Scottish Football : Highest Attendances In Europe Per Capita

E10H

E10H

Well-Known Member
A new report has revealed that Scottish football fans are the most dedicated in Europe.

The Association of European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL) published the second edition of the Fan Attendance Report on Monday, which compares attendance figures across major domestic leagues from 2010/11 to 2016/17.

Scotland tops the table, boasting the highest average attendance per match based on country inhabitants with 0.21% of Scots going to games.

Norway and Switzerland are joined in second with 0.14%, while England has a figure of 0.07%, Spain 0.06% and Germany 0.05%.


An average crowd of 11,436 over that period also made the Ladbrokes Premiership the 10th best-attended division in Europe over a seven-year period.

That places Scotland's top tier above leagues in larger countries such as Switzerland, Portugal, Turkey, Belgium and Poland.

View image on Twitter

https://twitter.com/EPFL_Leagues/status/953223372384632832
EPFL@EPFL_Leagues

During 2016/17 season, the @spfl recorded the highest attendance in Europe based on country inhabitants
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The @News_SFL
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, @notoppfotball
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and @Superligaen
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are next on the list!

To download the official report
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http://bit.ly/2mFVOYl

11:12 AM - Jan 16, 2018
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SPFL Chief Executive Neil Doncaster said: “Football remains Scotland’s national sport and it is hugely encouraging to see this report confirm that SPFL fans are the most devoted in Europe.

"It is further sign that our game is in good health and we hope that trend will continue in the years ahead."
 
...and yet have one of the shittiest products to watch and with next to %^*& all investment. What Dhoncaster really means is we're amongst the most mugged off fans in Europe.

Imagine what things would be like if we'd a tenth of the resources that are being pumped into the English leagues.....

Personally I find this survey more depressing than anything else.
 
This theory makes Ross county the biggest club in Scotland if not Britain maybe the world apart from Villarreal maybe
 
TimzRFudz said:
...and yet have one of the shittiest products to watch and with next to %^*& all investment. What Dhoncaster really means is we're amongst the most mugged off fans in Europe.

Imagine what things would be like if we'd a tenth of the resources that are being pumped into the English leagues.....

Personally I find this survey more depressing than anything else.
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True but no matter, I would always rather our shiter game than the half and half scarf game England is becoming, at least the game up here is still working class real fans and real rivalries
 
WalterSmith72 said:
True but no matter, I would always rather our shiter game than the half and half scarf game England is becoming, at least the game up here is still working class real fans and real rivalries
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Not disagreeing with that general point.... but one of the "arguments" people come up with is that we can't expect the same level of TV deals etc that they have in England because of the larger viewing population, and so on. The horse has bolted now anyway.... but as I say, even a sniff of something approaching a per capita level of investment would see us buying players worth say £5M instead of £500k. Surely that wouldn't be a bad thing?
 
TimzRFudz said:
Not disagreeing with that general point.... but one of the "arguments" people come up with is that we can't expect the same level of TV deals etc that they have in England because of the larger viewing population, and so on. The horse has bolted now anyway.... but as I say, even a sniff of something approaching a per capita level of investment would see us buying players worth say £5M instead of £500k. Surely that wouldn't be a bad thing?
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Not at all mate totally agree, our deal is so bad its frightening and its all the SFA's fault when they turned down 50 mil and wanted more then Sky pulled the plug, ended up with Setanta for 3 mil a year or something, never recovered since then.
 
The fans and support in Scotland has always been second to none. It's the tadgers who are running the game who are the issue. They seriously undervalue the product and have shameful marketing skills - in a time when everyone else seems to be vastly improving their revenues those in charge of the SPFL are happy with minimal improve on tv and sponsorship deals.
 
This is an average attendance across the league, so really it is just yet more evidence of how our support have propped up this sorry league financially with our home and away attendances. Well done Bears as usual
 
You cant fault the fans in Scotland (from a neutral standpoint, i certainly can fault the c.unts). As a nation we are second to none in regards to dedication and loyalty, and the game is still at its purest form up here, very little to no football tourism and no nicey-nicey with each other, which is utterly sickening to watch down south and abroad.

Its a shame the game is run by absolute fuds up here or maybe we would have a set up dedicated to supporting our youngsters, our fans and our clubs which would only benefit the game.
 
They could have narrowed it down considerable, West side of Glasgow has the highest attendance in the world per capita.:)
 
I prefer Scottish football over the game in England. Cant remember the last time I watched an English game, yes the quality is far superior than what we have but at same time the quality doesn't automatically make the game more entertaining. I would argue it has had the opposite effect.

