The Biggest Draws in 2010-11: Matchday Attendance in European Leagues

Which are the best soccer teams or leagues in the world? Of course we can see which teams win more matches, and for leagues, UEFA's league coefficient allows us to answer that question with a fair amount of precision. Less systematic but popular ways of determining league or team quality involves looking at international head-to-head competition, or evaluating which leagues attract the best players and managers. All are tried and true ways of answering the perennial question of who is best.

Here's another, and slightly different, way of comparing leagues and teams: how much excitement do they generate among supporters? If "better" football - however we define quality - is more enjoyable and therefore valuable to supporters, we can measure the excitement of supporters by quantifying how willing they are to part with their hard-earned cash to see a club play. (As an aside, this approach should also have intuitive appeal to those who think soccer is a business.)

So here are some interesting numbers on matchday attendance I came across a few days ago, from a source called Stadionwelt. They show average attendance for home matches for the Top 30 draws in Europe so far this season (on average, teams played between 8 and 10 games at home). I took these numbers and turned them into a bar chart for easy reading and comparison (the x-axis shows attendance in thousands).

So what do the numbers tell us?

They reveal that Top 30 attendance has been a very healthy 50,939 on average. Barca has been the clear No.1 with 86,000 supporters in the stands, followed by Dortmund (77,385), with Man U, Real Madrid, and Bayern filling out the Top 5.

These are all big clubs with big stadiums, where supporters are almost guaranteed soccer at the highest level, so there's no real surprise in these statistics. What I found notable was the high levels of attendance for clubs that are not playing all that well, or that have rarely had consistently good seasons in the last few years. These include Cologne, Frankfurt, or Newcastle, and incredibly, Borussia Moenchengladbach who have been consistently mediocre for a good number of years. The other remarkable fact is that Hertha BSC makes the Top 30, despite being a second division club with a stadium that's much too big and not all that fan friendly (the Olympiastadion). So, while the very top on the list also are among the very best clubs, the overall correlation between attendance and quality of play (as evidenced in league standings) is low (but presumably positive, despite outliers like Gladbach).

So here are the top clubs in each league:

1. Bundesliga: Bayern

2. Bundesliga: Hertha BSC

EPL: Man U

Eredivisie: Ajax

La Liga: Barcelona

Ligue 1: Marseille

SPL: Rangers

Serie A: Inter Milan

A couple of other things stand out: The Bundesliga seems to have the healthiest attendance overall; there are 4 Bundesliga clubs in the Top 10 (and only 2 La Liga,  2 EPL, 1 Serie A, and 1 Ligue 1 club). Moreover, Bundesliga clubs make up 12 of the 30 attendance toppers - a full 40 percent of the Top 30. Contrast that with just 3 (or 10% of 30) Serie A clubs (Inter, AC, and Napoli) or 4 La Liga outfits (Barca, Real, Atletico, and Valencia). Of the big leagues, the EPL comes closest with 6 clubs, or 20% of the Top 30, but it, too, comes nowhere near the Bundesliga.

Some of these numbers may reflect each country's business cycle -  compared to its European neighbors, the German economy is relatively healthy these days. And attendance clearly is a worry for Serie A. In the first half of the season, attendance at matches was only 23,800 on average, 6.8% fewer than in the previous year, and not all that much more than American Major League Soccer. Overall, 23,800 is about half what Bundesliga clubs have drawn so far this season (42,209).

Of course, we have to qualify these statistics a bit; after all, capacity is a real constraint on how many people make the trek to the stadium, and % of capacity may be a good an indicator of a team's or league's fortunes as well, though these numbers are harder to compare: is 99% attendance (as a % of capacity) in a 40,000 seat stadium better than, say, 80% capacity at Camp Nou?

Given that Real and Barca derive a much bigger portion of their revenues from broadcasting than English teams like Man U or Bundesliga clubs (because of the way broadcasting rights are negotiated in each league), the top La Liga clubs are in great shape, but the rest of the league are not nearly as well off. Similarly, Serie A is in crisis, if you ask me, a crisis that is hidden by the success of a few clubs with deep pockets (like the Milan clubs). So for my money, overall, the Bundesliga looks to be in great shape, as does the Premier League (or at least half of it).