Serie A Average Attendance Reaching 26-Year High
Tifosi are heading to stadiums around Italy in bigger numbers
Serie A is popular again.
While the value of Serie A’s domestic TV deals continue to fall, fans are continuing to flock to the country’s crumbling stadia week in and week out. In October 2023, Serie A clubs agreed to a $977 million per-year domestic deal with DAZN to broadcast the league from the summer of 2024 to 2029. This figure is down from the current arrangement, which is around the $1bn per-year mark, shared between DAZN and Sky Italia.
And yet, while there is diminishing hunger from TV executives to pay big money for Serie A, attendances for games haven’t been higher. After 30 games of this season, the average attendance for Serie A is 30,913, the third highest among Europe’s top five leagues. Compared a decade ago, when the 2013-14 average attendance was just 23,331, the leap is huge. In fact, you have to go back some 26 years to the last time Serie A posted figures this impressive, to a time when Serie A was still the greatest league in the world.
Superstars such as Ronaldo, Alessandro Del Piero, Roberto Baggio, Zinedine Zidane, Gabriel Batistuta — and everyone in between — played to an average attendance of 31,223 during the 1997-98 season. Then, Serie A was home to the cream of the crop from the world game. Now, there isn’t anywhere close to the same level of players in the league (not even in the biggest teams), but the appetite for fans to return to arenas across the country has swelled to unseen numbers in the 21st century.
Prior to the pandemic, attendance had been on a slow upward trajectory. The 2017-18 season saw the figure jump to 24,783 from 21,966 the year prior. Juventus were in the midst of their stranglehold of the Italian game, but Napoli’s title challenge raised excitement among fans, even if their challenge ultimately collapsed in a hotel room in Florence. The following season saw the figure jump again, slightly, to 25,062.
Then Covid arrived, and with it no complete data for three straight seasons. Last season was the first full campaign for four years when all stadia was fully opened to the public for an entire season. The end result was a massive upsurge in fans attending games, with 29,537 the average attendance, the most Italy had seen since the 2000-01 season.
Now that figure has risen again (and it would be higher were Atalanta not redeveloping part of Gewiss Stadium, limiting their capacity), but why?