Baton Rouge Louisiana is ground zero for fans of the Louisiana State University Tigers. For those of us who live in The Boot, we recognize that purple and gold almost immediately. The LSU brand is known far and wide and with a recent national championship in football and an even more recent national championship in women's basketball the purple and gold of LSU are reaching more and more fans nationwide.

Mississippi State v LSU
Sean Gardner, Getty Images
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But, how do the Tigers step up against their conference competition as far as " who has the most fans" is concerned? The sports marketing firm SBRnet recently conducted a survey of fans from around the SEC conference footprint and around the nation to see which college sports brands had the most fans. Surprisingly, the SEC did not have a school in the top five nationwide.

The top five most popular college football teams in the most recent survey found that Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Duke, and Florida State all had more fans nationwide than any school in the SEC. The top of the SEC fan bases went to the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia respectively.

So, you've probably deduced that Alabama and Georgia are the top two fanbases in the SEC if they are number five and number six in that same category on a nationwide scale. But where do the rest of the SEC schools rank?

Alabama Crimson Tide on AL com via YouTube Bleacher Report via YouTube
Alabama Crimson Tide on AL com via YouTube Bleacher Report via YouTube
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If you're a fan of LSU you don't have to look far. The Tigers have the third most populous fanbase of any SEC school. The SBRnet survey suggests that some 2.51 million fans consider themselves to be Tigers. That's up 9% from 2022's survey.

This puts LSU ahead of the University of Texas and Texas A&M who round out the SEC's Top Five most populous fanbases. The remainder of the conference shakes out like this. Oklahoma, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Auburn make up six through ten.

Georgia v Florida
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South Carolina saw its fanbase double over the last year and Ole Miss has seen its fanbase grow by 163% in the past year. Meanwhile, fans of Mississippi State, Missouri, and Vanderbilt are still there, they just don't have as much to cheer about I guess. In fact, Mississippi State and Missouri saw their fan bases shrink by 22% and 20% respectively over the past 12 months.

2022 CFP National Championship - TCU v Georgia
Getty Images
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While many fans might see these figures as a reason to support bragging rights, sports marketers see these figures in dollars and cents. Obviously, a player attached to a bigger fanbase will command more NIL dollars. And, those schools with big fanbases can afford to help create those NIL opportunities for their athletes as well.

The Most Searched Craft Beer Brand in Louisiana

Online research was conducted by Shane Co. to reveal the most popular craft breweries in the nation. They used this data to breakdown each state's most popular breweries. This is the list they were able to build for Louisiana using that data.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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