Dutch Attendance thread

When I read your post I immediately looked at it from a French perspective after all Dutch league is supposed to be the next best league after French.
Anyhow I noticed that Eredivise is only about 4,000 behind the French League in average. I believe Ligue 1 last time I checked was averaging 20,095. That is depressing to me because I feel their should be a bigger gap between the two. Says a lot about French supporters dont it lol. Maybe the gap will close or widen in the next few years who knows. It depends on who gets bigger or newer stadia etc.

Another thing that jumped out at me was that Feyenoord is averaging more than PSG. This is again depressing to me. I believe you wrote that Feyenoord is at 40,800 per game so I checked and noticed that PSG is at 39,598 per game. It's very close but Feyenoord is still averaging more. I hope PSG can surpass them by the end of the year we shall see. I can't believe PSG isn't averaging over 40,000 but then again the last few years for them on the pitch have been lean.

 

I think you need to add figures on stadium capacity and percentage of seasons tickets sold to put these figures into perspective.

 

Stadium capacity is tricky though because different places always list different capacities. Very rarely does the same exact number come up every where you look for that stadium.

 

I don't know where you get this number from, but Heerenveen's stadium only can hold about 15000 people.

 

Re: Re: Dutch Attendance thread

I was wondering about that too. It's 14,400 to be exact, I checked.

 

Re: Re: Re: Dutch Attendance thread

I just checked again and it's 14,299. They gave two seats to a fat bloke.

 

I was kind of surprised to see that the average was that low. As an MLS fan, it's kind of gratifying to see that our league's average is only about 1,400 short of the Eredivisie. Of course, the variation among the teams is much much less (from 8,000 to 22,000). It makes sense then that a few teams completely dominate and the other are just there to make up the numbers. I mean, really how can a team that only gets 8,000 a game compete with one that has the fanbase to pack in nearly 50,000? It seems like that kind of disparity might be viewed as a big problem, although at this point, I guess that most fans are used to the notion that most of the teams just don't stand a chance, and probably never will.

G.

 

Re: Re: Re: Dutch Attendance thread

It used to be 14,400, but a few of the news seats are already in use. At the games versus PSV and Ajax there were a little over 15,000 spectators.

 

Ajax attendance figures are way off.

Average attendance at Ajax home games is 35.000-45.000 I reckon.

 

But don't forget that a team with 14000 stadium capacity just whipped the living daylights out of a team that plays in a 50000 seat stadium!

Of course this is a result from just one match.
Match attendances are very intriguing and very interesting to compare to other leagues. But it really doesn't explain much, except for the novelty of comparison.
I don't think the lack of MLS attendance is the problem for its sustained existence. The biggest problem facing footie fans in the US is the fact that the MLS is and will always be a profit first venture. Teams are created from potential profit forecasting. And there will be no hesitation to "close" a franchise when it continues to show a profit loss year after year.
It is difficult to generate continuous fan support for one particular team under such economic enviroment as we have today.

It's too bad there was no football "visionary" back in the seventies or eighties that could put together an American soccer league, purely in the traditional spirit of competition. Let there be divisions and promotion and relegations. Let there be teams from all towns and cities. Let the game and the leagues flourish over decades. Had it been done this way, soccer in America will have its grassroots in its football towns and cities.
Instead, soccer took a path all too familiar with the other popular team sports like basketball & american football. Thousands of aspiring players move to colleges and universities and then a few hundred make it to the 8-10 MLS teams that exist today. And the remaining thousands of "ex-soccer players" go on to support either MLS teams or follow teams from other countries.

All I'm trying to say here, is that many MLS supporters claim that by supporting MLS you're supporting soccer in America. But it's only half-true.
Because the MLS really only came into existence in light of America being rewarded the 1994 WC and it continues to be marketed as a high-end franchise entity, but still it does not bridge the gap between school-level soccer and the professional league.
There's not enough progression up through the ranks, and I think it reflects on the MLS attendance today.

