Despite having the most expensive tickets in Europe only 1.6% of seats were empty during the first round of matches in the English top tier compared to 44.2% in Italy’s Serie A

Even though the Premier League has some of the most expensive seats in the continent, the English top tier still is ahead of most of its European rivals in getting fans through the turnstiles.

The top tier of the English football system filled 388,681 of 394,831 - or 98.4% - of available seats on its first weekend of action compared to 93.6% in closest rival Bundesliga.

All of the games in the Premier League were played with at least 96% of the stadium full. The best attended match that weekend was Manchester United’s opening game at Old Trafford against Swansea where just 296 seats remained unreserved in the 75,635 seater stadium.

The game in each league with the highest percentage of seats filled.

Unfortunately most of those watching would have been disappointed United fans as Louis Van Gaal’s side went down 2-1 against the Welsh team.

The worst attended out of the six European leagues was Italy’s Serie A where just 55.5% of seats were filled. Italian football attendance has been on the slide for some time, not particularly helped by a general lack of away support and stadiums that are falling into disrepair under local authority control.

AC Milan vs Lazio is by no means a derby but some would probably be surprised to know that these two legends of the European football scene played in the second worst attended game out of any of the league systems we looked at. Only 44.4% of the admittedly colossal San Siro being full.

The only game that was worse was fellow Serie A team Udinese’s first home match where just under 8,000 seats were sold for their 30,000 plus seater stadium. It could have been worse for the north Italian club - they once only had one away fan turn up for a match against Sampdoria in 2012.

The game in each league with the lowest percentage of seats filled.

In the Bundesliga where many celebrate the affordable ticket structure and team membership schemes, four teams had completely sold out their stadiums on the opening weekend: Bayern Munich, FC Cologne, Hannover 96 and Borussia Dortmund.

However, attendances of 79% for 1899 Hoffenheim and 80% for newly promoted Hertha Berlin dragged down the average.

While fans of plucky underdogs will be happy to know that the remarkable Spanish team Eibar, sponsored by a local scrap metal business and with by far the lowest wage bill in La Liga, filled all but 77 seats in their tiny Estadio Municipal de Ipurúa. However, the 5,173 fans would have only taken up 5% capacity at Barcelona’s Camp Nou.