10+ Ranking: Europe’s most popular clubs by attendance 02.09.2016 17:41 source: StadiumDB.com

We’ve listed all 227 clubs that draw an average of 10,000 people or more every day. Which teams from your country are on the list?


As every year, even if delayed this time, we’ve combined the best information we could find and created the 10+ Ranking, our list of Europe’s most popular clubs in terms of attendance. The outcome is the immense list of 227 clubs (below) that drew the most people across the continent. And at this point we can congratulate every team on the list, because this scale of support is an achievement!

We’ve already shown you the top 20 list of European clubs and that exclusive club is very difficult to get into. But when you dive into the long list, you see many fascinating cases.

Take the Scottish Rangers FC. They were a 2nd league team in 2015/16 and yet enjoyed the biggest following of all clubs, surpassing champions Celtic as well. This of course stems from their promotion back to the Premiership for 2016/17, after years of exile, as well as ending of managerial turmoil of 2014/15.

Promotion also did the trick for RC Lens (although playing back home after reconstruction was the real boost!), Real Betis and Swedish Hammarby as both teams enjoyed increases of 5,000-9,000 fans every game! New or expanded stadiums contributed to boosts in ticket sales for Olympique Lyonnais, Udinese Calcio or Manchester City. Meanwhile fresh Israeli champions Hapoel Be’er Sheva had double the charm as they both moved in to a new stadium last year and won the domestic league.

There’s unfortunately also a list of clubs that lost the most fans. These include Lazio with over 14,000 fewer people per game and Olympique de Marseille with over 11,000 down. In both cases league performances were far below expectations, though this wasn’t the only factor. Take just the boycott of Rome derby or the fact that Olympique lost some fans after having grown a lot a year before (just after the opening of new Velodrome). “New stadium effect” is wearing off not only in Marseille, but also in Haifa and Lille. There, after great previous seasons the crowds have decreased.

There’s also the dramatic case of Turkish Galatasaray. Sure, they remain among the most popular in the country, but nationwide fan ID card boycott and very mediocre performances on the field resulted in the club losing almost 5,000 per game. When you look in the perspective of two consecutive seasons, Galata lost over 21,000 people for each match they play!

Still, there’s one place more unlucky than Ukraine at present. The war-torn country’s league is in serious decline. Shakhtar is nowhere near being included in our 10+ list after leaving Donbass, while champions Dynamo lost almost 14,000 people per game during the last two seasons. This means more than one out of two Dynamo fans stopped coming to games. Judging by the economic and political situation in Ukraine, we may see further issues for their football.

These are of course only a small selection of facts behind our 10+ Ranking. Please dive into the entire list below and find your own fascinating attendance facts from across Europe!

1 -Attendance figures used come from 2015/16 and 2015 seasons, depending on country. In brackets you'll find the difference between this and previous edition. Data listed comes from official reports or the most reliable sources we were able to find, largely thanks to Worldfootball.net and European Football Statistics.co.uk!