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Football attendances per capita


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Tables like this always make me wonder whether the OF skew the figures. It's obviously true that no matter the league you go to there will always be big teams and smaller teams, but I do wonder if the difference in attendances between top and bottom is more of a contract in Scotland than it is in other places.

The OF might bring in 50/60k, and you'll have a middle ground of the Edinburgh clubs and Aberdeen, but other than that we're talking the 3000 to 7000 mark.

image.png.47a20721cfbe32b4ba1cfb7b604f23e2.png

(source: BBC - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/48473238)

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For completion here is the other leagues:

image.thumb.png.9de96dd3dc57f36ebcdd74e4562d48c9.png

 

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I would imagine there are few other top leagues in countries with such a marked difference in attendances. But Scotland is not a huge country population wise and outside of the big city’s it’s fairly sparse. Look at Motherwell with a population of only 32000, they probably get a higher percentage of the population actually watching games than some of the bigger city’s.

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14 minutes ago, Yorky said:

I would imagine there are few other top leagues in countries with such a marked difference in attendances.

Well that's the question I'm sort of putting out there. I honestly don't know. I seem to remember someone comparing us to the Dutch league and while they have big clubs with high attendances, there isn't the level of drop off down to just the few thousands.

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Well that's the question I'm sort of putting out there. I honestly don't know. I seem to remember someone comparing us to the Dutch league and while they have big clubs with high attendances, there isn't the level of drop off down to just the few thousands.


Portugal has a sizeable drop off from their big 3 clubs. In 17/18 the big 3 had averages of 53276, 43588, 41359 with best outside the big three being 16695 & only one other club in five figures with 12626. Next club is down at 6678.
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Tables like this always make me wonder whether the OF skew the figures. It's obviously true that no matter the league you go to there will always be big teams and smaller teams, but I do wonder if the difference in attendances between top and bottom is more of a contract in Scotland than it is in other places.
The OF might bring in 50/60k, and you'll have a middle ground of the Edinburgh clubs and Aberdeen, but other than that we're talking the 3000 to 7000 mark.
image.png.47a20721cfbe32b4ba1cfb7b604f23e2.png
(source: BBC - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/48473238)
Spoiler

For completion here is the other leagues:
image.thumb.png.9de96dd3dc57f36ebcdd74e4562d48c9.png

 

You can take out Celtic and Rangers home crowds from the SPFL and Scotland is still one of the highest attended leagues per capita. Figures above actually illustrate that. Take 50odd thousand out of the crowd per week and Scottish sides still get to near enough 1% of the population.

I'd also add that this is in a small sized league. Lots of the leagues in the comparison above have 16+ sides in the division.

Scottish football is wildly supported, and I don't think people understand quite how much the case that is.
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1 hour ago, Lebowski said:

Scottish football is wildly supported, and I don't think people understand quite how much the case that is.

I'm not disputing that Scottish football is well supported, per capita, I was musing over just how much weight the OF gates add to our ratio.

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47 minutes ago, Ric said:

I'm not disputing that Scottish football is well supported, per capita, I was musing over just how much weight the OF gates add to our ratio.

From reading the original table and folk discussing it Scotland would be 4th in Europe without the Scumbags. 

Removing all top two from other countries and Scotland would go back top again.

If thats true (I havent done the calculations) then its quite impressive given the level of utter shite we each had/have to endure on a weekly basis.

No wonder folk like a pint before a game. 

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Do Celt

16 hours ago, Ric said:

Tables like this always make me wonder whether the OF skew the figures. It's obviously true that no matter the league you go to there will always be big teams and smaller teams, but I do wonder if the difference in attendances between top and bottom is more of a contract in Scotland than it is in other places.

The OF might bring in 50/60k, and you'll have a middle ground of the Edinburgh clubs and Aberdeen, but other than that we're talking the 3000 to 7000 mark.

 

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For completion here is the other leagues:

image.thumb.png.9de96dd3dc57f36ebcdd74e4562d48c9.png

 

Do Celtic really get an average of 57,644 every week? I don't know as I am not there but from watching Soccer Saturday or BT score most weeks when they cut to Celtic park there are plenty empty seats.

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2 minutes ago, ahemps said:

Do Celt

Do Celtic really get an average of 57,644 every week? I don't know as I am not there but from watching Soccer Saturday or BT score most weeks when they cut to Celtic park there are plenty empty seats.

