With the season winding down in most countries of the northern hemisphere, I thought I'd have a look at the average attendances in the major European leagues. The reason I looked into this really is because I've been watching a few games in Italy's Serie A on television and always been astounded how empty the arenas appear to be. I was surprised to find out that the largest average attendance was in Germany's Bundesliga despite them not enjoying the dominance in Europe shown by England, Italy and Spain. France's top flight Division One finished last of the five leagues in my unscientific study, a result that was less surprising to me. Runner up was the English Premier League and third place went to Spain's Primera Liga. As I had expected, Italy came in with a low number. The rankings were as follows:
Bundesliga 42,648Premier League 35,638Primera Liga 27,487Serie A 23,949French Division One 20,377
The club with the largest average is Manchester United (75,304) then come Borussia Dortmund (74483) and Real Madrid (71,789). Before calculating these numbers I would have guessed Barcelona would have been in the lead but they only come fourth with 69,081, only 70% of their capacity 98,000. Despite their low average, the Serie A clubs' poor statistics (and the appearance of near empty stadia on television) are hampered by the capacities of the Milan clubs Inter and AC (85,700) and Lazio/Roma (82,307). Only the Milan clubs reach over 50% of capacity (63.7/70.1) while Lazio and Roma fall back on 40 and 48.4 respectively.
All the best.