Last week, we started with our series of random attendance facts. Here is the second round of attendance facts that relate to last weekend:

• The US Major League Soccer is rather egalitarian if it comes to attendances. However, one club jumps out with an average almost twice the level of the next club. These are the Seattle Sounders, and they have averaged 41,418 spectators per match so far this season. Normally, they keep the upper deck of CenturyLink Field closed, however they made an  exception for their home match against the LA Galaxy this weekend, and welcomed a season-high of 60,908 visitors.
• The J-League has grown into a mature league in recent seasons. They have averaged a total of 16,928 visitors per match so far, and last week we already mentioned Urawa Reds’ very impressive average. What’s more, all teams have thus far averaged at least 10,000 spectators a match, though Omiya Ardija and Sagan Tosu will have to watch out not to fall below this threshold.
• Brazil’s average attendance of 12,078 so far must strike many as disappointing for such a football-mad country. We mentioned Flamengo’s disappointing attendances last week, but one of Brazil’s other well-supported clubs, Corinthians, does live up to its reputation and has managed to fill Pacaembu with an average of 23,312 fans per match so far. 
• Russia will be an interesting league to follow in the upcoming years as a host of new stadiums may push them in the top 6. After three playing rounds they have averaged just over 13,000 fans per match, but can they keep this up when the winter comes?

Weekly attendance facts

It is the end of July, and it won’t take long before Europe’s major leagues will kick off. In the meantime, some smaller leagues have already done so, and other leagues across the globe are already well under way.

This season, we will again meticulously keep track of the attendances of the world’s major leagues, and after every weekend present you with a few random facts. Highs, lows, averages, trends, fluctuations, sell outs, occupancy rates, and much more. Anything we can think of. Here is our first series:

• The French have made it a tradition to play their annual super cup (Trophée des Champions) in a different country somewhere around the world. Earlier versions in Rabat, Tunis, and Montreal were a great success. The New Yorkers, however, could not be bothered with the match and only 15,166 people showed up at the Red Bull Arena last Saturday.
• The Major League Soccer has already seen a lot of action this season. The league has thus far posted an average of 18,642 visitors per match, pretty much comparable with the French Ligue 1 and the Dutch Eredivisie.
• Just over a month ago we reported on the reopening of Montreal’s Stade Saputo. Whereas the Impact’s attendances at the start of the season at the Olympic Stadium were pretty high (avg. 36,498), they disappointed for the first six matches at Stade Saputo (avg. 14,450). Last Saturday, the Impact finally came close to selling out their renovated stadium when 19,441 people paid to see the Impact play the New York Red Bulls.
• Japan’s J-League has already completed its 19th round of matches, and there is no doubt which is the best supported club. Urawa Reds has thus far managed to attract an average of 33,617 people to its home matches at the Saitama Stadium 2002.
• The excitement of Clarence Seedorf’s arrival at Botafogo seems already to have worn off. Attendances at Engenhão shot up after the announcement and 29,942 people paid to see him play his first match. Two losses later and only 3,401 fans were left.
• Botafogo’s average is still higher than Flamengo’s though. Rio’s most popular club has managed to attract just 10,741 people per match this season. This is 8,000 per match less than what they achieved last season.

Weekly attendance facts

Since we launched our new design in January we have added a lot of content to the site. While we were initially forced to scale back the number of stadiums in our database to a mere 100, these have in the meantime been increased to over 350 again. We have also been able to consistently keep you up to date with the latest stadium news and write several background articles.

However, now that the quieter summer period is about the start, we have taken a moment to reflect on what we have done and decided that some further changes are needed to make the site even more attractive. These are no grand changes, but most of all small changes to change the look and feel of the site as well as the accessibility of information.

We will use the rest of the summer to make these changes and at the same time update our database. As we are no professional organisation with lots of resources we will make these changes gradually, which means that at some point certain entries will look different than others. Which will not make any of the information less useful, but we thought we’d let you know anyway in case you wondered.

You may already have noticed that the browsing structure has changed and we are about to complete the future section of the site. We will then move our attention to the section of past stadiums and then the rest of the present stadiums. We hope to have everything more or less in shape at the start of the new season.

