Serie A, record attendance at the stadium: it is the highest average since 2000

Something is changed. There A league she took off her mask, she left after three years of restrictions due to the pandemic. From the closure of the plants at the beginning of 2020 to restricted access. Buffers and green passes: entering the stadium had become a real obstacle course, which many fans had preferred to escape. The return to maximum capacity has marked a turning point since the spring of 2022. But it is this season, with the first championship entirely without stakes, that the music has really changed. After the long fast, there were all the ingredients to bring back numbers that hadn’t been seen on Italian fields for over twenty years. With an average of 29,551 spectators per gameindeed, the A league 2022/23 it becomes the most watched at the stadium since 1999/2000, which had averaged 30,025.

A significant fact, given the presence in our league of many small stadiums, from Castellani of Empoli at the Zini of Cremona, fromU Power of Monza al Peak of La Spezia, which with its 11,466 seats is the third smallest stadium of the top 5 European championships that has just ended, behind that of theAjaccio (10,446) and to that of Bournemouth (11,329).

Serie A 2022/23, the most watched match at the stadium

According to the data collected by the portal stadiapostcardsthe derby Inter Milan of last February 5 – finished 1-0 for the nerazzurri with goals by Lautaro – was the most watched match at the stadium of this one A league with 75,584 spectators and guaranteed the second highest grossing in the history of nerazzuri in the league (€5.75 million). The first, absolute record in A leaguestay Inter-Juventus of 6 October 2019, with 6,620,976 euros in receipts and 75,923 spectators, in the away match won 2-1 by the black and whites coached by Maurice Sarri.

Spezia-Sassuolowith suns 6500 spectators (the figure is slightly approximate), it was instead the least watched match at the stadium this season.

How do fans of the Italian champions behave? The Naples is only in fifth place for average viewers: 45,617while the capacity of the Maradona is 54,726 seats.

Napoli and Paolo Rossi, the most viewed ever at the stadium

The Campania side, however, still hold the record for the game with the most fans at the stadium in the history of A league: 89,992 For Naples-Perugia of 20 October 1979, despite the testimonies speak of almost 100,000 presences. The reason? Paolo Rossion loan to Perugiahad refused the Naples in the summer: “Play for them? No thanks, for me life comes first and then my profession. And if I have to reverse the order of things I have to think about it not once but a hundred times. What am I coming to do Naplesthe savior of the fatherland?”

He will be the future driving force of the Azzurri al World Cup 82submerged by the whistles of St. Paulto give the guests the lead on a penalty kick, in the match which then drew 1-1, again from the penalty spot, by Oscar Damiani.

Since 2015 always the same team in first place for spectators

L’Inter it was the most followed team in the championship: at every game, he had behind him to support it 72,630 fans, on average. A habit for the nerazzurri: it is already the seventh consecutive time, in practice since 2015/2016 they have always won the Scudetto from the fans at the stadium. Except when the fans at the stadium didn’t let them in.

A sensational result for the team of Simone Inzaghithe third most supported in Italy after Juventus And Milan. The reason is also economic: a San Siro the cheapest subscription to follow the nerazzurri cost 269 ​​euros. It is no coincidence that in second place for average viewers there is the Milanwith subscriptions starting from 199 euros. There Juvesupported by 8 million people in Italy, double the number of people in Milan according to some estimates, is in sixth place for fans in the stands, also given the smaller capacity of theAllianz Stadium compared to rival systems. In his case – the stadium ownership factor also weighs – season tickets started from 650 euros.

The trend of recent years and the comparison with the nineties

Inverted trend compared to the previous two seasons, inevitably conditioned by the pandemic: in 2021/22 the average spectators in the plants had been 18,154 spectatorswhile in the 2020/21, with the exception of some limited access challenges, most of them were played behind closed doors to avoid contagions. Already a year earlier, in 2019/20 however, an encouraging fact was recorded: 27,608 media viewers, before the cause interruption Covid of March 10 and resumed in June without fans in the stadium.

If audience participation had collapsed in the 10s, the average had started to rise again as early as the 2017/18 season, the first of the Varcontinuing to grow the following year, also thanks to the arrival in Italy of Cristiano Ronaldo. In the 2018/19indeed, the Juve of CR7 closed in third place for average spectators (39,244).

The data of 2023 it takes us back decades, to the 1990s (30.5 thousand viewers on average), before the widespread diffusion of pay TV. There are many similarities with that period, starting with the victory of the Scudetto of Naples (1990), which opened, together with World Cupone of the most prosperous decades in the history of Italian football, both for the results obtained (8 finals of Champions League and 6 Golden Balls from A league) and for the attraction exercised by our league on foreign players. We are still far from those levels, but the path taken, given the increase in the public and the Italian participation in the three European finals, bodes well.

Comparison with other leagues

There A leaguehowever, remains behind the Premier League and to Bundesliga for stadium attendance. The German top flight, with an average attendance of 42,992holds the record of the top 5 European leagues, followed by the English one with 40.505. The gap of over 10,000 spectators is also determined by the presence, in our championship, of many stadiums in need of renovation: the average age of Italian stadiums is 68, in Germany it is 38 and in England it is 35.

Three clubs A league in the top 10 of the spectators ranking of the major European leagues. In first place we find the Barcelonawith an average of 83,498 fans at the stadium, followed by the Borussia Dortmund and from Bayern Monaco. L’Inter is fifth, the Milanwith an average of 71,880, sixth. Octave A Rome (62.033 of average), which since the advent of the new ownership, in 2021, has undertaken a policy aimed at favoring admissions thanks to packages and discounted rates. This is demonstrated by the over 30 sold outs in one year.

In any case, the Italian championship closed with more attendance in the stands than the League 1 (23,708 average viewers) and in line with the Spanish championship (29,584). We are no longer last in Europe in terms of fans. Now there are no more excuses for not renewing the infrastructures that have to host them.