Attendance in Europe

I was just doing some research on football attendance all over Europe and I found a great site, which maybe some of you know but it looks like it is accurate enough. http://itv.stats.football365.com/dom/ITA/SA/attend.html
There was some others, but the numbers are more or less the same.

Mainly I have read a lot of stuff here and on websites as in attendance has gone down and that is mostly true for Italy I I think. Only a few teams have a bigger average attendance while a lot of the teams don't even fill 50 % of their stadiums. It is sad to see that Lazio's average attendance is only around 16,000 a game where their stadium can fit about 82,000 people.

Even though attendance in Italy has gone down and now Italy is far behind Spain, Germany and England in terms of per/game attendance this season, Milan's attendance seems to be pretty high regardless of all this.

As a matter of fact, here is the average attendance of teams across Europe for this season.
1. Barcelona - average per/game (90,000); stadium capacity (98,000)
2. Man. Utd - (75,531) ; (76,212)
3. Borissia D. - (73,050) ; (83,000)
4. Shalke - (61,433) ; (62,109)
5. Arsenal - (60,000) ; (60,432)
6. Real M. - (58,250) ; (75,000)
7. Celtic - (57,042) ; (60,832)
8. Marseille - (56,767) ; (60,000)
9. Bayern - (55,200) ; (69,060)
10. Hamburg - (54,940) ; (56,000)
11. Milan - (51,800) ; (85,700)
12. Ajax - (48,000) ; (?)
13. Valencia - (48,000) ; (53,000)
Some other Italian teams are Inter with 42,000 ;Roma with 41,000; Fiorentina with 32,000; Palermo with 29,000....

It is not as great as it should be as teams like Marseille, Hamburg, Celtic, Shalke, Borussia D., Celtic should not be in front of us but the 3 teams in front of us are only averaging 4/5,000 more a game which is not that much. Climbing up the table in Serie A and a few more impressive performances should give us 5/6,000 more on an average in the near future.

Although I think Milan situation is not that bad........Italy's situation could not get any worse I think.
Here is a little table on the leagues:
1. Germany - total attendance in 81games (2,947,708);average p/g (36,391)
2. England - 99 games (3,401,787) ; (34,361)
3. Spain - 80 games (2,452,781) ; (30,659)
4. Italy - 90 games (1,854,995) ; (20,611)
5. France - 110 games (2,172,160) ; (19,746)
6. Holland - ? games (?) ; (17,500)

It is embarassing that Italy only averages 20,000 people a game..... 15,000 less then Germany and England and 10,000 less then Spain. The federation has to do something to improve this situation.
This season though it looks like the league is more balanced and that might work out for the better with this issue because the more chance the smaller teams have of making it higher up the table, the larger their attendance is going to be.

I just thought it would be interesting to share this here because I was really wondering about how football attendances are throughout Italy.

There is lack of competition now as Juve are not around in the league and the penalties screw the interest of a lot of people.

One more thing is that Italian teams do not have good competitors in their groups (at least CL), Bayern and Valencia being the only teams capable to win away from home (on paper at least). The attention towards our teams will increase if all three of our teams make it to the quarter finals and onwards.

We may also need to get some stars to improve the league appearance. Stars like Ronaldinho who are flashy as well as good will increase the viewership abroad also. Hence I support the Ronaldinho movement that is going on in the Milan camp and expect all the other Italian teams help us to bring him to our club.

This is interesting. I'll share some too to compare from last season, taken from Calcio Italia mag.

2005-2006 season

Average attendance: 21,800
Average capacity filled: 54%

Highest attendance (Top 7)
Milan – 59,993
Inter – 50,702
Roma – 41,933
Fiorentina – 33,044
Lazio – 27,872
Palermo – 27,294
Torino – 24,199

Highest percentage capacity filled (Top 7)
Torino – 89%
Palermo – 74%
Milan – 72%
Fiorentina – 70%
Catania – 67%
Livorno – 62%
Ascoli – 62%
Inter – 61%

From the link you posted, it is 28,250 average attendance in current Serie A season so far. That increased from last year! Both of numbers are without Juventus though. But still I thought attendance was down ... but maybe it has increased for other clubs.

Milan, Inter and Lazio have significant decrease. Surprisingly, Fiorentina is even. All other clubs decreased except for a significant rise with Chievo, Palermo, Cagliari and Atalanta this season.

* Average attendance for 05-06 and current season computed with the 3 promoted clubs: Atalanta, Catania, Torino and not with relegated clubs for comparison between 2 seasons that would constitute the same clubs

Italy's average attendance would be higher if some of the traditionally bigger clubs like Genoa, Bologna and especially Napoli were around (i'd add Juve but they never get many fans anyway ) if you took out the 3 smallest teams and put those 3 in the average attendance would probably go up by 5000+

Its the same in England too, little teams like Reading, Watford, Wigan etc who sell out at 20k are in the Premiership whilst clubs like Sunderland, dirty Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday and others are rotting in the lower leagues. Thats just the nature of promotion/relegation systems but it does create a false picture of popularity sometimes..

Yea, you are right. As a matter of fact Napoli has the highest Serie B attendance with about 35,000 a game. That would put them in 4th place in serie A...not to mention that if they were in serie A that attendance will probably be higher anyway.

The problem however isn't only that teams like Bologna, Napoli, Genoa...etc. are in the lower leagues, but also there is a problem with some of the status of the current teams. Teams like Parma, Lazio, Sampdoria,Udinese were a force in the league about 6/7 years ago when the average attendance was 10,000 higher. Now we see Lazio with average attendance of 16,000; Parma with with an embarassning 13,000; Udinese with only 16,000 and Sampdoria is around 20,000 a game. If these teams get back to the level they were a while ago then we will see the attendance go drastically up. Just look at Palermo for an example.

The drop in attendance which applies to most teams could be due to star players leaving Serie A and that no big names have been brought from abroad. I have nnoticed that in my country fewer and fewer Serie A matches are being broadcast. As usual the attention swings to EPL but now the spansish league. The scandal have effected Italian football in more ways then 1

Palermo were helped by having Zamparini (sp?) come along and cough up £120 million of his own money over the past 4 years.

If each team could have one of those, Italian football would be laughing!

I have no numbers, but I've heard that attendances in Serie A have decreased every year for the last 10 years.

They blame it on bad facilities in stadiums, great TV-coverage and increasing number of violent episodes. And also the calciopoli.

Sounds like England 20 years ago to me... Wake up Italy! If this continues, italian football will get worse and lose the public interest.

Here in Norway lots of clubs build new modern stadiums to please the spectators, and Italy should do the same. And they should also get better at tracking down and arrest hooligans.