in the top 8. The bottom 9 in attendance were all soccer programs. (The asterisk besides NC State soccer was there because one game was excluded with very low attendance because it was an extreme low attendance outlier so it was taken out of the analysis.)
Bottom line: There is no arguing that soccer is a more known sport locally, nationally, and globally. However, in the communities where Atlantic Coast Conference programs exist, the data shows men's college lacrosse with a more than 2 to 1 advantage (2647 to 1177) in driving attendance per person per game.
A future analysis will compare Big Ten Soccer and Lacrosse attendance. Stay tuned.