Thats a huge issue I’ve been to a few national league grounds in England and bar one or two loi grounds the facilities are much better.We don't do too badly, all being said. The problem though is just facilities here. Our stadiums are so far behind many European leagues.
Down a couple of official figures. Will update accordingly as, and if, they come through.
Week 22:
PREMIER DIVISION
Bohs - 2,159 (2,006; 1,627; 1,724; 1,395; 1,597; 1,496; 1,488; 1,835)
Bray - 607 (966; 957; 769; 718; 891; 965; 1,121; 952)
Cork - 4,361 (4,559; 2,533; 3,263; 3,777; 1,965; 2,786; 2,128 FD; 1,693 FD)
Derry - 2,462 (1,517; 1,563; 1,124; 1,106; 1,446; 1,460; 2,135; 1,965 FD)
Dundalk - 2,664 (2,674; 2,738; 3,158; 2,534; 1,997; 949; 1,355; 1,877)
Limerick - 1,004 (1,610; 1,131 FD; 1,206; 757; 1,649; 734 FD; 569 FD; 598 FD)
Pat's - 1,681 (1,504; 1,088; 1,321; 1,386; 1,687; 1,474; 1,346; 1,756)
Rovers -2,712 (2,809; 2,041; 2,890; 2,269; 2,763; 3,127; 3,779; 3,794)
Sligo - 1,894 (1,717; 1,750; 1,750; 1,959; 2,342; 3,007; 2,103; 1,807)
Waterford - 2,356 (1,550 FD; 314 FD; 460 FD; 470 FD; 478 FD; 453 FD; 466 FD; 619 FD)
FIRST DIVISION
Athlone - 135 (154; 156; 314; 653 PD; 754; 271; 200; 354)
Cabinteely - 272 (346; 352; 610)
Cobh - 243 (358; 403; 366; 223; 439; 2008 - 1,122 PD; 681; 368)
Drogheda - 389 (850 PD; 583; 813 PD; 1,064 PD; 817 PD; 977 PD; 811 PD; 859 PD)
Galway - 793 (1,376 PD; 1,169 PD; 1,290 PD; 975)
Harps - 667 (1,202 PD; 1,216 PD; 784; 449; 479; 429; 433; 644)
Longford - 449 (342; 488 PD; 803 PD; 567; 379; 365; 315; 230)
Shels - 675 (496; 554; 596; 713; 1,114 PD; 1,187 PD; 781; 737)
UCD - 291 (236; 297; 216; 397 PD; 487 PD; 506 PD; 558 PD; 610 PD)
Wexford - 176 (338; 585 PD; 553; 331; 227; 302; 216; 343)
PREMIER AVERAGE: 2,188 (1,902; 1,476; 1,681; 1,502; 1,566; 1,630; 1,547; 1,512)
FIRST DIVISION AVERAGE: 409 (477; 476; 486; 495; 391; 372; 578; 682)
OVERALL AVERAGE: 1,261 (1,387; 1,117; 1,249; 1,160; 1,140; 1,125; 1,110; 1,095)
OVERALL PREMIER ATTENDANCE: 262,601 (376,627; 292,204; 332,805; 297,334)
OVERALL FIRST ATTENDANCE: 44,994(53,461; 52,807; 54,474; 55,408)
OVERALL COMBINED ATTENDANCE: 307,595(430,088; 345,011; 387,279; 352,742)
UK Tourism stats show that over 120,000 Irish people a year travel to England to watch football.Originally Posted by nigel-harps1954
Assuming most of them turn their nose up at the LOI, that would increase the league's overall attendance by a quarter if they watched games at home instead/as well.
I'm surprised at how low that figure is
Quite a number of LOI fans that I know also travel over to England to watch matches. There's naturally a huge amount of people who turn their noses up at LOI football, but I'd wager that most of those wouldn't travel to England either, more than maybe two or three times in their lives.
