Italian Attendances

[Portadown Loyal]

Am not sure why I have noticed but I've noticed that attendances for Italian teams are super low this year in Europe in both competitions.

For Example there were just 32,000 at Inters game this week and only 25,000 for Juve against Madrid, similar attendances for Fiorentina and Roma.

Do Italian teams have a ban on certain stadium capacity this year or something?? All these Stadia bar Fiorentina's hold atleast 70,000.

[feedbackproblem]

I heard a while ago that Italian attendances were in rapid decline. I think that one season not too long ago I read that we had sold more season tickets than one of the really big teams (Juve, Milan, Inter etc...) and although that claim might be exaggerated, I believe it's a big problem.

I found this article from a couple of years ago:

Not even a World Cup triumph has reversed the decline. Just three and a half months after 500,000 fans poured onto the streets of Rome to acclaim Marcello Lippi's side, attendances in Italy's top flight have dropped to their lowest since 1970 - an average of just 19,511 after seven games. That's barely half the Premiership average of 34,084 so far this season, and only marginally better than the Championship's 17,368. Perhaps most worrying of all, it also represents an 8.7% fall on the same period last season.

The figures are shocking, inconceivable in a country where football has always been so intrinsic to the national psyche, and where a ticket for next week's Milan derby - one of the biggest on the European calendar - can be bought for as little as 14 euros. The gut reaction is to blame the drop-off on this summer's other events, namely the match-fixing scandal which undermined years of supporters' financial and emotional investment in their clubs. Things are not so simple. Serie A attendances have been on the slide since the 1997-98 season. At worst Calciopoli accelerated an existing trend.

Nor, despite some commentators' panicked analyses, can the problem be attributed predominantly to saturated television coverage. That particular challenge is shared by all of Europe's biggest leagues, and of the other big four (the Premiership, Germany's Bundesliga, Spain's La Liga and France's Ligue 1) only the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 have experienced a fall in attendance from the same period last season, both by about 1% (although the Premiership's small rise in attendances is entirely due to the increased capacities at Arsenal and Manchester United).

As former Italy manager Arrigo Sacchi points out in his column in today's La Gazzetta Dello Sport the current predicament is far too complex to be attributed to a single cause. Fans have to contend with stadiums that are "tired, obsolete, inhospitable and structured like the Colosseum", points out Sacchi, as well as the increased presence of violent, often racist Ultras, who make life miserable for moderate fans and "would not have a place in any part of civilised Europe". The clubs themselves have alienated supporters, argues Sacchi, not only by fixing matches (the Calciopoli scandal is not the first - Genoa were relegated for a similar offence in 2004), but also by faking passports for players and repeatedly mismanaging their finances, with a succession of clubs having gone bankrupt only to rise from the dead under a minimally changed name.

There are short-term causes, too, such as the absence of Juventus from the top flight. The Old Lady, despite poor home attendances, added glamour to the league and brought considerable away support to many fixtures. Their presence has certainly been felt in Serie B, where, with high-profile clubs Genoa and Napoli currently also plying their trade at the lower level, attendances for the eighth round of games were over double what they were last year.

The shame in it all is that this season's Serie A has been one of the most interesting in years, with a gloriously gung-ho Palermo getting among the big guns and a genuine uncertainty about who will win the Scudetto. If ever there was a time for Italian football to get its act together and make a concerted effort to win back the fans, then it must be now, in the post-Moggi climate, where everything is still up for grabs. Sadly, with the unifying force of the World Cup already fading from memory, it already looks like another missed opportunity.

I'm not a regular viewer of the Serie A, but I had no idea things had gotten this bad. I was aware that Italian cup matches over the years had pathetic attendances (I vaguely remember seeing a Juventus game at the Delle Alpi with only around a thousand at it) but for the league to go the same way so soon after Italy winning the World Cup is amazing. Even if you take the attempted match-fixing and all that went with it, it hardly justifies a slide of the proportions that have been seen, especially when you consider that it is the 9th season in a row that the average has been in decline.

Current attendances are almost half that of the Premiership, and linger just above the average Championship level. Serie B averages are on the increase (up roughly 20%), with the obvious explanation being that Juventus are now a part of the division.

Average attendances for 11 of the 20 English Premiership clubs are down, and the overall 1% increase has more to do with the new Emirates stadium and expansion of Old Trafford. Blackburns attendances have fallen by around 20% over the past four seasons, and they recently introduced a flat rate of £15 for the game against Bolton, which they unfortunately lost 1-0.

What factors do people think are to blame for these falls in attendance? Predictability? Live TV coverage? Lack of exciting football?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/10/25/why_are_serie_a_attendances_on.html

http://www.goal.com/en/Articolo.aspx?ContenutoId=154241

[peter beagrie is mint]

:) The Italians have woke up and know what we have known for years...there league is ****!!!

[billybantam]

I'm guessing the corruption will have hit them badly as well. Punters want to turn up and know they are seeing a genuine competition and i reckon a fair few will have stayed away after that whole scenario

[SoggyMoggy]

Do you think fans would stay away from the Premiership if there was proven match fixing like in Serie A?

[Portadown Loyal]

I think alot of fans at the big clubs are so fickle that they wouldnt give a toss

[SoggyMoggy]

Exactly what I was thinking. It's just an afternoon out to some of the prawn sandwich brigade.

[Portadown Loyal]

Aye certainly is. Am not sure what the percentage of season ticket holders is at Old Trafford but when you see match of the day it just looks like lots of family outings all with their new megastore bags to pick up a wee bit of merchandising as a memento

[SoggyMoggy]

Hopefully the recession will take care of a few of them