Of course, we very much appreciate any feedback to make the site even better, whether this means making further changes or adding additional information. Feel free to let us know!

Making changes

This attendance report will be the next-to-last of the season. After all, there are only a few more matches to play in most major leagues. We will then dedicate a few articles to some in-depth analyses of the attendances around Europe this season. But first, let’s have a look at the attendances of this weekend’s round, and those of the weekend before.

English Premier League

In these two rounds we only had 16 Premier League matches (out of a normal 20) due to some postponements resulting from FA Cup commitments. During these matches an average of 93% of seats were occupied and a total of 9 matches were sold-out or almost sold-out. Decent attendances, but not as good as in the middle of the season.

We see few surprising attendances. The relegation strugglers Blackburn, Bolton, and QPR all recorded above-average attendances, though quite a few Wolves fans decided to stay at home instead of facing their relegation ordeal inside the stadium.

Liverpool’s poor home form finally seems to have affected their attendances. More than a thousand faithful did not bother to show up. Swansea’s “not-very-exciting” mid-table position also meant that quite a few fans of the club decided to spend their Saturday afternoon in a different way. They recorded a season low, though still filled almost 93% of the Liberty Stadium.

Most end-of-season attendance rankings of the Premier League seem to have been settled, though there is still a bit of a fight going on about which team can call themselves England’s fourth favourite team this year. If Tottenham fails to attract good crowds in their matches away to Bolton and Aston Villa (two though crowds), they may lose this honour to Everton. A low crowd for Everton at Molineux may thwart that though. Surprisingly, Newcastle United finds itself in a rather secure third spot behind Manchester United and Liverpool.

Germany Bundesliga

The last two Bundesliga playing rounds together made up the 16th home match of the teams. This 16th home match was the third best attended of the season, with an average crowd of 46,033, an average of 95% of tickets sold, and a total of 12 (almost) full houses.

Most notable of these sell-outs were Hamburg (back from a few weeks without selling out) and Bremen (the second sell-out in a row). Good attendances were also achieved in Stuttgart (5th high of the season) and Kaiserslautern (7th high), despite a hopeless league position for the latter.

There were hardly any negative surprises, with only Wolfsburg and Mainz recording attendances that fell into the bottom quartile of the season.

Also in the Bundesliga most attendance rankings seem to have been settled. Borussia Dortmund has the highest averages, Bayern the most sell-outs, Nürnberg the least sell-outs, and Hertha the lowest occupancy rates. Hertha’s fans are also the most fickle, thoug hit should be noted that they still attract an average of more than 50,000 spectators per match.

Spanish Primera División

The last two playing rounds in the Primera División saw 75% of all tickets get sold, which is above the season-average of 72%. This was obviously helped by Barcelona’s sell-out in El Clásico, and a week earlier the club had also helped Levante sell out for the first team this season. Other good attendances were recorded by Zaragoza and, as usual, Granada.

Osasuna and Getafe continued with disappointing crowds, and Sevilla’s and Valencia’s attendances also rated amongst their worst of the season. That said, Mestalla could be well-filled for the next home match as Valencia’s fans rate among the most fickle in the league, a ranking that is topped by Levante.

Barcelona’s sell-out crowd has brought its season average to within a few hundred of rivals Madrid: 74,671 vs 75,078. If Barcelona manages to attract more fans to the Camp Nou than Madrid to the Bernabeu for their last two home matches, they will at least have that consolation after their title and Champions League hopes have crashed (there is the small matter of the Copa del Rey too, of course).

French Ligue 1

Just as in the Primera División about 75% of tickets got sold during the last two playing rounds of Ligue 1, which resulted in an above-average attendance of 19,500 people per match.

Sochaux recorded a season-high in their match against Dijon. Bordeaux, Caen, Lorient, and Nancy also all managed to attract significantly more people than normal to their stadiums. Some of the bigger clubs disappointed though, with Marseille and Lyonnais both recording their lowest attendance of the season. Stade Rennais did not do much better.

