Premier League Attendances

[Xangsamhua]

Premier League attendances in 2007-8 were 13,676,390 (Wikipedia: List of Sports Attendance Figures). I don't know if these attendances are increasing or declining. One hears a lot about people being put off by the rising ticket prices. However, these figures are impressive, equating to 581 out of every million people in England, ahead of the Bundesliga (521), and a little behind La Liga (633).

The Premier League and the other Association Football leagues cited are substantially more popular than the NFL (American football) which attracts only 220 per million (2008), but the PL gets considerably less patronage per capita than the Canadian Football League (Canadian/American football), with an attendance in 2008 of 856 per million Canadians.

Far outstripping all of them, however, is the Australian Football League (Australian Rules football), which in 2008 attracted 1,711 patrons per million.

I was interested to check these attendance figures on learning that the Collingwood-Geelong AFL game at the MCG in Melbourne last night (a preliminary final: the winner goes into the Grand Final) had an attendance of 95,241. This is near full capacity for the MCG. The attendance at the GF next week will not be much higher.

I don't know what the highest attendance ever is for a football match. The Brazil-Uruguay final in the 1950 World Cup is claimed to have had 199,000 in attendance, but even assuming everyone stood, that seems unlikely.

[MSingh]

I see lots of spare Seats now in Games that a few Years back, there wouldn't have been..

I see that Manchester United Season Tickets are avaiable these days when a few Years back they wouldn't have been.

I see Teams that don't sell out their Travelling support this Season when a few Years back, they would have done & did..

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

It doesn't make any sense to be measuring attendance against the total population of the country. Like rental marketsand the travel industry, the proper method of supply-demand measurement is the vacancy rate: how many seats are sold as a percentage of total seating capacity. In the NFL, you have teams like the Redskins which sell out their entire stadium in season ticket sales.

[MSingh]

It doesn't make any sense to be measuring attendance against the total population of the country. Like rental marketsand the travel industry, the proper method of supply-demand measurement is the vacancy rate: how many seats are sold as a percentage of total seating capacity. In the NFL, you have teams like the Redskins which sell out their entire stadium in season ticket sales.

Welll that would be the same as the Prem if the Prem decided to do that but theey don't, Prem Clubs choose to allow some Tickets to go to Club Members & not only Season Ticket Holders which makie smore sense on teh whole as the Club itself gets more $$ from indiviula Tickets whihc they put into different Categories IE Grade A for the lieks of Games against the real Top 4 & West Ham & Grade C Games against the likes of Blackpool, T*ttenham etc..

Arsenal for example have 40,000 people on their Season Ticket waiting list, but are still unbelieveabley in some people's eyes, not the best supported Club in London...

[Hackett]

It doesn't make any sense to be measuring attendance against the total population of the country. Like rental marketsand the travel industry, the proper method of supply-demand measurement is the vacancy rate: how many seats are sold as a percentage of total seating capacity. In the NFL, you have teams like the Redskins which sell out their entire stadium in season ticket sales.

Welll that would be the same as the Prem if the Prem decided to do that but theey don't, Prem Clubs choose to allow some Tickets to go to Club Members & not only Season Ticket Holders which makie smore sense on teh whole as the Club itself gets more $$ from indiviula Tickets whihc they put into different Categories IE Grade A for the lieks of Games against the real Top 4 & West Ham & Grade C Games against the likes of Blackpool, T*ttenham etc..

Arsenal for example have 40,000 people on their Season Ticket waiting list, but are still unbelieveabley in some people's eyes, not the best supported Club in London...

Hilarious stuff MSingh.

[nev]

The genuine fans the ones going for years are jacking it in,it is getting to expensive what with tickets costing 40 or 50 quid a game,season tickets at a grand a season the average working man cannot afford to go no more,they have more important thing to spend on.

With man united our aways always sell out we have a ballot system,not always fair as the big games like liverpool city chelsea arsenal away the genuine lads miss out and the execs get tickets before the ballot,and at sunderland we have got reduced allocations down to 1200 from like 2900 we used to get,all because they say we do not sit down and its to hard to police at the same time at this game you see huge empty sections.

blackburn yesterday had the right idea made it 10 quid a ticket to fill some seats.

United is slowly replacing the genuine fans with fans they want to see going,sit down shut up go in the megastore before and after,thus the atmosphere is going to pot at games now.

The way forward is bring back safe standing so lads can go and stand with there mates again,bringing in all seater stadiums ruined the game day for the average working class man.

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

It doesn't make any sense to be measuring attendance against the total population of the country. Like rental marketsand the travel industry, the proper method of supply-demand measurement is the vacancy rate: how many seats are sold as a percentage of total seating capacity. In the NFL, you have teams like the Redskins which sell out their entire stadium in season ticket sales.

Welll that would be the same as the Prem if the Prem decided to do that but theey don't, Prem Clubs choose to allow some Tickets to go to Club Members & not only Season Ticket Holders which makie smore sense on teh whole as the Club itself gets more $ from indiviula Tickets whihc they put into different Categories IE Grade A for the lieks of Games against the real Top 4 & West Ham & Grade C Games against the likes of Blackpool, T*ttenham etc..

Arsenal for example have 40,000 people on their Season Ticket waiting list, but are still unbelieveabley in some people's eyes, not the best supported Club in London...

That's not my point. The true metric of sports attendance is how many unsold seats are there for each game compared to sold seats, not how many seats are sold compared to the population of a country. I used the Redskins example to show how a market's demand can far exceed supply of tickets. The fact that all the seats are sold as season tickets is irrelevant.

