Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Attendance figures

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Attendance figures

    In the old days (yeah, I know, they the old days) newspapers would print the barest of stats for football games. Final score, scorers, and attendance. Obviously now we have access to reams of information from number of passes made to time in possession to pretty much anything you can imagine. But though we have all this stuff it's really hard to find attendance numbers now. Where do you find that information? It's simply not published it seems.

    This was sparked by a comment on twitter that the attendance at Hillsborough yesterday was greater than the attendance at the Wolves Liverpool game. I thought I'd like to check that. But can I? Can I bollocks. The BBC match report gives the Wednesday Plymouth crowd as "over 33000" but click on the "stats" tab and there are plenty of stats but not that one. Nowhere else can I find it either. Are stats now just for what happens on the pitch?

    (there must be somewhere to find this out. I presume they still announce the attendance at the ground)

    #2
    They put the attendance at the bottom of the ‘line ups’ tab/section, somewhat oddly as you suggest.

    33,342 for Wednesday

    31,664 for Wolves

    Comment


      #3
      It's on this page as 33442 - you have to click on the Line-ups tab at the bottom.

      Comment


        #4
        Of course it's on the lineups tab. I mean why wouldn't it be? <makes Muttley restle festle noise >

        Comment


          #5
          Aa a general point they report tickets sold rather than through the turnstiles which I think may the figures less interesting.

          Comment


            #6
            Yeah, season ticket holders get counted whether present or not. e.g. I doubt there was any way there were actually more than 7000 at Oxford yesterday.

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Belhaven View Post
              Aa a general point they report tickets sold rather than through the turnstiles which I think may the figures less interesting.
              Absolutely. However even that flawed figure is still more useful than "shots off target" or xG (both of which are a hell of lot easier to find)

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                Of course it's on the lineups tab. I mean why wouldn't it be? <makes Muttley restle festle noise >
                Far be it for me to yet again open up another lengthy debate on this subject, but advances in computing technology have definitively proved the correct spelling is russle fussle. I can't believe you are continuing with this...

                Comment


                  #9
                  In the League of Ireland, attendance records seem to be very much discretionary, with some clubs publishing them, and others not doing so, making the compilation of seasonal averages virtually impossible.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    It does seem like some clubs are still operating in full-on lockdown mode and haven't yet got back into the habit of publishing attendances after fans were allowed back into grounds. Oddly, it seems that the further up the pyramid you go, the more gaps there are.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      The trend goes back further than lockdown, it's something that's been annoying me for some years.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Yeah the trend for reporting attendances by tickets sold rather than by numbers actually present is a pain. Orient have been doing it this season, resulting in our highest "attendances" for decades (though crowds have healthily increased just not to the extent reported).

                        It makes it harder to make statistical comparisons between eras too, not least because under-reporting of crowds - for tax-diddling purposes - was endemic back in the 80s. I've also got memories as a kid of "kindly" turnstile operators letting me jump over the turnstile for a reduced fee (a quid say) so the turnstile-click went unreported and he pocketed the quid.
                        Last edited by E10 Rifle; 05-02-2023, 13:44.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          FWIW, Fotmob (my new favourite score app) puts attendance figures (where available) on the main page for each match (aka the Facts tab)

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by delicatemoth View Post
                            The trend goes back further than lockdown, it's something that's been annoying me for some years.
                            I get the impression that it's something that came in around the same time as the switch to all seater stadia premier league, and season ticket holders becoming the vast majority of people at every game.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              It is an understandable, if annoying, artifact of people paying on the gate having become a rather tiny percentage of a club's income.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                There's a real bang of enclosing the commons about the shift to all seater stadia isn't there? With a very similar mix of associated positives and negatives.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  What does enclosing the commons mean?

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Dating back to the Agricultural Revolution, when wealthier farmers monopolised pasturelands, that had previously been the preserve of the peasantry under the rundale system, so by analogy, club owners used the excuse of the Taylor Report to gentrify stadia, keeping them out of the means of ordinary fans.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Looking at this through a North American lens, what is interesting is that the same gentrification has happened here without any similar disaster or governmental action.