One could also call league leader Montpellier’s recent attendances disappointing. In its last two matches it attracted an average of about 18,500 fans per game, which did not even fill their Stade de la Mosson for 60%. With an average occupancy rate of 50% over the season they only (just) beat Auxerre, who seem bound for relegation. The league average is 71%.

Dutch Eredivisie

There does not yet seem an end in sight for the good attendances in the Eredivisie. The 13th, 14th, and 15th home match of the teams all recorded an average of over 20,000, and there is little reason to think that the 16th round will not be able to make this mark, that is, if Feyenoord continues to sell out.

Most of the teams recorded top attendances in the last two rounds, though as quite a few of them are hitting their capacity, there is little room for improvement. The average occupancy rate in the Eredivisie is 90%, and only ADO Den Haag (80%), FC Utrecht (80%), Roda JC (70%) and Vitesse Arnhem (69%) are able to record significant growth with their current capacity.

Of these teams, Vitesse’s attendances are possibly most disappointing. The team has apparently not been able to convince sufficient people that this year’s reasonable results are a proper turnaround of previous’ years misery.

USA Major League Soccer

We have tried to take a look at the MLS too, but, as we’re only seven games in the season, the irregular schedule makes it hard to analyse. Some teams, for example, have already played five home matches, whereas others only two.

What strikes though, is that attendances seem very volatile. They can easily go up and down by 50% from one match to another, which even to Spanish measures is a lot. But let’s wait a few weeks before making firm conclusions.

Weekly Attendance Report

This week’s attendance report has come out slightly later than normal as we decided to include both the weekend’s and the mid-week’s playing. We’ve also decided to make the attendance report a biweekly feature (i.e. once every two weeks), which means that the next one come out in a week-and-a-half.

English Premier League

The Premier League analysis includes two matchdays: the 32nd and 33rd.

During the two matchdays about 91% of all seats were sold and a total of 11 stadiums were completely filled or almost completely filled. All sold-out matches were of teams that regularly sell out though, and few of the other team surprised in a positive way. Blackburn recorded its 4th highest attendance of the season, but the visitors were Liverpool who always attract extra crowds.

Aston Villa, on the other hand, recorded its worst attendance of the season only just beating the 30,000 mark. West Bromwich also recorded one of its lowest attendances of the season, though still filled almost 90% of the Hawthorns. In fact, both Chelsea and Liverpool technically recorded season lows, but in reality this only meant a few hundred visitors less than normal. 

Wigan’s attendance (10th of the season) was possibly one of the most disappointing as they received Manchester United and the team has shown real fighting spirit recently. Wolves’ fans also did not warm up for the Arsenal match, but in their case there is few to get excited about.

Bolton’s attendance returned to more average levels after a spike up in their last home match. They prove once again to be the most fickly fans of the Premier League. On any match day attendances tend to be 20% higher or lower than their last.

German Bundesliga

The Bundesliga analysis includes the 29th and 30th playing round, which together form the 15th home match of the teams. A very average round on most accounts: the 15th home match rates as the 7th best attended of the season, half of the matches sold out, and about 93% of all tickets got sold.

Most full houses came from teams that have at least regularly sold out this season. Freiburg’s recent push up the table has not gone unnoticed with the fans: it recorded its fourth sell-out in a row. Wolfsburg and Köln sold out for the second time in a row. But after selling out its previous two games, Hoffenheim failed to do so this week.

The rest of the attendances were rather average, though Leverkusen’s and Hertha’s rank among the lowest of the season. Apparently Leverkusen fans do not get excited about a fight for a Europa League spot, whereas Hertha fans may have started to despair about the team’s poor form and ranking. 

There is still a small fight going on between Schalke and Gladbach for the honour of being Germany’s third popular team this season (after Bayern and Dortmund). Schalke lies currently in third but may loose their spot if they fail to attract a (close to) full house at Bremen.

Primera División

After a couple of rounds with high attendances, these have now fallen slightly back in the last two playing rounds. On average 71% of all seats were sold, which meant an average attendance per match of just under 29,000.

