163.5m spectators and attendance is up in 22 European leagues

European football clubs totalled nearly 163.5 million spectators in 2012-13 (2013 for the leagues whose calendar corresponds with the calendar year), revealed the sixth benchmarking report of European clubs, published by UEFA (Union of European Football Associations), on 17/04/2014.

99.9 million spectators attended the 54 stadiums of European first divisions, 50.4 million spectators attended matches of the 67 lower leagues studied by UEFA and 13.1 million went to European matches.

With nearly 13.7 million viewers in 2012-13, the Premier League dominated the ranking of aggregate attendance, ahead of the Bundesliga (13 million), Liga BBVA (10.7 million) and the Championship (second English division, 9.6 million). Serie A is ranked 5^th with 8.8 million spectators, ahead of Ligue 1 (7.3 million) and the Champions League (6.8 million).

The Premier League (+3.8%), Serie A (+3.4%) and Ligue 1 (1.8%) had some of the highest growth of the 22 European divisions between 2011-12 and 2012-13. La Liga BBVA (-1.9%) and the Bundesliga (-5.5%) were part of the 28 championships where crowds had…