It is often stated that what Scottish football lacks in perceived quality, it certainly makes up for in support. And that statement couldn’t be demonstrated better than by a study, which looks at the season total attendance of football fans per percentage of the population.
Taking into account top division matches from across the UK and Europe, Twitter user Andrew Caskie uploaded the following two graphics.
How much do Countries love their Football? pic.twitter.com/ugULkOP096
— Andrew Caskie (@caskieandrew) June 26, 2022
As can be seen, Scotland has a phenomenal season total attendance, standing at 57.95% as a percentage of the population. This is more than double the figure found in England, and well in excess of any other nation in Europe.
As Scotland’s largest supported club on home match days, with a bigger capacity than any other club ground in the country, Paradise and the Celtic faithful play a huge part in achieving those statistics.
Is it time we started selling the game here more? And given Scotland’s dedication to top flight football, one wonders if the TV deals should be distributed more evenly. It is then that the wealth can be invested in players and infrastructure to raise the quality on the park, in accordance to other nations who enjoy disproportionate TV and sponsorship deals.
For Scottish football to progress and start getting proper sponsorship, we need to first get Doncaster and his cronies out. They take far more out than what they put in. Their departure is long overdue
It has always been the case that per head of population, Scotland outshines the rest of Europe by some distance. All the more difficult to explain why our record in Europe is so abysmal. Not that I am pointing my finger at Celtic Park, of course! Oh, good heavens, no!
No doubting Scotland’s passion for football but the attendance figures can be a bit misleading. The majority of people going to top flight games in Scotland are only going to 2 venues. In my first season of going to the football (over 60 years ago!) 14 clubs had average league attendences in the 5 figure mark. St Johnstone, Dunfermline around 10,500. The likes of Motherwell, Partick Thistle, St Mirren, Dundee , Dundee Utd Aberdeen, Kilmarnock averaging between 11,000 to 13,000. Hibs over 15,000. Hearts over 20,000. By contrast Celtic’s average gate was 19,600 and Rangers was about 35,000. Apart from Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen all those other clubs have seem their crowds dwindle to around half of what they were. On the other hand Celtic and Rangers have seen their attendance figures soar. In Jock Stein’s time there was still a chance that another team might win the League. That is out of the question now. The league flag will never fly outside of Celtic Park or Ibrox again. That I feel is one of the reasons why we don’t get a great TV deal. Also so many games played in front of so may empty seats- even those involving Celtic and Rangers. The TV companies are not interested in developing the game. They just want a product that sells TV programmes. Scotland might have higher average cowds than Spain but a mid table clash in Spain is more appealing to viewers than the vast majority of games in Scotland. I am sure with some decent people in charge we could improve the TV deal but I would not be relying on that. While improved TV revenue woulkd certainly help it does not answer the question of our relatively poor record in Europe. That is a problem we have to solve within the present set up. Hopefully Ange has the solution.
Even if you remove Celtic and theRangers, then Scotland would still 2nd in Europe per head of the population. So still good numbers for a small country. The investment would mean that teams outside of celtic and therangers could sign better players, which would bring back the crowds as they could compete well. But Sky wont care about that as they just want to make money, rather than help develop Scottish football – as is their right. But you only have to look at England, tiny clubs like Bournemouth became overnight billionaires in the premier League and were able to sign good players, who would never dream of going there if they didnt have that cash. Same concept would apply if Scottish clubs got that cash.
In Europe we have been extremely poor for a long time. Obviously more money would help as better players would give us a better chance, but it cannot be an excuse for how bad we’ve been