In December Scotland seemed to have big game after big game, Rangers v Aberdeen twice, Rangers v Hibs, Hibs v them, all provided entertainment that I feel can sometimes be lacking down south.
 
We do our game a disservice at times.

Watching the superstars at Man City, Man United and Chelsea is great but a dour relegation battle between Swansea and Stoke is a dour relegation battle. There's no real quality there but fans have been conditioned to lap it up like it's clash of the titans.

Competitive football is entertaining football. I'll take a battle of a game with chances at either end and meaty tackles over a tactically and technically sharp game that ultimately ends in a dull, negative 0-0 draw any time.

That doesnt mean these figures are worth one iota. They're not. When one of the big 2 clubs in Scotland can draw almost the same as the other 40 sides combined to a home game then the statistic is utterly meaningless. If you remove the 2 obvious outliers from the stats then you'd have a far more representative result. Rangers and Celtic skew the results so massively that it renders them worthless.

Take Dec 2nd for example.

103272 fans turned out to watch Scottish football's top 4 leagues. Assuming a population of 5.5million, thats 1.9% of the population (approx). Remove Celtic's declared 57817 and a total of 45455 fans turned up to Scotland's 17 other games. The combined total is less than attended the other single match and takes the % of Scotland watching live Scottish football down to around 0.9%.

The stats are utterly meaningless because Rangers and Celtic skew them. It's back to the days of Craig Brown claiming credibility for winning the most corners in a match despite the result going against him over 90 minutes.
 
Kubala said:
There's too many teams for a country of our size diluting those decent figures.
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No there isn't.

Less teams doesnt mean that the remaining clubs share out the fans from the collapsed/merged sides. Those people would more than likely be lost to football and wouldn't follow anybody else. Caley Thistle don't enjoy the combined support of former Inverness Caley and Inverness Thistle fans. You could merge the Angus teams into an Angus United and they wouldn't draw the combined fan numbers of Arbroath, Montrose, Brechin and Forfar.

Scottish football is simply becoming less important to Scottish people. The game is overpriced and poorly run, does nothing to encourage new fans and sells itself short by effectively telling the world that we've got a shite product that nobody in their right mind would follow.

The game needs to change. If it did so then there is no reason why all professional teams in Scotland couldn't do well.
 
There is no getting away from the fact that attendances at clubs like Hamilton, Motherwell, Partick, Dundee and Kilmarnock are a disgrace.
 
Another point would be that some teams have stadiums far too big considering the size of their catchment area. Teams like Airdrie for example, in a town of what, 35,000? They have a 10,000 seater. Madness. That is the fault of the stupid laws that the SPFL insist on upholding.
 
Partickger said:
Does this include Celtic's made up attendances though? That will skew them somewhat.
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When we were in the lower divisions, they constantly gave 47,000 as their attendance.
Everybody has seen how empty their stadium was, so the figures mean absolutely nothing.
Most of the time, their shithouse wasn't even half-full.
 
YoungGer97 said:
Another point would be that some teams have stadiums far too big considering the size of their catchment area. Teams like Airdrie for example, in a town of what, 35,000? They have a 10,000 seater. Madness. That is the fault of the stupid laws that the SPFL insist on upholding.
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The stadium requirements have been reduced significantly, but it has left teams crippled financially as they were forced to build facilities that they'd never realistically need.
 
In agreement with a couple of posters' points above, you will never get as exciting and entertaining a 0-0 draw in England, as the one between us and them a couple if weeks back. Never. I know we all had a vested interest but I genuinely believe most fair minded neutrals would have found it a great watch
 
Makes a bit of a mockery of the often posted "the game is dead in Scotland" post we often see on here.

3 times as many Scottish as English people go to games.
 
I've always said we just have too many teams in Scotland. Two divisions of 10 teams. Never happen as not many fans would agree to their team combining with another couple. I don't think anything else will improve the product.

Mind you take us and the poets out the equation and its a different stat altogether.
 
Aye Mr Potter , our game is in great shape . Sell out saturdays every week and the entertainment on display is top notch . Added to that our clubs in europe and the national team are doing well . Scottish fitba is bollocks .
 
Surely that number would also be higher had we been in the top tier for the full period covered?

Be interesting to see just how much wider the margin between us and 2nd would be if our numbers were included.
 
I think this is only about the top tier, so the "too many clubs" argument doesn't apply. On the other hand, I'd imagine that our top tier attracts a higher proportion of fans than in some other countries, as indeed do our two biggest clubs. So, for example, the fans watching England's Championship (5th biggest attendance in Europe?) don't count, never mind the lower leagues, in which many clubs have better attendances than some Scottish Premiership clubs.
 
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