By Paul Nicholson
February 5 – Premier League attendances dipped slightly for the mid-week 24th round of matches though five teams still recorded over 99% of their capacity filled. For the first time this season three teams in the round were below 90% with Sunderland dipping below 80%.
With exactly the same teams at home as the previous weekend, a direct comparison shows only two clubs beat the weekend attendance and overall a drop of almost 7,000 from the weekend total attendance figure.
That drop taken across the league is not greatly significant – even though it resulted in the poorest average percentage of capacity for the season so far. The Premier League clubs still filled more than 372,000 seats for the second time in five days.
Where the drop is significant is in Sunderland who accounted for more than 10,000 of the 22,000 unfilled seats. The club seem to be unable to lift them out of the trough both in terms of attendance and getting clear of the relegation places. The situation is not as desperate as Aston Villa where the fans appear to have voted with their feet and walked away as the team have hit rock bottom.
Higher up the attendance table West Ham again recorded impressive efficiency in filling all available seats with just 102 empty. Leicester, Arsenal, Norwich and Man Utd were all more than 99% full with only about 1,200 seats unfilled between the top five clubs.
The Insideworldfootball stadium stats are taken from reported attendance figures and do not take account of seats that are sold but left empty due to no-shows. Nor do they take account of seat kills for safety reasons or media requirements.
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