Record Football Attendances In UK Stadiums in 2022/23

Over 37 million people attended games at UK Stadiums within the 2022/23 season to break all records that have gone before!

In the Premier League alone over 15.2 million football fans attended what is widely regarding as the most exciting league in the world, although many Championship fans will disagree and understandably so with recent dominance in the top division in England.

At the Premier League AGM they confirmed that the average attendance for the 2022/23 season across 380 matches was a record 40,267, up from 39,950 the season before. Grounds were fuller than ever before, with the average utilisation of stadiums at 98.7 per cent of capacity!

In the Football Leagues over 21.7 million supporters passed through the turnstiles of an EFL competition in 2022-23, with the highest cumulative attendances recorded for league matches since 1953-54. Of that total, 19.8 million attended a fixture in the Sky Bet Championship, League One or League Two and the end of season EFL Play-Offs, ranking the season in the top 10 highest regular EFL season attendances of all time.

All four divisions featured in the top 20 best attended Leagues across Europe in 2022-23, while a record 443,765 fans attended the 15 Sky Bet EFL Play-Offs, the most since the format was introduced in 1987.

Over 10 million fans attended a match in the Sky Bet Championship, the first time that milestone has been broken since 2018-19 and only the 11th time that that has happened in tier two football, making the Championship the fifth best attended division in Europe behind only the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga and Serie A.

English football’s third tier, Sky Bet League One, also made the European top 10 with nearly six million supporters attending a match, while League Two was in 14th place with over three million supporters taking in a fixture in the fourth tier.

A 15% rise in season ticket sales from 2020-21 has contributed to the growth in attendances and represents the highest number of season tickets sold from any EFL season in the 21st century. Junior season ticket sales have also continued to rise.

The Carabao Cup and EFL Trophy saw another 1.9 million fans in grounds across both competitions. The EFL Trophy Final between Bolton Wanderers and Plymouth Argyle attracted 79,389 fans, ensuring the fixture was the highest attended across Europe that weekend, while the 87,306 fans from Manchester United and Newcastle United that attended the Carabao Cup Final made it the highest attended final since 2014/15.

EFL Chief Executive, Trevor Birch, said: “To welcome nearly 22 million supporters to an EFL competition in 2022/23 is quite remarkable. These numbers don’t happen by accident. They are testament to the efforts of the 72 Clubs to create such quality football and matchday experiences that encourages fans to attend matches in person even when there are so many other ways to consume football, and particularly when so many people are facing a squeeze on their finances. The continued rise in season ticket sales, and particularly junior season ticket sales, is really encouraging. Quite simply, these fans are the future of our game which is why it is so heartening to see so many young supporters attending fixtures regularly and developing a love of the game that they will hopefully take with them throughout their lives.”

*Source: Premier League and EFL