List of sports attendance figures
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This article lists the attendance of many sports competitions around the world, based in some cases on the number of tickets sold or given away, rather than people actually present. The list is almost exclusively
stadium A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...
field and
indoor arena An arena is a large enclosed platform, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theatre, musical performances, or sporting events. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectator ...
ball sports. Top leagues in weekly attendance includes speedway sports. All listed attendance figures reflect those for the most recent season or event for which: * reliable attendance figures are available, and for UK Boxing events 2019. * no artificial attendance restrictions (i.e., apart from venue capacity) were imposed during the relevant time frame—an entire season or a given event, as applicable. During the
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, almost all championship events that have not been canceled have been held either with severely restricted attendance or none at all.


Domestic professional leagues


Top 10 leagues in average attendance


Highest attended leagues by sport


Top leagues in weekly attendance

Note that other ticketed activities in motor sports such as practices and qualifying are not included in the number of "games" in a week. Formula 1 attendance represents cumulative weekend attendance. Top race day attendance 141,000 at Silverstone. With average race day attendance 88,555. * Games in a week only by team * Weekly attendance only by team


Top 10 stadiums in total attendance in a calendar year


Top leagues in recent domestic club championship event attendance

This section lists the most recent attendances at annual championship events (single decider matches or the final match in a best-of series only) by total attendance; however, be advised that figures affected by the
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have not been included. It also includes domestic leagues and competitions. Additionally, it includes the finals of top-level promotion playoffs, in which teams play to determine potential or confirmed
promotion Promotion may refer to: Marketing * Promotion (marketing), one of the four marketing mix elements, comprising any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or i ...
to a country's top league level in the next season. It has to be noted that the listed crowd figures are often a reflection of a championship venue's capacity, as demand for these events is generally so high that any stadium or arena would be filled to capacity. In some cases, such as the
AFL Grand Final The AFL Grand Final is an Australian rules football match to determine the premiers for the Australian Football League (AFL) season. From its inception until 1989, it was known as the VFL Grand Final, as the league at that time was the Victori ...
, the record (121,686 for the 1970 VFL Grand Final) far exceeds the most recent figures due to the stadium previously holding
standing room An event is described as standing-room only when it is so well-attended that all of the chairs in the venue are occupied, leaving only flat spaces of pavement or flooring for other attendees to stand, at least those spaces not restricted by occup ...
at the time the record was set. The method by which championship venue(s) are determined can indirectly affect the attendance of such a match. In most competitions that use a best-of final series, each individual match typically takes place at one team's home venue. In the
Philippine Basketball Association The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) is a men's professional basketball league in the Philippines composed of twelve company-branded franchised teams. Founded in 1975, it is the first professional basketball league in Asia and is the se ...
, a competition in which no team has its own home arena, finals matches (including any that can potentially end a series) are held at three large venues in or near Metro Manila:
Smart Araneta Coliseum The Araneta Coliseum, also currently known by naming rights sponsorship as Smart Araneta Coliseum, is an indoor multi-purpose sports arena that is part of the Araneta City in the Cubao area of Quezon City, Philippines. Nicknamed as "the Big Dom ...
,
Mall of Asia Arena The SM Mall of Asia Arena, also known as the Mall of Asia Arena or the MoA Arena, is an indoor arena within the SM Mall of Asia complex, in Bay City, Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines. It has a seating capacity of 15,000 for sporting events, an ...
and sometimes
Philippine Arena The Philippine Arena is the world's largest indoor arena. It is a multipurpose indoor arena with a maximum seating capacity of 55,000 at Ciudad de Victoria, a 140-hectare tourism enterprise zone in Bocaue and Santa Maria, Bulacan, Philippin ...
. In most competitions that have a one-off final, the site is determined well in advance. Some competitions have a permanent site for their finals. Two notable examples are the
Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional sports, professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling ...
, whose
Grand Final Primarily in Australian sports, a grand final (sometimes colloquially abbreviated to "grannie") is a game that decides a sports league's premiership (or championship) winning team, i.e. the conclusive game of a finals (or play-off) series. S ...
is always at the
Melbourne Cricket Ground The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as "The 'G", is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadium in the Southern ...
(MCG), and the
Gaelic Athletic Association The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; ga, Cumann Lúthchleas Gael ; CLG) is an Irish international amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused primarily on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional ...
, which holds its final matches in
Gaelic football Gaelic football ( ga, Peil Ghaelach; short name '), commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA or Football is an Irish team sport. It is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score by ki ...
and
