By Paul Nicholson
November 20 – With clubs across Europe returning to their domestic league programmes after the international fixture window, focus will fall on crowd attendances, particularly in the aftermath and uncertainty of the Paris attacks.
For European leagues it will be a somber weekend as fans across the continent get to grips with the implications of the terrorist atrocities.
But the Premier League, which has been averaging 95.57% stadium capacities across its clubs over the first 12 rounds of the season, will be expecting to potentially beat that average this weekend.
The French national anthem – La Marseillaise – will be played before all of this weekend’s Premier League matches. A choral version will be played after the coin toss, with players from both teams coming together with match officials in the centre circle as an act of “solidarity and remembrance” after the Paris attacks in which 129 people died.
The next five weekends are traditionally a time when attendances can dip as the monetary pressures of Christmas force fans to save money before the holiday season. The Christmas period itself is a boom time for clubs as a flurry of fixtures take advantage of holiday crowds.
In the week leading into the international fixtures five Premier League clubs recorded over 99% capacities at their stadiums, and eight clubs were over 95% (see table below).
Man Utd and Arsenal, with a combined capacity of 136,163 seats, had just 693 seats unfilled.
Out of 407,438 seats available only 16,584 were unfilled and over 12,000 of them at Sunderland and Aston Villa who have both struggled to get sell out crowds this season.
Many of the unfilled seats can also be accounted for by seat kills due to security concerns or media requirements, and some seats may have been sold but the ticket buyers were unable to make it to the match.
The brutality of the Paris attacks did not stop a Wembley crowd of more than 70,000 honoring the victims at a friendly between England and France. The show of solidarity and the emotion on the night overshadowed the football match that was played. The same show of solidarity can be expected for the Premier League fixtures this weekend, but after that normal hostilities will be resumed.
Round 12 attendances
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1734938266labto1734938266ofdlr1734938266owedi1734938266sni@n1734938266osloh1734938266cin.l1734938266uap1734938266