                                      While the Taylor Report was key, the owners needed the new television rights and "hospitality" driven business model in order to make the change commercially attractive. The North American (and Australian) experience was vital in demonstrating that that could work.

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        I've been present at a couple of games this year when someone has literally gone round counting.

                                        Can't really do that at a Premier League stadium tbf

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          There is one of the eurotravel groundhopping fraternity who carries a clicker with him so that can count how many are at the games he does. To be fair to him I'd say its an eccentric quirk of his and he takes the stick he gets about it in good spirits. I genearlly do a very quick headcount as I'm always curious to know how many are at the games I go to and when you're lower level Europe, you can rarely if ever, find out.

                                          But I'm glad ad-hoc has raised the issue of finding even higher level footie crowds these days, websites either ignore or bury them. Argyle are pretty good at publishing the crowds including the away support numbers, on all their match report which also has the 33,442 (3,700 away - sold out) figure for the game yesterday. I guess it was close to a sell-out in the home end as well?

                                          E10 comments on under-declared crowds chimes. Argyle beat Bristol City 4-0 in 1986 to get promoted and the crowd was declared at 19,900. The reputed figure was around 27,000 and the club *allegedly* did a deal with HMT on paying a more appropriate level of tax for the crowd.

                                          But that said, attendance figures do seem crazily high everywhere these days. I don't know if COVID has got a lot of people who never got round to going to games or travelling as an away fan, to suddenly decide they should do whilst they can, but its all nuts. Getting tickets for Argyle home and even away is getting really hard, and a mate of mine who goes to Exeter, tells me its getting hard to get tickets for a lot of their home games as well, and that's what mates who also support Ipswich are also saying.
                                          Last edited by super furry dice; 05-02-2023, 15:35.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            The most egregious fiddled-down crowds I can remember being in include the famous Burnley-Orient game in 87 (Turf Moor's capacity at the time was over 20,000 but the attendance was given as 15,781 - there was loads more than that in. And an Orient-Spurs League Cup tie in 85 given as 13,000 when Brisbane Road's capacity at the time was 26,000. I also remember being at a West Ham-Man Utd Cup tie the same season and having to be pulled out of a crush in the North Bank at a game whose official attendance was 26,000, at a time when Upton Park held 35,000

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                              There's a real bang of enclosing the commons about the shift to all seater stadia isn't there? With a very similar mix of associated positives and negatives.
                                              Yeah, I was ruminating on this the other day that when we were at Ayresome, densely populated all around, there were tons of kids getting a squeeze and into the Boro, but no-one lives around the Riverside and there's no way of letting kids in for free even if they were hanging around. Except for at HT when they now open the gates for people to go for a tab or a vape, so it is possible that a load of bairns have cottoned on to this and sneak in for the second half.


                                              Anyway, I find kicker.de is quite good for finding attendances.

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by super furry dice View Post

                                                But I'm glad ad-hoc has raised the issue of finding even higher level footie crowds these days, websites either ignore or bury them. Argyle are pretty good at publishing the crowds including the away support numbers, on all their match report which also has the 33,442 (3,700 away - sold out) figure for the game yesterday. I guess it was close to a sell-out in the home end as well?
                                                It was an incredibly impressive away showing given how far it is from Plymouth

                                                Yeah there was talk of a sell out in the home stands, but it wasn't quite I think

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  Some nice stats here, comparing the post-war high and mid 80s low of attendance figures. Just two clubs that I could find who increased their crowd between 1946 and 1986.

                                                  I was in quite a few of those 1986 Scunthorpe crowds where the attendance was quoted c.1500, and it was always quite obviously well under 1,000.
                                                  I think about 1,200 is the cut off for when you can clearly hear the players' shouts.

                                                  https://twitter.com/Groundtastic/status/1622235408665804804?t=dolNf9Xy-LyHUf_t-0DXSw&s=19

                                                  Comment

                                                  Working...
                                                  X