The lower attendances are mainly caused by falling levels of spectators at the bottom teams. Sporting Gijón set a record low of the season, Racing also could not get its fans excited for the encounter with Mallorca, and Sociedad’s attendances continued the downward trend. Surprisingly also Getafe and Osasuna, both arguably performing better than expected, set their lowest attendance of the season in their last home match.

On the other end both Granada and Málaga, the only two teams to regularly sell out, continued playing for sell-out crowds, though they were accompanied this time by Zaragoza and Atlético who received Barcelona and Madrid.

Madrid just edged Barcelona in terms of attendance and their season average is also just above Barcelona’s (76,000 vs 74,600). Barcelona still has the chance to make up though as they have the advantage of having a bigger ground.

Ligue 1

Ligue 1, which only played one league round, also could not keep up with previous high attendances and fell back to average levels which stand at about 18,500 per match and 71% of seats occupied.

Paris Saint-German set a season high though in their match against rivals Marseille, and Dijon set a second-high against Nancy. Both Ajaccio’s and Nice’s attendances are following their results on the way up, and Caen rebounced from a poor showing last week. These were however offset by relatively poor attendances in the other home games.

There is still a bit of competition for the title of club-with-the-fourth-highest-average-attendances (after PSG, Marseille, and Lyonnais) with Toulouse, Saint-Etienne, Rennais, and Bordeaux all averaging close to 21,000 spectators per game.

Eredivisie

Also only one round of matches in the Eredivisie due to the Cup final on Sunday. No Big 3 home matches this round so lower aboslute numbers, but still an above-average 93% of all seats filled and four (almost) full houses.

NAC Breda had one of the lowest attendances of the season, though in absolute numbers not much less than the average. Roda JC attracted the second highest crowd of the season, though received Feyenoord who always attract more fans.

Ajax will end the season with the highest average, and if they keep selling out they may just pass the 50,000 mark. Feyenoord will be second with an average of in the mid 40,000s, and PSV Eindhoven third with a likely average of around 33,000.

Weekly Attendance Report

It’s almost that time of the season again. The end is nearing which also means that Europe’s domestic cup competitions are coming to a conclusion. Belgian’s cup final has already been played and this weekend it’s the turn of the Dutch. Though other tournaments are still in the semi-final or even quarter-final stage.

Cup finals are typically played at a country’s national stadium or other flagship stadium, though there are the odd exceptions We’ve put them all in a nice table for you:

Photo Wembley: © Wembleystadium.com

Your Guide to the Cup Finals

From now on we will provide you every Monday evening with a report of the attendances of Europe’s major leagues (and soon the Major League Soccer). This report will generally be published on Monday evening, depending on what matches are still to be played. Here’s our first, discussing this weekend’s attendances:

English Premier League

A very average round of attendances for the English Premier League, with the home teams managing to fill about 91% of seats and sell out 5 matches. Of course, none of the (old) Big 4 played a home match.

Still, some noticeable attendances with Blackburn recording its highest attendance of the season and Newcastle its second highest. No wonder though, as they played Manchester United and Liverpool who have proven to be the most popular teams in the league. Both teams manage to fill about 96% of the stadiums they visit.

The good run of Wigan has also had its effect on attendances with the club attracting a third high of the season, though not beating the 20,000-mark as in their previous home match. Wigan will likely have to improve if it does not want to end up as the club with the lowest occupancy rate (73%). Currently only Blackburn does slightly worse.

Overall, attendances in the Premier League are slightly on the up, averaging about 34,500, though they are also characterised by stability, in general not moving more than 3% up or down per home match.

German Bundesliga

This weekend the Bundesliga could not match last weekend’s spectacular attendances when 98% of available places were sold. Still not a bad weekend overall, with 93% of places sold (11th out of 28 rounds) and 5 sell-outs.

It was the first sell-out of the season for 1. FC Nürnberg, who hosted FC Bayern. Not that much of a surprise as Bayern is the only Bundesliga club to have sold out all its home AND away matches this season. Looking at the club’s remaining away matches – FC Köln, Dortmund and Bremen -, it is likely to complete the season without having seen one empty seat.