That may have been true under Deila but not since. Its pretty full most games apart from midweek domestic games and most cup games

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15 hours ago, Lebowski said:

You can take out Celtic and Rangers home crowds from the SPFL and Scotland is still one of the highest attended leagues per capita. Figures above actually illustrate that. Take 50odd thousand out of the crowd per week and Scottish sides still get to near enough 1% of the population.

I'd also add that this is in a small sized league. Lots of the leagues in the comparison above have 16+ sides in the division.

Scottish football is wildly supported, and I don't think people understand quite how much the case that is.

Ok but if we take out attendances for old firm visits what would that give us?

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Deila left Celtic in 2016.

Police Scotland issued a response to a question of attendances for Celtic games

4/08/18 - Celtic v Livingston                                      49,346  
26/08/18 - Celtic v Hamilton                                        35,645 
02/09/18 - Celtic v Rangers                                         56,294  
29/09/18 - Celtic v Aberdeen                                       46,794  
20/10/18 - Celtic v Hibs                                               49,143 
03/11/18 - Celtic v Hearts                                            49,153 
08/12/18 - Celtic v Kilmarnock                                     41,579  
19/12/18 - Celtic v Motherwell                                     32,059  
22/12/18 - Celtic v Dundee                                          36,659

I would expect an OF game to be full but under 50K for the next 3 biggest fixtures???? Livi may have been the opening game of the season, and apart from Kilmarnock just breaching 40k (Killie were challenging at the top at this time) then there are plenty weeks Celtic are only getting in the 30 thousands.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/541231/response/1302453/attach/html/2/Final response 2019 0012.pdf.html 

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Scotland clearly has a very high attendance figure, and I might be looking at this the wrong way, but if Germany is 16 times the size of Scotland, would it not need to have over 600 match days to be able to compare the per capita figure? Or absolutely massive stadia with people travelling from all over the country to watch the teams in the top league? Or is it physically possible for their clubs to have over 1.4m at games every week? Would that not need an average capacity of about 160,000?

Perfectly possible that I’m getting muddled up.

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4 minutes ago, Paisley Ton said:

Ok but if we take out attendances for old firm visits what would that give us?

The old firm away games do make the overall crowds bigger but several teams have reported lower home figures when the OF are in town. I know Aberdeen and St Johnstone have said this. 

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It’s comparing the top 10 clubs in one country versus the top 12 in another, versus the top 16 in another and so on. It’s quite misleading without context.

Then there’s the fact that a lot of clubs (mostly in the bigger countries I’d think) would have higher attendances if they weren’t limited by capacity.

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I don't think it includes lower leagues either. Thinking of England specifically there are some big clubs getting big attendances all the way down the leagues. Don't know how much difference that would make to the figures if taken into account.

Either way, there is no doubt we have a well attended league.

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Multiply Scottish attendances by 10 to roughly get what they would be with an England sized population and as supported as they are now. Hibs Hearts and Aberdeen would need the old Maracana for clashes with Hamilton. Celtic and Rangers would need 3 Maracanas. Dundee Utd would need something about Old Trafford sized. Falkirk an Elland Road.

 

Scottish football crowds are phenomenal.

I don't think it includes lower leagues either. Thinking of England specifically there are some big clubs getting big attendances all the way down the leagues. Don't know how much difference that would make to the figures if taken into account.

Either way, there is no doubt we have a well attended league.

 

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19 hours ago, Ric said:

I'm not disputing that Scottish football is well supported, per capita, I was musing over just how much weight the OF gates add to our ratio.

Using the following stats from Statbunker for 2018/19:

91160340_Annotation2020-06-30150810.thumb.png.f5a7f81c6a9885fe69934d6989234602.png

The mean attendance is 288,586 per season; or 15,189 per game (assuming 19 home games) . However, for skewed data sets, the mean average isn't a particularly good method of determining central tendency.

A better measure for a data set with large outliers is the median, which in this example is 122,734 per season, or 6,460 per game.

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22 hours ago, Yorky said:

I would imagine there are few other top leagues in countries with such a marked difference in attendances. But Scotland is not a huge country population wise and outside of the big city’s it’s fairly sparse. Look at Motherwell with a population of only 32000, they probably get a higher percentage of the population actually watching games than some of the bigger city’s.

Or you could say the population of Lanarkshire in 2020 is nearly on par with Glasgow.

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