[MSingh]

It doesn't make any sense to be measuring attendance against the total population of the country. Like rental marketsand the travel industry, the proper method of supply-demand measurement is the vacancy rate: how many seats are sold as a percentage of total seating capacity. In the NFL, you have teams like the Redskins which sell out their entire stadium in season ticket sales.

Welll that would be the same as the Prem if the Prem decided to do that but theey don't, Prem Clubs choose to allow some Tickets to go to Club Members & not only Season Ticket Holders which makie smore sense on teh whole as the Club itself gets more $ from indiviula Tickets whihc they put into different Categories IE Grade A for the lieks of Games against the real Top 4 & West Ham & Grade C Games against the likes of Blackpool, T*ttenham etc..

Arsenal for example have 40,000 people on their Season Ticket waiting list, but are still unbelieveabley in some people's eyes, not the best supported Club in London...

That's not my point. The true metric of sports attendance is how many unsold seats are there for each game compared to sold seats, not how many seats are sold compared to the population of a country. I used the Redskins example to show how a market's demand can far exceed supply of tickets. The fact that all the seats are sold as season tickets is irrelevant.

My point was not to shoot down your point...

My point was giving a different persepctive to your point..

[Xangsamhua]

It doesn't make any sense to be measuring attendance against the total population of the country. Like rental marketsand the travel industry, the proper method of supply-demand measurement is the vacancy rate: how many seats are sold as a percentage of total seating capacity. In the NFL, you have teams like the Redskins which sell out their entire stadium in season ticket sales.

Welll that would be the same as the Prem if the Prem decided to do that but theey don't, Prem Clubs choose to allow some Tickets to go to Club Members & not only Season Ticket Holders which makie smore sense on teh whole as the Club itself gets more $ from indiviula Tickets whihc they put into different Categories IE Grade A for the lieks of Games against the real Top 4 & West Ham & Grade C Games against the likes of Blackpool, T*ttenham etc..

Arsenal for example have 40,000 people on their Season Ticket waiting list, but are still unbelieveabley in some people's eyes, not the best supported Club in London...

That's not my point. The true metric of sports attendance is how many unsold seats are there for each game compared to sold seats, not how many seats are sold compared to the population of a country. I used the Redskins example to show how a market's demand can far exceed supply of tickets. The fact that all the seats are sold as season tickets is irrelevant.

My point was not to shoot down your point...

My point was giving a different persepctive to your point..

I don't think I've got the point at all. The data I used from Wikipedia was what I wanted to show, i.e. how popular the code is, or how much of a market share the game has compared to other football codes in different countries.

If we go by number of seats unsold and Gillingham, for example, in a good year was close to filling its 11,000 seat stadium at Priestfield, that doesn't tell me how popular Gillingham is compared to West Ham (35,000 seats) or Arsenal (60,000). Arsenal could have 40,000 empty seats at Emirates and still have twice as many fans as the Gills.

As I said, I might have missed the point.

[MSingh]

Welll that would be the same as the Prem if the Prem decided to do that but theey don't, Prem Clubs choose to allow some Tickets to go to Club Members & not only Season Ticket Holders which makie smore sense on teh whole as the Club itself gets more $ from indiviula Tickets whihc they put into different Categories IE Grade A for the lieks of Games against the real Top 4 & West Ham & Grade C Games against the likes of Blackpool, T*ttenham etc..

Arsenal for example have 40,000 people on their Season Ticket waiting list, but are still unbelieveabley in some people's eyes, not the best supported Club in London...

That's not my point. The true metric of sports attendance is how many unsold seats are there for each game compared to sold seats, not how many seats are sold compared to the population of a country. I used the Redskins example to show how a market's demand can far exceed supply of tickets. The fact that all the seats are sold as season tickets is irrelevant.

My point was not to shoot down your point...

My point was giving a different persepctive to your point..

I don't think I've got the point at all. The data I used from Wikipedia was what I wanted to show, i.e. how popular the code is, or how much of a market share the game has compared to other football codes in different countries.

If we go by number of seats unsold and Gillingham, for example, in a good year was close to filling its 11,000 seat stadium at Priestfield, that doesn't tell me how popular Gillingham is compared to West Ham (35,000 seats) or Arsenal (60,000). Arsenal could have 40,000 empty seats at Emirates and still have twice as many fans as the Gills.

As I said, I might have missed the point.

I got your point..

I was just making a point to the other Fella's point...

I love a Point, my Team has a Point & guess what shape the top of a Pyramid is ??

Sorry, it's late..

That's why i despise Chelsea i guess, just too many points..

[Xangsamhua]

I don't think I've got the point at all. The data I used from Wikipedia was what I wanted to show, i.e. how popular the code is, or how much of a market share the game has compared to other football codes in different countries.

If we go by number of seats unsold and Gillingham, for example, in a good year was close to filling its 11,000 seat stadium at Priestfield, that doesn't tell me how popular Gillingham is compared to West Ham (35,000 seats) or Arsenal (60,000). Arsenal could have 40,000 empty seats at Emirates and still have twice as many fans as the Gills.

As I said, I might have missed the point.

I got your point..

I was just making a point to the other Fella's point...

I love a Point, my Team has a Point & guess what shape the top of a Pyramid is ??

Sorry, it's late..

That's why i despise Chelsea i guess, just too many points..

Good point! Especially the one about the Hammers' shiny new point they got at Stoke.