Oklahoma State looks to be on track to hit a record historical season average for wrestling attendance this year.
Last year the Cowboys had incredible attendance. I dug into the numbers then and believe it to be the highest average in the history of the “new” Gallagher-Iba Arena. Oklahoma State “Raised the Roof” on old Gallagher in 2001 and opened the new arena in the middle of that season. Since then, the highest recorded average was last year at 5,871. This year, Oklahoma State is on pace to crush that average based on their reported numbers.
2024-2025 Oklahoma State Attendance
| Opponent | Attendance |
| Wyoming | 6781 |
| Arizona State | 6583 |
| Virginia Tech | 6067 |
| Air Force | 6538 |
| NC State | 8212 |
| West Virginia | |
| Missouri | |
| Average | 6836 |
The remarkable thing when digging into this is Oklahoma State did not have Iowa or OU on their home schedule this season. Last year, some of the early dual crowds weren’t great. It took the Cowboys getting on a bit of a roll to change that and get fans engaged. Then big crowds for those two events pushed OSU into the black and set the season average for the “New” Gallagher.
No easily searchable attendance records were kept prior to the 2002 wrestling season, but “Old Gallagher” had an arena capacity of 6,381. Though numbers from that era really aren’t available, there is plenty of lore surrounding “Old Gallagher” to make one believe that they may have sold out every single dual in a given season a few times.
So what can happen this year? Cowboy fans have an opportunity to lock in a season-average record with good crowds for the remaining two duals in Gallagher-Iba this season with West Virginia and Missouri. To beat that 6,381, OSU would need roughly 5,250 for each. To date this season, OSU has not had a crowd under 6,000, so it seems like a near lock that OSU will break this record. By how much? We will find out in the coming weeks.
Credit to the Mat Talk Almanac for providing/keeping most of these numbers over the years.