hurling Hurling ( ga, iománaíocht, ') is an outdoor team game of ancient Gaelic Irish origin, played by men. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goals, the number of p ...
at
Croke Park Croke Park ( ga, Páirc an Chrócaigh, ) is a Gaelic games stadium in Dublin, Ireland. Named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, it is referred to as Croker by GAA fans and locals. It serves as both the principal national stadium of Ireland and h ...
. Others determine the final venue anywhere from months to years before the event, such as the NFL, which determines the host of the
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the gam ...
more than three years in advance. However, one transnational club event in
rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In it ...
(whose final attendance is listed in a separate table) uses a very different system. In
Super Rugby Super Rugby is a men's professional rugby union club competition involving teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Building on various Southern Hem ...
, the final is awarded to the finalist that finished higher in the league table during the regular season. Another transnational club event in the same sport, Pro14 (originally the Celtic League), used the same method to determine the host of its final until
2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...
, when it began to use a predetermined site. Since the 2018 season, all 10 American college sports conferences that sponsor
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...
in the top-level
Division I FBS The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). ...
have held season-ending conference championship games in that sport. Of these leagues, six have a permanent site for their title games, three award hosting rights to the division champion with the better record in conference play, and one awards hosting rights to the team with the best regular-season record (with tiebreakers used as needed). For the purposes of this table, "domestic" is defined to include leagues which are historically focused in one country, but may have teams in one or more nearby countries. Examples of this phenomenon include: * Of the six largest professional leagues in English-speaking North America, only the two gridiron football leagues—the NFL and CFL—operate on one side of the U.S.–Canada border. Of the four traditional "major leagues", only the NHL has more than one team in Canada; as of the current , it has 24 teams in the U.S. and seven in Canada, and will add one U.S. team, the
Seattle Kraken The Seattle Kraken are a professional ice hockey team based in Seattle. The Kraken compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference and began play during the league's 2021–22 season. ...
, for 2021–22.
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Cana ...
, in recent years becoming increasingly accepted as a fifth "major league", currently has 21 U.S. teams and three Canadian teams, and will add four more U.S. teams by 2022. * The
Gaelic Athletic Association The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; ga, Cumann Lúthchleas Gael ; CLG) is an Irish international amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused primarily on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional ...
, which governs Gaelic games, is mostly restricted to the island of Ireland, although teams from
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
and
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
participate in its senior championships. * Two major Australian leagues—the National Rugby League (rugby league) and A-League (association football)—have included a team from New Zealand since their inception. * The vast majority of the teams competing in rugby league's Super League have been from England. Only three teams from outside the country, two from France and one from Wales, have ever competed in the league, and only one of these teams (from France) currently competes at this level. * Although the Challenge Cup of rugby league currently includes teams from France, Ireland, Scotland, Serbia, and Wales, and has in the past also had teams from Canada and Russia, the overwhelming majority of the competing teams are from England. * The English association football pyramid includes several clubs from Wales, although Welsh clubs do not necessarily participate at every level in a given season. As of the most recent 2019–20 season, no Welsh teams play in the Premier League following the relegation of
Cardiff City Cardiff City Football Club ( cy, Clwb Pêl-droed Dinas Caerdydd) is a professional association football club based in Cardiff, Wales. It competes in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1899 as R ...
, which had played at that level in 2013–14 and 2018–19.
Swansea City Swansea City Association Football Club (; cy, Clwb Pêl-droed Cymdeithas Dinas Abertawe) is a professional football club based in Swansea, Wales that plays in the Championship, the second tier of English football. Swansea have played their ho ...
played in the Premier League from 2011–12 to 2017–18. * The Kontinental Hockey League is headquartered in Moscow and is mostly a Russian league, although in its most recent 2019–20 season it also had teams in Belarus, China, Finland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Slovakia. The EuroLeague in basketball is transnational in that it includes teams from multiple European countries, but is domestic in the sense of being a championship for the single entity of Europe. It is governed by
Euroleague Basketball Euroleague Basketball is the private company that runs and operates the top continental-wide basketball men's professional sports club competitions in Europe, the first-tier level EuroLeague, and the second-tier level EuroCup. It has been or ...
, an explicitly pan-European body that is independent of the continental governing body of
FIBA Europe FIBA Europe is the administrative body for basketball in Europe, within the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), which includes all 50 national European basketball federations. In reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, FIBA Euro ...
. This contrasts with leagues such as Super Rugby and Pro14, which operate in multiple countries with more than one team in most (Super Rugby) or all (Pro14) of their participating countries, and also make no pretense of being a championship for a continental-size region.


