Football attendances in Europe – which clubs fill their grounds the most? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

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This is part two of a series on football attendances and football grounds in Europe.  To read part one on the biggest stadia in Europe please click here.

By Walter Broeckx

In part 2 of our article on football grounds in Europe I will be trying to see how football grounds in Europe fill up for league games. And by doing the research for this I must say that I have found some things that surprised me a bit.

I have taken the numbers of the last 4 seasons that I could find and left out the current season. And then I did make a nice spreadsheet of this but then I realized that it would be too big to show in one piece. And this is a bit of a shame in fact. So I will have to do it in two parts!

So in this first article I will try to see which team gets the highest number of people inside their stadium. I will be leaving out how many seats remain empty as otherwise it would become a bit unclear.

I have put the teams in order of the biggest total average attendance for the 4 seasons I took. So it could well be that in one season a team had a higher average than the team in first place but one has to draw a line somewhere. And as I am drawing the lines it is my line.

But enough talking for now, here are the numbers of the teams with the highest attendances in the last 4 seasons in European football:

Club	capacity	Rank capacity	Avg 06/07	Avg 07/08	Avg 08/09	Avg 09/10	Total avg
Man Utd	75957	2	75826	75691	75304	74864	75421
B. Dortmund	81264	4	72799	72510	73097	77248	73914
Real Madrid	80354	3	71526	76234	71947	74921	73657
Barcelona	99354	1	74078	67560	71328	78097	72766
Bayern M.	69901	5	68647	69000	68647	69000	68824
Schalke 04	61482	6	61348	61274	61361	61327	61328
Arsenal	60355	7	60045	60070	60040	59927	60021
Celtic	60832	9	57928	56677	57066	45582	54313
Hamburg SV	57274	11	55867	55368	54744	50045	54006
Inter	80065	8	48284	51211	60019	56195	53927
Marseille	60031	12	51604	52601	52376	52376	52239
AC Milan	80065	10	47117	56642	55185	42809	50438
Newcastle	52387	18	50686	51321	48750		50252
Rangers	52063	15	49955	49143	49533	47564	49049
Ajax	52960	17	48610	49125	49014	48734	48871
Hertha BSC	74228	14	48704	45438	49695	46681	47630
Frankfurt	52300	20	47625	48324	47012	47206	47542
Stuttgart	55896	13	45765	50447	51340	41065	47154
FC Köln	50374	16	41900	43741	49312	48059	45753
Monchengladbach	54067	19	47488	40427	47376	46410	45425

And the first thing that surprised me was that I didn’t see Barcelona taking first place but it was Manchester United who has attracted most people. So whatever we may think of them and how much we dislike them we can only accept the fact that Manchester United has the biggest crowd in Europe.

But an even bigger surprise is the fact that in second place we can find Borussia Dortmund. They just beat Real Madrid by a few hundred people to take this spot in the list.

And then we can only find Barcelona in 4^th place. But as you can see Barcelona did have the highest average attendance ever in this survey in the last season with 78079 people as their average number.

I must say that this top 4 was the opposite of what I was expecting. I was thinking of Barcelona first and Real Madrid second. But they are only 3^rd and 4^th.

And behind Barcelona we find Bayern Munich in 5^th place. Followed by another German team Schalke 04 who could change their name in Schalke 06 in this article.

And then in 7^th place we have Arsenal. We are the last team who have an average attendance of + 60.000. So not that bad and in fact the gap between us and let us say Barcelona is not as big when it comes to selling tickets.

And after us there is a big gap of some 6.000 people less on average for the next team.

Now if you take a look at the rest of the top 20 yourself you will see that in this top 20 there are 9 teams from Germany. So the Bundesliga really is selling tickets like mad.

There are 3 teams from England in this list as Newcastle is the number 3 in England when you look at sold tickets.

There are 2 Spanish sides in this table as they are the only real title contenders for the last century and the next one as long as the banks keep them above water.

But there are also just 2 Italian clubs in this list. Both clubs from Milan in fact. Even the Italians don’t like their boring football any more?

Something worth mentioning is the fact that even though the Scottish league is a very two sided affair those two sides do have their place in this top 20 of selling tickets. And to make the list complete we also have one French team (Marseilles) and one Dutch team (Ajax Amsterdam).

But the fact that almost half of this table has been taken by German clubs is rather amazing. Now I do admit I don’t follow the Bundesliga that well enough to give a reason for this. I have heard that the prices are rather lower compared to the EPL and this will play a part. But I don’t know if the high entertainment of the games has anything to do with it?

Do German teams play an attacking style of football most of the times? I know most top teams are rather attacking minded but I’m not that good in judging it because I rarely see a game.

So if there is anyone out there who knows a bit more and who can explain this high number of Bundesliga clubs in this list you can have your say in the comments section.

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