Kaiserslautern fans realised the match against Hamburg may have been their last chance for survival and recorded its 5th highest attendance of the season with 44,745 fans showing up. Hertha fans however did not feel the urgency yet, or have already given up, as they recorded a – for them – not so stellar attendance of 46,388, a third from last of the season. Hoffenheim, on the other hand, is back to selling out after a dip in attendances mid-season.

Overall attendances seem to be edging up with the end of the season nearing. The 13th home game of the clubs was the best attended of the season, and the 14th (this and last weekend) the third best.

Spanish Primera División

Primera División attendances tend to be very volatile, with averages moving up and down by about 15% per week. This weekend’s round saw a season high of 34,333 visitors per match showing up, which was mainly helped by the critical Barcelona fans showing up in large numbers for the match against Bielsa’s Bilbao. The attendance of 88,207 was a season high, though they obviously still get Madrid at home.

Atlético and Valencia, both with a set of very fickly fans, also scored high attendances. As did Osasuna for their home match against Real Madrid, though Osasuna fans tend to be amongst the most loyal in the Primera División. Real Madrid turned out to attract more fans in Pamplona than Barcelona did earlier in the year, whereas it usually is the other way around.

Gijón also attracted a season high attendance (of almost 30,000) as their fans realised the importance of their match against Zaragoza. We have a similar story in Santander, which recorded its third-highest attendance of the season in their match against fellow-strugglers Granada. At both club the increased support was however to no avail.

French Ligue 1

The French Ligue 1 could not maintain its excellent attendances of the last two rounds and fell slightly back to 74% of seats sold. Still a very decent 7th place (out of 30) for the season.

The fans of the two bottom clubs, Auxerre and Sochaux, rallied around their teams, with Auxerre recording an attendance of just over 14,000 (4th of the season) and Sochaux a record attendance of 17,299 in their match against relegation competitor Stade Brestois.

Caen fans, however, have become rather disillusioned by the club’s poor form and only recorded an attendance of 13,480, third from bottom this season. Lorient set an absolute season low, but this was only about a thousand fans less than their median attendance of 15,563, as the club’s attendance are among the most stable in the league.

Nancy recorded its second highest attendance of the season against Paris Saint-Germain, France’s second favourite club after Marseille. Both club manage to fill 85% to 90% of the stadiums they visit, whereas the average lies at about 70%.

Dutch Eredivisie

The Dutch Eredivisie recorded its highest round of attendances of the season with an average of 27,204, about 8,000 more than their season average. No wonder though, considering that Ajax, Feyenoord, PSV and FC Twente played a home match.

Still, the eight home teams managed to sell 92% of available seats. And the clubs’ 14th home match (this and last weekend’s round) was with 20,146 the second best attended of the year, only just being beaten by the 13th home match (20,159).

The tight league standings are clearly making fans excited, with all top team (almost) attracting full houses. Vitesse fans also got excited about their match against league-leaders AZ, setting the second highest attendance of the season with 22,164. The only fans not joining the fun were those of RKC and Utrecht. The latter have little to get excited about with a probable mid-table finish, but surprise-of-the-season RKC is still in contention for Europe, and therefore should have done better than a third from worst attendance of the season.

Most popular club in Holland is Ajax, who manage to fill 98% of the seats of the stadiums they visit, but Feyenoord and PSV or still competing for second place, with the end result probably getting decided by the fickle fans of Roda JC, that both teams still have to play.

Disclaimer: It is important to realise that about a thousand caveats apply when analysing attendances, and that we are obviously depending on the data that is reported (with especially the Primera División data somewhat unreliable). Feel free to ask any questions you have in the comment section. We expect to include an analysis of both the Serie A and Major League Soccer as from next week.

Weekly Attendance Report

It’s not a fancy as Facebook’s, but will undoubtedly make for nice browsing. Our first timeline lists the openings of most of the stadiums in our database in chronological order. Starting in 1855 with Bramall Lane, it runs all the way down to 2012 with Stadion Narodowy w Warszawie.

