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Big welcome to the Hibs, Hearts & Rangers to the Championship


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Not the first time I've seen that claimed but I just can't see it, even factoring back for the lesser number of games this division has.

Celtic Park has a bigger capacity than Ibrox and whilst neither club is especially likely to actually publish real bums on seats attendances there's no real reason to expect Rangers to significantly out-attend Celtic in matches.

Hibs and Hearts are big teams but Aberdeen's support would probably beat either of them, whilst a combination of Dundee United, Dundee, Motherwell, etc would outweigh the other.

Thereafter where are we getting the bigger crowds? Falkirk have a decent support but not enough to outweigh Kilmarnock and St Mirren. QoS, Livingston and Raith have average supports well under 2,000 usually and the part time clubs are all much smaller than anyone in the Premiership.

Apart from anything else, even if you accept the premise that there will be massive travelling supports from Rangers, Hearts and Hibs (which is by no means certain), the sheer size constraints of most of the grounds down here means they won't beat the Premiership attendances. Doesn't matter how many tens of thousands might want to see Dumbarton v Rangers, the stadium can only hold a couple of thousand (or whatever capacity is).

I expect next season will see the narrowest gap between the top two division ever in terms of average attendance but I would still expect the Premiership to be comfortably ahead.

Using last Season's averages as a baseline...

The teams who make up next seasons top flight averaged official attendances of 9,306

While the teams who make up next seasons 2nd tier averaged 7,790 (It would have been 8,061if the Pars had come up)

For that gap to close would require about a 10% average drop at the premiership clubs and a rise on a similar scale at the championship.

That's not outwith the realms of possibility but I would be surprised (though not shocked) to see it happen.

But this is all, to use a technical term, bollocks

The statistical value of looking at the difference between the means of the two sets is very limited given the massive variation within them.

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Interesting times. Expect The Sevco to pack in the punters whatever. We'll probably still pack em in to support our first season out of admin. Hibs though? Last time in relegation their attendances went up due to them winning games. This time though? If Petrie and TB are still around and they lose against us, Sevco, RR again and others, I can see ER becoming even more of an echo dome.

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  • 6 months later...

Bumpety bump.

Championship reached halfway yesterday and according to the average crowds table in my paper the division as a whole is averaging 7,571 with the Premiership (still 4 matchdays and an Inverness match short of halfway) averaging 8,459.

Hearts have averaged 15,963 which is a fantastic increase of almost 2,000 on last season... Hibs have remained fairly static down around 400 to 10,596... Rangers crowds have suffered a terrible crash plunging by over 10,000 to 32,375.

Regarding the predictions about Celtic and Aberdeen the Parkhead club are down about 4,000 to 43,265 and Aberdeen are down about 500 to 12,437 using the incomplete series.

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Bumpety bump.

Championship reached halfway yesterday and according to the average crowds table in my paper the division as a whole is averaging 7,571 with the Premiership (still 4 matchdays and an Inverness match short of halfway) averaging 8,459.

Hearts have averaged 15,963 which is a fantastic increase of almost 2,000 on last season... Hibs have remained fairly static down around 400 to 10,596... Rangers crowds have suffered a terrible crash plunging by over 10,000 to 32,375.

Regarding the predictions about Celtic and Aberdeen the Parkhead club are down about 4,000 to 43,265 and Aberdeen are down about 500 to 12,437 using the incomplete series.

Utterly shite home attendances from the Sheep.

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Yet they consistently have a good away following. I don't get it.

Middle-aged punters who started supporting them in the late 1970s and early 1980s that live in the central belt.

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  • 4 months later...

Yet they consistently have a good away following. I don't get it.

Middle-aged punters who started supporting them in the late 1970s and early 1980s that live in the central belt.

Or maybe just a day away from Aberdeen? :whistle

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