January 16 – Chelsea’s topping of the weekly attendance capacity chart once again proved their need for a new stadium to maximise their matchday revenue potential at the end of a week when news broke that the earliest they will take possession of a redeveloped Stamford Bridge will be 2024.
For the 2016/17 Chelsea earned £361.3 million in revenue, a 9.8% year-on-year increase in local currency (though a 4% decrease in Euros), but total matchday revenue actually dropped (though mainly due to a lack of European football that season).
However, with Chelsea now starting to show a growth in its number of international sponsorship partners and continued increase in its social media connections (over 72 million in total), demand for the in-stadium matchday experience will only continue to grow.
For Round 23 of the Premier League season Chelsea had just 111 unfilled seats for the visit of Leicester City – a 99.73% utilisation of the stadium. Second in the weekly ranking was Manchester United who had 1,005 unfilled seats for the Monday night visit of Stoke City.
Only Spurs failed to get above 90% of stadium capacity at their temporary Wembley home, though they still had the highest crowd of the weekend by over 20,000, with 76,251 watching their win over Everton.
Of 21,556 unfilled seats for this round of fixtures, 13,749 of them were at Wembley.
The Insideworldfootball attendance capacity figures are taken from the official stadium capacity figures and the official reported matchday attendances. No allowances are made for seat restrictions due to safety or media requirements.
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