I've just checked, and it's actually over 180,000. Plus that's just from ROI - Nordies not included.
ROI is the biggest source of visiting football fans to England.
It amounts to more than 4,500 a week over the approx. 40 weeks that the English season tends to run (from opening day through to the FA Cup Final). Which would make English Football the best supported team in Ireland.
For a small country, that's quite a lot IMO.
Sorry, Flamengo's average is actually 50k so far this season - http://www.worldfootball.net/attenda...erie-a-2018/1/
(That's a great site by the way, even shows the attendances for our own league, though i'm not sure they're as accurate as Nigel's numbers)
Looking down the list of attendances for the Brazilian league though, the spread is quite similar to our own league. The bottom 2 clubs get an attendance of about 6.5k on average, which is about 7-8 times less than Flamengo are getting. In our league Cork are averaging 4.4k per game while Bray average 600, about 7 times less.
Yeah, Corinthians average 30k in a city of 22 million and tickets are way too expensive for the average person for the most part.
And if that stat only covers England, then there's another crowd going to Celtic matches.
I’m assuming that 180,000 could contain people who travel over several times a year. I’d love to know the number of unique visitors. I’d also think a reasonable percentage of these unique visitors would also be LOI match attendees.
That's spot on. I've done some research on attendance figures in the top divisions of other european countries with the closest populations to ourselves. Results below:
Before starting, note our average league attendance last year was 1.9k. And so far this year it's up slightly up, at 2.16k.
- Moldova have a million fewer people than we do, but their attendances were WAY worse than ours last year. Their top club averaged just 1.7k, while the lowest averaged just 167 people! The average figure was 732.
- Bosnia are the next closest country to us in terms of population with 3.8 million. Their average attendance last year was 1.97k - roughly similar to ourselves.
- Croatia have half a million fewer people than us but their average attendances are better than ours at 2.9k. But this result is very skewed by Hajduk Split, whom average 12k for every home game, 3 times more than the next nearest club. If you take Hajduk out of the equation, our average attendance would be considerably better than Croatia's.
- Norway have 400k more people than us, but their attendance figures completely dwarf ours, and everyone else on this list too. The average attendance in their top division is 6.7k. It's interesting that Norway are usually used as a benchmark for our league, but they're a total outlier when compared to other european countries of similar size.
- Slovakia are next, with almost a million people more than us. Their average attendances are almost identical to ours. But less evenly spread. Their top clubs have higher figures than our top clubs, but they're lowest club averaged less than 500 last year - that's even worse than Bray this season!
- Finland has a population of about 5.5 million (about 15% more than us), and their average attendances last year was just shy of 2.5k (15% more than us).
All in all, our attendances are quite middle-of-the-road.
Just to add one factor you haven't considered - the number of clubs in each league. We have just ten teams; you can see an almost 10% increase on last year's 12-team league which is partly a result of relegating two of the smaller clubs.
So Norway's average is even more impressive when you consider they have 16 teams in their top flight. Slovakia, Finland and Bosnia all have 12. (Moldova only have 8). So this is actually a hidden plus for those countries (and a minus for Moldova)
But by far the bigger issue for the LoI is the lack of European income, transfer income and TV income.
Official attendance of 3,287 at the RSC tonight for Waterford v Cork City.
957 in Finn Park tonight
The league figures get a bit of shine because we have to compete with rugby, hurley and garlic. I know some of the countries compete with basketball, ice hockey and possibly other team sports. I suspect that that the viewership figures per person in the countries mentioned are higher than us and visits to other countries lower.
You're never going to win when you come up against the garlic.
Pleasantly surprised at that
2,214 the official figure at Oriel for cup tie v Cobh Ramblers.
Reduced prices worked and both sides will be happy i think with that attendance.I was expecting maybe 1400 tbh
Noticed Shels also reduced their prices for the match v Athlone.
410 announced at Carlisle Grounds for Bray v Harps. Looked like less tbh
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