The timeline, however, requires some explanation, and also leads to some interesting observations. But let’s first start with the explanations.

First of all, tagging a fixed date on a stadium is not always as easy as it seems. For most recently built stadiums it probably is, however the distant past is more fluid. For example, at some of the stadium sites football was already being played before a stadium was built. Do you start counting from the start, or from the official inauguration of the first stand?

Also, quite a few stadiums were already in use by other sports before football came to town, which was for example the case with the two oldest grounds in our database (Bramall Lane and Stamford Bridge) – cricket and athletics being the sports in question.

Or what do you do when a complete new stadium is being built on the site of an old stadium, whether the stadium keeps its former name or not. Do you keep counting, or do you consider it to be a newly opened stadium? Is Wembley Stadium a new stadium or just a new form of the old stadium at the same place.

There are no firm rules for these issues, and much is led by how a club or stadium presents its history, which is something to bear in mind.

Now on to the observations, as some things do call the attention when looking at the timeline:

• Bramall Lane really has no competition if it comes to being the oldest stadium at which professional football is still being played.
• Only English and Scottish clubs still play at a stadium that was built in the 19th century.
• The golden years for stadium construction in England ended in 1923 with the completion of Maine Road and Wembley Stadium.
• The year 1923 was in general a grand year, with other notorious stadiums such as Estadio de Mestalla, Müngersdorfer Stadion, and the Belgian Bosuilstadion being inaugurated.
• The heydays of stadium construction in continental Europe continued until the mid 1930s with many still classic stadiums opening in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
• Both World Wars had obviously a massive impact on activity, with new stadium construction only picking up again by the mid 1950s.
• New stadium construction came to a halt in the mid 1970s and only got on again in the 1990s (though many Spanish stadiums were renovated for the 1982 World Cup).
• A new generation of football stadiums arose from the early to mid 1990s, starting with such stadiums as Parken (1992), Stade Michel d’Ornano (1993), Abe Lenstra Stadion (1994) and the Riverside Stadium (1995). The Amsterdam ArenA (1996) was the first 50,000+ stadium of a new generation.
• Which means that the 1990 World Cup came at the worst possible time for Italy in terms of stadium legacy.
• We are still going strong in terms of new stadium activity, with few negative effects (yet!) of the economic downturn such as happened in the late 1970s.

Undoubtedly there are many more interesting trends to find in the data, and we’ll soon dive further into the details.

Four further notes:

• We have only included stadiums that are currently in our database. Which means that a good few stadiums are still missing, but that the list will also keep expanding.
• To keep things clear we have only included stadiums with a current capacity of 25,000, or that have had a much larger capacity in the past or other historical significance (e.g. Pittodrie Stadium or the Bosuilstadion).
• We have included present as well as past stadiums (that don’t exist anymore). Obviously, the data is (still) skewed toward the present stadiums.
• Many stadiums have had different names in the past, and we have tried to use the name the stadium was longest known for, though some situations are ambiguous. In any case, if you hover over the link you will see the current name of the stadium.

If you haven’t clicked at the link above already, you can find the timeline here.

We present our first stadium timeline

With another round of Europa League action kicking off tonight, we present you all Europa League stadiums in a handy table. From the massive Old Trafford to the modest AFAS Stadion. From the famous Mestalla to the (still) lesser known Metalist Stadium.

This week’s matches:

And next week’s return round:

Photo: © Wikipedia user Tot-futbol.

Your Guide to the Europa League Stadiums

That’s why we are now ready to start including smaller and more exotic stadiums, and we are open for your suggestions on which ones to work on next.

Would you like to see the stadium of your home club included? Are you planning a trip and need information about a certain stadium? Has a particular stadium caught your eye and you would like to know more? Let us know, and we’ll start working.

The only condition is that it has got to be a stadium from one of the top two leagues of a country (top three for England), or that it has a certain history. Feel free to request past or future stadiums too. We cannot fully guarantee that we will add your request as we need at least one photo of a certain quality with copyright permissions, but you can always help us with that by sending a photo.

So let us know your requests in the comments!

Your Stadium Requests