Attendances

[ictfcsince94]

Heard a potentially interesting 'factoid' on Off The Ball on Saturday eve...Attendances in Scotland are highest per capita in Europe...

dont know if this is true, but coming via the bbc I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't! Maybe this is a wee project for Sneckboy? I wonder where ict sit in the grand scheme of things...

Edited April 11, 2016 by ictfcsince94

[Kingsmills]

I don't know if things have changed in recent years but I believe that for many years we were second only to Albania in that respect.

[lightwelter]

I also heard that, very interesting if true. If someone has loads of spare time they should work out the average attendances across Europe and normalise it to population.  

[The Mantis]

It's already been done in this book 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006PVZ3LE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

previously called "Why England Fail" this expanded book is now called "Soccernomics" and if Sneckboy doesn't already have it I'll be mighty surprised 

[ictfcsince94]

Would be interesting to see it at a club level - where do ICTFC compare to Celtic/Manchester Utd/Real Madrid etc...

[Sneckboy]

20 hours ago, TheMantis said:

It's already been done in this book 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006PVZ3LE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

previously called "Why England Fail" this expanded book is now called "Soccernomics" and if Sneckboy doesn't already have it I'll be mighty surprised 

 I'm aware of the book, but haven't got it!
As soon as I read the OP, I immediately thought of Scotland as 2nd behind Albania - same as Kingsmills. I think it was a widely held assumption after a 'study' a few years ago.
There have been numerous studies done over the years and Scottish attendances are some of the very best in Europe and the world.
Regardless of the study, Scotland is always one of the top countries. Albania has slipped somewhat, however. Not even in the equation now. I can only assume the 'Albania' stat was from around 2011, when their domestic attendances were significantly better than now. It's virtually halved over 5 years since then, with an alarming year-on-year reduction. http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm

The website above is the favoured resource for stattos as it's usually spot-on with its accuracy, despite covering all of Europe.
For ictfcsince94, this would be your best bet for comparing us to Real Madrid etc.

An interesting statistic from here https://theballisround.co.uk/2012/06/12/the-most-passionate-football-nation-in-europe/ has Scotland at 4th in Europe, although, none are specifically for the past few seasons - but the trend is the same; folk in Scotland attend football at a pro-rata rate more than those of England, Germany etc...

We're ranked just behind the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Cyprus,

Another study concludes the same: except this time, we're above Cyprus, but still behind the Faroes and Iceland.
The darkest colours again showing Cyprus, Scotland, Iceland and the Faroes as the top football supporting countries

[Sneckboy]

Finally, as well as Europe - Scotland has the 4th best football attendances in the world!
A completely different study by an American based company, conducted a survey of all the world's leagues, and the top European nations come out top.
Again, it's Faroe Island's top, followed by Iceland, Cyprus and Scotland.
But, make-of-it-what-you-will...however, there is a consistency towards Scotland having remarkably good attendance stats - relatively!

Edited April 12, 2016 by Sneckboy

[Renegade]

Doubt people in Montreal will like being classed as American!

[Scotty]

The MLS figures are nonsense.

Seattle has the highest attendance in MLS and last season they set a new average attendance for the season at 44,247 which was a new record high for MLS. They have huge support there in the north west and a bunch of games over the years where they have over 60,000 attending with 67385 being the highest (2013). Montreal had an average attendance of about 17,700 last season and 17.400 the season before and have never been one of the top crowds in MLS. They are sitting something like 14th out of 20 in MLS for average attendance but they are increasing thanks to the "Drogba" effect. They have had +60,000 for a game in Montreal one time when they played LA Galaxy at the Olympic Stadium rather than their own stadium and 61000+ in the same venue for the Champions League semi-final game against Mexican side Club America last year but those were one-offs rather than the norm.

 

    

[jaggiesoverstaggies]

One thing from that table- the old firms 'dominance' is second only to whatever happens in uruguayan football. I wonder how the fans of lower-placed uruguayan clubs perceive their big teams compared to here in scotland.

Edited April 12, 2016 by jaggiesoverstaggies

[Sneckboy]

16 hours ago, Scotty said:

The MLS figures are nonsense.

Seattle has the highest attendance in MLS and last season they set a new average attendance for the season at 44,247 which was a new record high for MLS. They have huge support there in the north west and a bunch of games over the years where they have over 60,000 attending with 67385 being the highest (2013). Montreal had an average attendance of about 17,700 last season and 17.400 the season before and have never been one of the top crowds in MLS. They are sitting something like 14th out of 20 in MLS for average attendance but they are increasing thanks to the "Drogba" effect. They have had +60,000 for a game in Montreal one time when they played LA Galaxy at the Olympic Stadium rather than their own stadium and 61000+ in the same venue for the Champions League semi-final game against Mexican side Club America last year but those were one-offs rather than the norm.