Semi-professional and amateur leagues

This section lists college and amateur leagues by total attendance. Remaining amateurism requirements in the majority of top-level sports were dropped in the late 20th century, and there are now only a few amateur leagues which are of interest to a wide public. In the United States, college sports are very popular and at least one significant ice hockey league retains an amateur requirement. In Ireland, the All-Ireland senior championships in
Gaelic football Gaelic football ( ga, Peil Ghaelach; short name '), commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA or Football is an Irish team sport. It is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score by ki ...
and
hurling Hurling ( ga, iománaíocht, ') is an outdoor team game of ancient Gaelic Irish origin, played by men. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goals, the number of p ...
, both operated by the
Gaelic Athletic Association The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; ga, Cumann Lúthchleas Gael ; CLG) is an Irish international amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused primarily on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional ...
, which continues to prohibit professionalism, each draw over 80,000 to fill
Croke Park Croke Park ( ga, Páirc an Chrócaigh, ) is a Gaelic games stadium in Dublin, Ireland. Named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, it is referred to as Croker by GAA fans and locals. It serves as both the principal national stadium of Ireland and h ...
for the respective finals. The
NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges ...
championships listed here are all composed of several separate conferences with varying attendance levels. For example, in American football, per-game home attendances for the highest level of competition, Division I FBS, in the 2018 season ranged from 15,458 for
Mid-American Conference The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I collegiate athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region that stretches from Western New York to Illinois. Nine of the t ...
teams to 73,994 for
Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities o ...
teams.This includes all regular-season games,
bowl game In North America, a bowl game is one of a number of post-season college football games that are primarily played by teams belonging to the NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). For most of its history, the Division I Bowl Subdivis ...
s for FBS teams, and playoff games and other postseason games in FCS and lower divisions. It does not include postseason all-star games.
NCAA Division I FBS football has the 2nd highest average attendance worldwide for any league-wide sport (behind the National Football League) and the 2nd highest overall attendance worldwide (behind Major League Baseball). For
college baseball College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional pl ...
, Dudy Noble Field, Polk-DeMent Stadium at
Mississippi State University Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a public land-grant research university adjacent to Starkville, Mississippi. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univ ...
holds the on-campus attendance record at 15,586 and all of college baseball's Top 11 on-campus largest crowds.


Representative matches

This list covers special annual matches for representative sides that are not covered elsewhere by international or domestic fixtures. They include state or regional matches, annual commemorative games and publicly voted all-star selections. This type of event is unknown within European nations, except in basketball; many European domestic leagues in that sport hold an all-star game at roughly the midpoint of the regular season.


International club competitions

This section lists the attendances at international competitions between sport clubs, ranked by average attendance. These are usually organised on a continental basis. The teams which compete in these tournaments also compete in the domestic competitions in their home countries. 1 Current competition
2 Group stage only
3 This includes all stages except for the Euroleague Final Four.


International tournaments

This section lists the attendances at international competitions between national teams. These are usually organised on a continental basis. The teams which compete in these tournaments may also have competed in qualifying tournaments. The winners of continental championships usually play in a world cup or championship. * 1The World Baseball Classic and World Cup of Hockey are hosted in different regions of the world to boost attendance, as opposed to being hosted in one region like other international tournaments.


International club championship final events

These are restricted to final matches of international club events.


International club competition final (two decider matches)

These are restricted to final matches of international club events, played in a
two-legged tie In sports (particularly association football), a two-legged tie is a contest between two teams which comprises two matches or "legs", with each team as the home team in one leg. The winning team is usually determined by aggregate score, the sum ...
format. The two matches may be held in one or two different venues.


See also

* List of National Hockey League attendance figures * List of professional sports leagues by revenue


Notes


References


External links


Football StadiumsStadium Attendances of soccer and rugby games, huge details on French soccer leagueAverage Attendances
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sports Attendance Figures