The Auburn Tigers are losing fans faster than any college football team in the nation.

Recently released data from the sports marketing firm SBRnet and analyzed by the Center for Sports Analytics at Samford University and AL.com show the Tigers saw their football fanbase cut nearly in half in just one year – a huge decline for a team that was among the top 14 most popular schools in 2021.

Overall, SBRnet shows Auburn lost nearly 950,000 football fans between 2021 and 2022, a 47% decrease. Both figures led the nation.

RELATED: Alabama football loses fans, falls outside top 5 on national list of most popular teams

2022 was a tumultuous year for Auburn’s football team – the Tigers finished 5-7, their worst record in a decade, and fired Head Coach Bryan Harsin in the middle of the season.

Some other traditionally proud fanbases also found themselves near the top of the list. The University of Iowa saw the second fastest year-over-year decrease – the Hawkeyes saw a 42% decline. Florida (-26%), Notre Dame (-25%) and Texas (-22%) were also among the 10 fastest shrinking fanbases.

[Can’t see the list? Click here.]

In terms of total fans lost, Notre Dame was just behind Auburn, losing more than 860,000 total fans in one year. Third on the list? None other than Auburn’s in-state rival, the University of Alabama. Alabama lost nearly 700,000 fans from 2021 to 2022, knocking the Crimson Tide out of the top 5 most popular teams in the nation.

The Tide landed at No. 6 in 2022. Auburn, meanwhile, fell to No. 34 in the nation.

Some 885,000 of the nearly 1.1 million people who claimed Auburn as their favorite team in 2022 were from the South, but even among Southern football fans, Auburn was relatively far down the list of favorite teams. The Tigers ranked No. 24 in the South, behind several other SEC (or soon-to-be SEC) teams, but also a handful of notable non-SEC teams.

Eight non-SEC teams were more popular than Auburn in the Southern U.S. in 2022: Florida State, Duke, Ohio State, North Carolina, Michigan, Maryland, Clemson and Georgia Tech.

AL.com in partnership with the Center for Sports Analytics at Samford University conducted an analysis of college football fans. All analysis is based on a nationwide survey of 6,330 sports fans in the U.S. conducted in January, 2023 by marketing research firm SBRnet.

Do you have an idea for a data story about Alabama? Or questions about Alabama that data may be able to answer? Email Ramsey Archibald at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @RamseyArchibald. Read more Alabama data stories here.