Average attendances in Europe per capita.

http://www.pieandbovril.com/forum/index.php/topic/138139-european-attendance-rankings-scotland-remains-3rd/

http://comparetheleagues.com/

Source: EFS (attendances), Wikipedia (populations).

Figures are "1 in X", i.e. "1 in 373 Scottish people attend top-tier football".


Iceland... 310
Cyprus... 357
Scotland... 373
Norway... 607
Denmark... 668
Montenegro... 685
Switzerland... 704
Netherlands... 849
Belgium... 922
Portugal... 1,038
Austria... 1,061
Luxembourg... 1,089

Sweden... 1,429
Greece... 1,484
England... 1,506
Spain... 1,607
Israel... 1,846
Germany... 1,924
Northern Ireland... 1,938
Bosnia-Herzegovina... 2,003
Czech Rep... 2,181
Croatia... 2,217
Slovakia... 2,256
Finland... 2,415

Italy... 2,421
Slovenia... 2,422
Eire... 2,773
Macedonia... 2,793
Serbia... 3,057
France... 3,126
Hungary... 3,426
Moldova... 3,890
Kazakhstan... 3,968
Bulgaria... 4,131
Belarus... 4,193
Romania... 4,480

Lithuania... 4,628
Latvia... 4,758
Azerbaijan... 4,835
Ukraine... 5,131
Armenia... 5,669
Georgia... 6,124
Poland... 7,279
Estonia... 8,375
Wales... 10,866
Russia... 11,586
Albania... NA
Turkey... NA

No entries for Andorra, Faroes, Malta, San Marino.

Pretty much backs up what I was saying about Scotland for its size they certainly come out for their football league as poor as it is. Interesting stuff all the same, Wales though have two teams they do get big crowds but as they're EPL not sure they're included in their numbers.

Good stuff, thanks for the link.

It's back-of-the-envelope stuff this.

- He hasn't looked at capacity. It would have been better to weight the attendance on the % of empty seats. For instance 10,000 at Ibrox and 4,500 at the Abashidze Stadium might indicate that Scottish football is over twice as popular as Georgian football (population size is similar (c4.9-5m)) and both are big teams in their leagues - yet in fact Zestafoni would be playing at capacity, whereas Rangers would be playing with 4/5ths of the stadium empty.

- He hasn't factored in lower league football. Germany has 3 unified leagues, 1er, 2er and 3er Bundesligas, before it then goes into Regional Leagues, as does Ukraine, yet until last season the Dutch only had two professional, non-regionalised leagues (the Eredivise and the Erstedivise, below that was only the Hoftklasse - which was split on regions and then on saturday / sundays depending on which teams were religiously disinclined from playing on certain days). Surely it's better to look at all professional leagues ? For instance there is only one team in the whole of the former GDR (East Germany) in the Bundesliga, and that's Hertha. Hertha weren't even in the 1er Bundesliga last season so that's about 20m of the 80m in Germany who didn't have a top flight team within 200 miles. Yet they will have had nearly 10 teams in the 2er and 3er Bundesliga (Erzeburge Aue, Dynamo Dresden, Hansa, Cottbus, Babelsburg, Union Berlin, CZ Jena*, Braunschwig*

*Jena and Braunschweig are in old "West Germany" but only about 20km 30km from the old border.

- Linked to above he hasn't really factored in the size of countries. For instance there is only one team east of the Urals in this seasons Russian Premier League, Tom Tomsk. All these cities (Novosibirsk, Yekatrinburg, Omsk (nb not Tomsk), Chelyabinsk, Ufa) have over 1m inhabitants but are over 200km from a top-tier team. There are loads of big cities over half a million (e.g. Vladivostok, Barnaul, Irkutsk, Tyumen, Khabarovsk) which are also over a days travel from the nearest top-filght team. Compare this with say Belgium where most teams are within a 200mile radius.

Quote:

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- He hasn't looked at capacity. It would have been better to weight the attendance on the % of empty seats.

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Sorry but that's such a silly comment. You make some decent points, but if someone like Killie have an idiot for a chairman who built a stadium too big for them that doesn't take away from the fact for a small provincial club they get bigger average attendances then the biggest club by far in Ireland and average crowds of 5k for a small club in a small country is pretty good in the overall scheme of things so empty seats and how big some clubs built their stadiums means hee-haw.

No way he's using the two main South Wales clubs in the calculation for Wales. SCFC's average attendance last year was 18,522 whilst those other kunts up the road had 23,230. Plus Wrexham's 2,500 or thereabouts and Newport County's 1,600 or thereabouts, and the highest ever Welsh Premier divisional average of 343 (across 12 clubs) gives a combined average attendance for Wales of 3,421. That would put us higher per capita than Eire and Northern Ireland with similar populations. He's using the domestic league alone which is hardly a reflection of the actual support for club football here.

Digest that wall of text at 1 AM, why don't you.;)

Also I agree the comparison is pretty meaningless, but from my experience the Jocks are definitely diehard fitba fans, rugby is poorly supported compared to Wales and Ireland at club level whereas football gets generally strong attendances. I suppose there's the argument that if you removed the OF from the league it would not be anywhere near as good but that's a case of if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle if ever I saw one.

It's definitely a surprise to see Iceland so high on the table, is football their national sport? And it's good to see Ireland so high on the list considering the popularity of rugby and gaelic games in the country!