Attendance: a 25% drop in European Top 5 stadiums during the first half of 2021-22

Attendance at stadiums in the European Top 5 has fallen by an average of around 25% between the 2019-20 season and the first half of the 2021-22 season (excluding matches behind closed doors), according to data collected by News Tank Football for the Premier League, Ligue 1 Uber Eats, Bundesliga, LaLiga Santander and Serie A TIM.

This can obviously be explained by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, this figure masks highly varied realities in each of the countries, which were of course affected differently by the pandemic and responded in different ways.

For example, neither the Premier League nor the Ligue 1 Uber Eats stadiums (with a few rare exceptions) were subject to capacity limits, which enabled the former to record attendance levels in line with the pre-pandemic period (+1%), while the latter only suffered a slight decrease (-2.7%).

In the other three leagues, the situation is quite different. The Bundesliga, the usual leader in terms of attendance, posted a drop of nearly 50% in its number of spectators, which now places the league just below Ligue 1. The Serie A and LaLiga…