Topic: Serie A - Where are the crowds

[Endoe]

Crowd figures in Serie A have dropped again, according to figures released for the first half of the 2016-17 season.

With an average of 21,833 fans taking in fixtures during the first half of the current Serie A campaign, a drop of 1.7 percent year on year has been recorded with only AC Milan and Juventus bucking the trend with crowd increases.

The figures, published by Il Messaggero, are the lowest in the past five seasons with some of Italy's most supported clubs leading the decline.

Napoli's average gate fell 22.3 percent, arguably due to the sale of Gonzalo Higuain to Juventus in the summer, while crowd figures at Roma's Stadio Olimpico dropped 17.8 percent with Giallorossi fans continuing to protest against the controversial division of the Curva Sud for security reasons.


Crotone vs. Palermo was watched by just 510 supporters.
A new record low was set by Crotone, who welcomed just 510 fans to their game against Palermo, although that fixture was played in Pescara while work continued to bring the promoted club's Stadio Ezio Scida up to Serie A standards. Their other two games in Pescara saw just 821 and 522 pass through the gate.

The biggest crowd came in the Milan derby, which was seen by 77,882 fans at the San Siro, followed by Inter vs. Juventus (76,484) and Milan vs. Juventus (75,829).

Away from Milan, the biggest crowd was recorded for Napoli's clash with Sassuolo, with 49,490 fans in attendance at the Stadio San Paolo in December. That was just 6,000 more than the average crowd at AC Milan's home games of 43,595, with their on-field improvement under Vincenzo Montella reflected in the number of fans returning to watch their games -- up 12.8 percent on last season.

Visitors to the Juventus Stadium increased by 3.8 percent, meanwhile, with the venue almost always sold out for home fans and fluctuations mainly due to the number of visiting fans present.



For a league that's considered in the top leagues in the world, why in the world are crowd numbers so low? Just finished watching a season roundup of the season just gone past and it was striking how empty the stadia were.Seems a massive problem for the game over there, a league that in recent history was considered the best league to be involved in. Players would obviously love to be playing in full stadiums, Can anyone here explain why the cross numbers in such a highly rated league, with club's the size of Juve and Milan they struggle to pull a crowd.If I were given the choice of playing in Italy or England's, knowing I'd be playing in full stadiums every week would definitely be a massive advantage.So the question is what the hell is going on?

[Flinstone]

Italy is poor and will continue to become more poor.

[Goalposts for Jumpers]

They never really made the transition to it being a "family" spectator sport, and crowds are still aggressive, a bit dangerous and very hostile to away fans.

Another influence will be the resurgence (or in some cases emergence) of Southern Italian teams - Napoli, Palermo, Catania, Crotone, Reggina, etc, and teams that are just not big teams. Even Sassuolo further north have been incredibly successful, but they're basically a village team. Also, anywhere south of Napoli has a bit of the 3rd world about it, not many people can afford 20euro to watch a football match (let alone 80 to take the whole family), there's a lot of seasonal work and cash-in-hand type jobs and people don't have a consistent income. Not to mention the massive wealth imbalance between north and south making supporters a bit defeatist - what's the point spending lots of money to go and watch your team get smashed by the rich northeners.

[surfer. Fuck you generator.]

They never really made the transition to it being a "family" spectator sport, and crowds are still aggressive, a bit dangerous and very hostile to away fans.

Another influence will be the resurgence (or in some cases emergence) of Southern Italian teams - Napoli, Palermo, Catania, Crotone, Reggina, etc, and teams that are just not big teams. Even Sassuolo further north have been incredibly successful, but they're basically a village team. Also, anywhere south of Napoli has a bit of the 3rd world about it, not many people can afford 20euro to watch a football match (let alone 80 to take the whole family), there's a lot of seasonal work and cash-in-hand type jobs and people don't have a consistent income. Not to mention the massive wealth imbalance between north and south making supporters a bit defeatist - what's the point spending lots of money to go and watch your team get smashed by the rich northeners.

That's pretty much it. Bar Juve's modern stadium and match day experience (they get good home attendances, unsurprisingly), most of Italy's match day experience, stadium facilities are not up to mark. The middle class that you need to attract stay away from the experience, you're left with the less savoury elements, which in turn keeps the nice people from coming even more. Clubs can't really build with a plan. The clubs need to own and modernise their own stadiums to break the cycle and finally catch up with england, Germany.

[MOZ]

Not a great change from the previous year (-0.5%) with over half the clubs enjoying bigger crowds.

A few anomalies in there such a Palermo, with the doomed hedge fund take over and behind the scenes nonsense driving many fans away; and Crotone, who had to play a few matches 600km away from their home ground due to refurbishment work.

For comparison, England (-1.8%), Spain (-2.2%) and Germany's (-4.1%) crowds all dropped off by more last season.

[Peabee]

That's pretty much it. Bar Juve's modern stadium and match day experience (they get good home attendances, unsurprisingly), most of Italy's match day experience, stadium facilities are not up to mark. The middle class that you need to attract stay away from the experience, you're left with the less savoury elements, which in turn keeps the nice people from coming even more. Clubs can't really build with a plan. The clubs need to own and modernise their own stadiums to break the cycle and finally catch up with england, Germany.

Yes, the working class are so unsavoury.   They are practically animals. 

[CheshireDave]

For comparison, England (-1.8%)

Do they take into account size of stadia in that? Just wondered if the drop could be due to Newcastle and Villa going down in the 2015/16 season and  Bournemouth, Watford and Norwich City coming up.

[MOZ]

Do they take into account size of stadia in that? Just wondered if the drop could be due to Newcastle and Villa going down in the 2015/16 season and  Bournemouth, Watford and Norwich City coming up.

Includes the (%) rise in attendance of the newly-promoted clubs each year, so for example Middlesbrough had a 23.6% rise, Hull City a 20.7%, Burnley 23.0%, so this would have boosted the percentage.

Newcastle's will stay pretty much the same this year, so the increase will be less, while Brighton's and Huddersfield's should increase.

[surfer. Fuck you generator.]

Yes, the working class are so unsavoury.   They are practically animals. 

Woah there. Middle class / working class / families, people with something to lose if you will. Christ.

The less savoury elements are the usual unemployed yobs looking for an outlet, gangs running a racket on the tickets, club merchandise and so on.

Essentially Italy hasn't made the step England did in the 90s. Due to Italy's less favourable economic conditions, it may never quite do so.The first step though in these discussions is always for ownership to be compulsorily transferred from the city councils to the clubs. Everything else comes from this.

[Linudden]

Running tracks, clubs and the league fighting their own fans, predictable end results, lots of small clubs displacing major ones, poor results in Europe apart from Juventus, the offset of an 18-team league burning the pockets of working-class Italians with two extra home games and all that.

[CheshireDave]

Could the ease of finding 3pm (or any time really) steams have contributed to falling attendances?

[Ziltoid]

Why did i continue the thread title singing  "....bring on the crowds"

[JD.]

It's sad really. Every time you watch a Serie A game the ground is always half empty and it does take away something.

Teams who are supposed to be some of the worlds biggest like the two Milan teams, playing in one of the worlds most iconic stadiums, and they can only half fill it.

[Lush is the best medicine...]

Having to bring ID and show it at various points doesn't help what with the hassle