We did really good for playing against Cottbus. If we'd have a stadium the size of Wolfsburg's or Mainz's we'd sell out every matchday.
Impressive attendance at the last season 'Spieltag': Schalke-Bielefeld 61482 (ausverkauft) Leverkusen-Dortmund 22.500 (ausverkauft) Stuttgart-Cottbus 56.000 (ausverkauft) Hamburg-Aachen 57.000 (ausverkauft) Bayern-Mainz 69.000 (ausverkauft) Mönchengladbach-Bochum 50.000 Wolfsburg-Bremen 30.000 (ausverkauft) Frankfurt-Hertha 50.500 Hannover-Nürnberg 49.000 (ausverkauft)
Yeah, Leverkusen is not that big (something like 150.000 inhabitants) and they don't really have fans outside of their own city (or at least only very few).
1__Borussia Dortmund_________72.652 2__Bayern München___________68.465 3__FC Schalke 04_____________61.348 4__Hamburger SV ____________56.024 5__Hertha BSC_______________48.690 6__Eintracht Frankfurt_________47.625 7__Bor. Mönchengladbach______47.485 8__VfB Stuttgart_____________45.888 9__1. FC Nürnberg ___________41.555 10__Werder Bremen___________40.894 11__Hannover 96 ____________38.717 12__VfL Bochum______________24.969 13__Arminia Bielefeld__________23.127 14__Bayer Leverkusen_________22.412 15__VfL Wolfsburg_____________22.327 16__Alemannia Aachen_________20.745 17__1. FSV Mainz 05___________20.229 18__Energie Cottbus___________16.070 ---------------------------------------- league average________________39.957 (so close) Next year should see less because of Gladbach gone even though all three should average more than Mainz and Aachen. I guess Karlsruhe will sell out every game in their first season.
watching Stuttgart's fans was amazing today. same goes with Schalke. Watching the pain and anguish as opposed to the pure jubilation was amazing, it really backs up Uli's latest article talking about the passion being back.
Its really awesome. I love the Bundesliga! 2nd Bundesliga isnt bad either! todays attendances accoring to kicker: Duisburg-Essen 31500 Rostock- Haching 29000 Freiburg-Koblenz 24500 Lautern-Köln 48000 Aue-1860 14000 Fürth-KSC 14000 Burghausen-Paderborn 3900 Augsburg-Jena 24050 Offenbach-Braunschweig 16267 thats an average of 22802 would be interesting to see the whole seasons stats... They should definitely increase next seaon with Gladbach coming down and Pauli and Magdeburg probably coming up...
Leverkusen is to Köln what Luton is to London...Just a minor manufacturing centre really. But they started out as a club for workers at Bayer and Bayer is sponsoring them heavily (€25m p.a), that´s why they have a rather good team.
The season average was 16.697. Next season might increase slightly, but the teams coming up won't be a huge improvement to those coming down and Gladbach/Mainz/Aachen as a whole won't do much better than KSC/Rostock/Duisburg as a whole. Maybe 17.000 something in the end.
BMG might if they get a good start..Mainz and Aachen I´m not so sure about but Mainz might surprise a few.
Sure, Gladbach will raise the attendance, but to reach an average of 18.000 or higher the total number of spectators would need (very roughly) to rise significantly more than 10.000 on average per matchday, unless my maths is totally off here. This will be very hard to reach. Even if Gladbach kept their 1. Bundesliga average, this alone wouldn't be enough (and Duisburg und Rostock in the second weren't that far behind the averages of Aachen and Mainz in the first).
And Wehen and Hoffenheim will play their püarts and be worthy successors of Burghausen and Unterhaching.
Hoffenheim...They will be a drag on attendances for sure, have anyone ever seen a Hoffenheim fan, or even the town..
The BL is close to installing a new attendance record this season: http://www.dfb.de/index.php?id=500014&no_cache=1&tx_dfbnews_pi1[showUid]=13267&cHash=0d9b39a695 Now just imagine having clubs like BMG, Köln, Kaiserslautern and 1860 Munich instead of Cottbus, Bielefeld, Duisburg and Rostock in the 1st league...
Well... the Bundesligas average was 400 higher than in the record year, now that's impressing statistic ^^ Truth is the attendance at the top level is stalling at a very high level. Which is no wonder, since especially the successfull clubs are all sold out more or less every week, so there is little room for improvement... attendance might get a bit higher for most sub-top teams, but for the clubs that drove the attendances higher in recent seasons - mostly Frankfurt, Hannover, Nürnberg - reached the top, so it looks like the best shot at breaking the 40k average barrier would be at least 2 of Gladbach, Cologne and 1860 back in the league and none of the big attendance clubs getting relegated, Nuremberg is in danger now. Other possibilities would be Hertha finally playing good and drawing bigger crowds - with the stadium and all the Berliners to fill it it could get higher by 10-20k - the stadium renovations in Bremen and Leverkusen, should be good for 10k each in 2009/2010, for Leverkusen the attendances might already improve when they move into the LTU Arena for half of next season.
Mainz is increasing its capacity as well I think...But in general most room for improvement might be found with clubs like Hannover or Hertha that have a lot of overcapacity right now.