 

    

Those are impressive figures. 
I should have given the source...http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2012/04/02/revealed-the-most-dedicated-football-nations-the-faroes-iceland-cyprus-scotland-and-england-020403/ (the publication is a little dated, from 2012)

MLS consists of 'only' 20 clubs, plus the study goes down to just two-levels for the USA (the NASL is also included).
Even if they all sold-out their grounds every week, in an enormous country of 300+ million, it's going to 'return' a relatively small percentage of the US population attending.

I think the 'flaw' is in the methodology.

[Scotty]

2 hours ago, Sneckboy said:

Those are impressive figures. 
I should have given the source...http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2012/04/02/revealed-the-most-dedicated-football-nations-the-faroes-iceland-cyprus-scotland-and-england-020403/ (the publication is a little dated, from 2012)

MLS consists of 'only' 20 clubs, plus the study goes down to just two-levels for the USA (the NASL is also included).
Even if they all sold-out their grounds every week, in an enormous country of 300+ million, it's going to 'return' a relatively small percentage of the US population attending.

I think the 'flaw' is in the methodology.

I thought the two levels they were quoting were the two top divisions - ie. MLS Western Division and MLS Eastern Division?  NASL has pretty low crowds but I agree, the methodology makes it a bit flawed in some cases ....  

[TopSix]

ICTChris shared a stonking article earlier. Lengthy, but persevere. It hits the nail on the head. http://www.unmodernman.net/scottish-football-family-friendly-obsession/

[Scotty]

great article ! and with standing, booze and (controlled) pyro present at TFC games I can wholeheartedly agree that it definitely adds to atrmosphere

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

As Benjamin Disraeli once said to me at an all night Pyro Party in Yonge Street, Toronto " There are three types of lies Johndo - lies, damn lies and statistics".

[Charles Bannerman]

On ‎4‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 9:57 PM, jaggiesoverstaggies said:

One thing from that table- the old firms 'dominance' is second only to whatever happens in uruguayan football. I wonder how the fans of lower-placed uruguayan clubs perceive their big teams compared to here in scotland.

And therein lies the nub of the entire issue - the manner in which the Old Firm distort not only any statistics relating to the game in Scotland but the actual game itself. Forget about Iceland and the Faroes. Their population is so small (and arguably there's nothing much else to do there apart from shooting seals and watching football) that statistics relating to them don't really have much meaning. It's therefore worth noting that the very biggest and the very smallest populations lie at opposite ends of that table.

Uruguay is indeed interesting. It's the only country where the biggest two attendances are a bigger percentage of all football goers than Scotland's (55% compared with 50%). However Uruguay's population is 63% of Scotland's whereas the "top two" attendances (25,000 compared with 95,683) are only 26% of Scotland's. The difference is attributable to Uruguay's lower percentage of the country's population attending football (1.39% compared with 3.68%). A similar argument applies to every other "normal" sized country and the conclusion therefore has to be that by any means of measurement, Scotland's apparent (sic) standing is due to the massively disproportionate numbers attending Old Firm home games.

Scotland's football attendances are therefore clearly strongly driven by the OF - but for completely the wrong reasons. In fact Sneckboy's table goes a long way to support my long held belief that what run Scottish football are not factors relating to football itself but more relating to the tribalism and sectarianism created by the religious and political divisions of West Central parts.

It is the existence of these divisions which plays a huge part in pulling people into Ibrox and Celtic Park and to a large extent the football is somewhat secondary. One of the main drivers is the role which Rangers and Celtic play as vehicles for that politico-religious societal sickness which blights that part of Scotland. And then, once these two clubs reach critical masses for these non-football reasons, they also act as black holes which suck in all manner of glory hunters from everywhere else, leaving the rest of the Scottish game impoverished.

Consequently, I doubt if there is a real football nation in the world where "support" is as polarised in the direction of just two clubs - for the right reasons, never mind the wrong ones as here - as it is in Scotland. On these grounds, to a large extent Scottish football is a distorted joke. Perhaps the most revealing statistics would be the percentages of a) the entire population and b) the football going population of each country who attend clubs OUTWITH the biggest two. I am quite sure that this would show the uphill struggle that Scotland's other clubs have in the face of these two artificially inflated refuges for societal strife.

Sneckboy - are you up for another of your tables?

Edited April 15, 2016 by Charles Bannerman

[12th Man]

Locally we can beat the 3.68% national average.

 

[+DoofersDad]

Of course the OF distort the figures, but just leaving them out of it makes interesting reading.  If you look at Germany who are 13th in the list, the current World Cup champions and who have a superb top flight league, the % watching is listed as 1.63%.  Now if you divide the Highlands in 2 and say the potential fan base of ICT and County was 100,000 each, then at German levels of attendance we could expect home  gates of 1,630.  For all the moaning we do about how poorly the Inverness public support the club, this would suggest that compared to international levels, our level of support is pretty good.  The down side of this is that one might therefore expect the support to drop significantly in line with support elsewhere rather than rise.

Incidentally, I note that the number of divisions counted in preparing the table is listed as 5!  Does this include the Highland League, I wonder?  If so, then add in Wick, Brora, Clach, Nairn, Strathspey and Fort William onto the figures for ICT and County, and Highland clubs probably have a higher percentage of the population watching live football than Scotland as a whole - OF included.