 

I think 40.000 is a lot for a team that not play that well in the dutch eredivisie.
I see in country's like italy where the stadiums or almost empty when the team is not playing well.
I saw in the uefa cup tonight the match between
perugia and psv, the stadium was for 25% fild,
that's a shame for a club that plays in the uefa cup.
The Philips stadium with a capacity of 36.500 will propebly sold out next week.
When Feyenoord is doing well in the dutch eredivisie and i think they do it well next season then there will be 50.000 spectators in the stadium and i think they can have more spectators if the stadium is bigger.
By the way de kuip had before the renovation in 1994 almost 75.000 seats but new rules had to increas the capacity of the kuip.

 

and i think ajax can have more spectators if the stadium was bigger.
a stadium with a capacity of 75.000 does it well for ajax and the national team can also play for 75.000 spectators then.

 

A stadium can virtually never sell out entirely as there will always be some empty seats in the away section. A better indicator of how popular a club is locally is if (and how fast) their season tickets sell out.

 

I don't know how much season tickets feyenoord has sold this season but i know that ajax has sold 43.000 season tickets this season and that's a record for ajax.
All the 43.000 season tickets were sold before the start of the competition in august.
i think they can do better then the 43.000 and if they sell more then 43.000 season tickets the stadium will be to small.

 

That's nonsence the stadium is sold out when there our no more tickets for the home section.
The away section is almost never sold out only by the few clubs like ajax, feyenoord, psv, twente and groningen they take a lot of supporters with them to away games.
In the new stadium of Fc Groningen they will have two away section's with each 600 seats when there or less then 600 supporters of the away club they can sell the tickets to the home club.
I think that's good because there or a lot of club's who don't take more then 600 supporters with them.

 

Den Haag is a bit of a disapointment btw.

 

It's true: Ajax's official attendance figure is always higher than the actual number of people that were in attendance. But it's definitely not as low as 35,000.

The story behind it...

Until a few seasons ago Ajax always used to count the number of people that actually went through the turnstiles. That number was always lower than the sum of the number of season ticket holders + the number of tickets sold in presale. This has few reasons:

1. Unfortunately the Amsterdam ArenA is not Ajax's stadium. It is an independent stadium with Ajax as its #1 tennant. The ArenA has a number of 'certificate holders': mostly business people who sponsored the stadium when it was built. They are entitles to their own seat in the stadium and they have the right to go to every event in the ArenA (football, music, etc.). In practice many of these people are not football fans - and they don't always show up. Ajax, however, can not sell these seats.

2. We have a relatively high percentage of season ticket holders from places far from Amsterdam (from within The Netherlands and from abroad). These people can't always make it, especially to midweek home games.

3. There are more 'semi-legal' ticket agencies iN Amsterdam than in other city in Holland. Those agencies buy tickets in presale and sell them, marked up considerably. There is not much Ajax (or the police) can do about this, but in Amsterdam it's actually about fairly large numbers of tickets - and these agencies don't sell all of them.

4. Just like any other big club we have a percentage of 'fake fans', who don't bother to drive to the stadium for a home game against, say, RBC Roosendaal.

Due to these reasons the actual attendance is usually a few thousand lower than the number of seats officially sold (either to season ticket holders or in presale).

A few years ago Ajax decided to use the number of seats sold as the official attendance figure. One of the reasons: potential trouble with the Tax Dept. It could, basically, cause the club trouble if they use the actual turnout as the official figure, cos that would basically leave a few hundred/thousand tickets unmentioned for which Ajax did receive the money. In order to stay out of administrative/fiscal trouble the club now officially uses the number of tickets sold, in order to be 100% honest about the proceedings.

I know for fact that this is the story behind it, cos someone at Ajax explained me how it works.

Meanwhile, however, Ajax also counts the actual turnout ('off the record'). That number is not 48,000+, but 44.000+. Still higher than Feyenoord (although I am not the kind of person that gives a living crap about that).

K.