By Paul Nicholson
August 12 – The hottest ticket in England last weekend was one for a Premier League match, pretty much anywhere. Of a total of 369,536 tickets available across the 10 opening home matches, a massive 362,658 were sold, leaving just 6,878 tickets unsold, half of them at Newcastle’s St James’s Park for the 1.30pm Sunday lunchtime kick-off against Southampton.
Five of the clubs – Arsenal, Leicester, Man Utd, Norwich and Stoke City – filled over 99% of the capacity of their stadiums. The total average capacity for the Premier League was 97.36%.
Only Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion (Sunday lunchtime and Monday night fixtures) sold less than 95% of their capacity.
Source: Insideworldfootball
The weekend saw the debut of Bournemouth in the Premier League, in the smallest ever ground the league has been played in with a capacity of 11,700 – though even this is reduced once the media and Premier League requirements are taken care of.
The stadium capacity figures in the table are taken from the official club reported capacities, though these do vary match by match depending on safety requirements. Hence while Bournemouth shows 545 seats unfilled the reality is that there were unlikely any available seats.
Over the season Bournemouth will sell about 200,000 tickets. This is slightly less than the number of people reported to have taken Liverpool’s Anfield Museum and Stadium tour in the 2014/15 season on non-match days.
The attendance figures are for people who were actually in the stadium and not based on the number of tickets sold. Hence they do not take account of any ‘no-shows’ – tickets that were bought but the buyer didn’t turn up due to illness or other reasons.
The Sunday lunchtime figure for St James’s Park is likely a strong number considering Newcastle United’s fans ‘stay away’ campaign last season and the lack of love they have for their owner. New seasons and new managers bring new hope – even in the hard-bitten north east of England.
Their visitors, Southampton, had to make a 300+ mile trip for the 1.30pm kick off – having played in Holland on the Thursday before in the Europa League. The travel was sure to test the resolve and wallets of the Saints’ travelling fans. A week before the Newcastle match, Saints had sold out their 1,500 seat allocation (for an area high in the corner of the stadium). More seats for the away fans appear to have been released closer to the match date but Saints did not have enough time to sell them.
With Newcastle not completely selling their own fan allocation, this left the top tier of the most north-easterly corner of the stadium in the furthest north of the country as just about the only tickets available for those desperate to join in the opening day Premier League celebrations. And it was a shame they couldn’t make it as this was a good match.
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