[Yngwie]

10 hours ago, DoofersDad said:

Incidentally, I note that the number of divisions counted in preparing the table is listed as 5!  Does this include the Highland League, I wonder?  If so, then add in Wick, Brora, Clach, Nairn, Strathspey and Fort William onto the figures for ICT and County, and Highland clubs probably have a higher percentage of the population watching live football than Scotland as a whole - OF included.

Because there's nothing else to do except shoot seals?

[Sneckboy]

If my arithmetic is correct, taking away the 'Old Firm', Scottish attendances as a percentage of the population, don't fare as badly as I was expecting!

I can't find any reliable sources for 5th level attendances, so am only going with the figures for the 4 SPFL divisions. So the actual figures for Scotland would be slightly better.
But that could be argued for all countries - as not every league is included in the stats.

The average attendances of the 42 clubs, over 3 seasons (season ending by year):

[Sneckboy]

Celtic	46917	47079	44585	138581	46194
Rangers	45744	42657	32798	121199	40400
Heart of Midlothian	13163	14123	15985	43271	14424
Aberdeen	9611	12918	13359	35888	11963
Hibernian	10489	11027	10170	31686	10562
Dundee United	7547	7599	8113	23259	7753
Dundee	5958	4738	6966	17662	5887
Motherwell	5362	5175	4286	14823	4941
Kilmarnock	4647	4250	4076	12973	4324
St Mirren	4389	4511	3869	12769	4256
Partick Thistle	3614	5001	3777	12392	4131
St Johnstone	3712	3806	4592	12110	4037
Ross County	4430	3787	3525	11742	3914
Inverness Caledonian Thistle	4038	3558	3733	11329	3776
Falkirk	3127	3114	4661	10902	3634
Dunfermline Athletic	3796	3331	2523	9650	3217
Queen of the South	1659	1724	2778	6161	2054
Raith Rovers	1829	1659	2598	6086	2029
Greenock Morton	2137	1686	1728	5551	1850
Hamilton Academical	1231	1436	2877	5544	1848
Livingston	1308	1157	2364	4829	1610
Ayr United	1007	1905	1128	4040	1347
Queen's Park	2803	425	608	3836	1279
Airdrieonians	936	1592	830	3358	1119
Cowdenbeath	791	623	1574	2988	996
Dumbarton	925	938	1072	2935	978
Alloa Athletic	551	876	1429	2856	952
Arbroath	684	1054	721	2459	820
Clyde	1313	513	525	2351	784
East Fife	526	1249	557	2332	777
Stirling Albion	890	616	770	2276	759
Elgin City	1030	574	544	2148	716
Forfar Athletic	539	865	735	2139	713
Peterhead	938	573	580	2091	697
Brechin City	549	900	552	2001	667
Stenhousemuir	543	826	584	1953	651
Berwick Rangers	914	468	466	1848	616
Stranraer	426	802	541	1769	590
Montrose	831	363	419	1613	538
Annan Athletic	641	409	393	1443	481
Albion Rovers	387	408	552	1347	449
East Stirlingshire	612	343	315	1270	423
	2013	2014	2015	Total	Average

[Sneckboy]

Adopting the same methodology as the study being discussed, the percentage of Scotland attending football, using my attendance figures is 3.76%.
This is largely consistent with the 3.68% sated in the above survey which was using only 2012 data.

Now, without the 'Old Firm', that figure reduces significantly to 2.12%. But, it still holds-up well compared to other nations. Scotland would be identical with Denmark, and still in the top 10.
But, there are major flaws in the study. For example, Spain is only counting 2 levels of football. The Spaniard we released, Lopez, is playing 3rd-tier there, in one of many Regional Leagues at that level. I've no idea what the crowds would be like there, or the many levels below that. But none of them being included, does make the survey less than robust!
Still, I've always had a keen interest in attendance stats, but there are always so many variables at play.

[Charles Bannerman]

I agree totally SB, controlling variables is very difficult here. However I think one thing is quite clear about Scottish football. If Celtic and Rangers were "normal" football clubs as opposed to vehicles for factions which, over 400 years on, still basically haven't come to terms with the Reformation, the game here would have somewhat fewer attendees overall, much fewer at Ibrox and Celtic Park, but rather more at all other grounds..... as well as being far more interesting with a much more pleasant atmosphere in a lot of cases.

[buckett]

16 hours ago, 12th Man said:

Locally we can beat the 3.68% national average.

 

That's nothing!

Ross County can bring 150% of the population of Dingwall to a Cup Final!

[Charles Bannerman]

10 minutes ago, buckett said:

That's nothing!

Ross County can bring 150% of the population of Dingwall to a Cup Final!

This is one of the variables which it's difficult to control. Dingwall may well be Ross County's base, but the club's effective catchment area is far, far wider. Taking Scotland as a designated area is a lot less ambiguous, although even there you do have loads of Irish coming across to Celtic Park and Ibrox - which again is evidence that the OF are artificially inflating Scottish numbers.