Attendances at Celtic Park & Ibrox were on average 12,000 less than announced

Actual attendances dropped most across the winter months

I mentioned in a previous article that one of the subscribers to my site has started their own twitter account - SPFL Tix - where they investigate ticketing and attendance matters in Scottish football. It’s hard to get reach on social media without a big following and interaction so I would encourage you to follow them if you are interested in that sort of thing.

Back to my site, and I have already written this summer about season ticket renewal prices, compiling a 42 team SPFL league table based on cheapest adult renewal price. I also undertook in-depth research into season ticket sales at Celtic F.C specifically and the makeup of their ticketing income compared to total revenue over the past 20 years.

However I have not yet looked at the actual attendances of individual matches, to see which games attract the most fans. This is one of the angles the aforementioned SPFL Tix account is researching, with very interesting results. I cited their page previously - when they posted that when excluding Celtic Park and Ibrox - eight of the top ten attended matches in Scotland did NOT involve the travelling Old Firm Support.

Last week, SPFLTix again released attendance data, which was even more eye-catching. They have acquired the data for the ACTUAL attendance through the turnstile at every Scottish Premiership game - rather than the publicly announced attendance. For five clubs in Scotland, the announced attendance includes season ticket holders, regardless of whether they attended the match or not.

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THE DATA

Firstly, SPFL Tix has persevered with Police Scotland in order to acquire this data. At first they were informed that the request was a club matter only, and is not data that Police Scotland would hold or be able to provide.

Police Scotland initial response to the request for attendance figures across the Scottish Premiership.

In conversation with SPFL Tix, I said that I did not expect them to get any further, as the Police will likely maintain that the costs involved in providing such data would cross the allowable threshold, and so I expected that to be the end of the road. However, I was delighted to discover that after SPFLTix appealed the decision, they were able to acquire all the information requested.

These ‘actual’ attendance figures are the figures provided to Police Scotland, by each individual football club after the game.

Police Scotland follow up response to the request, reiterating that it’s the clubs that provide the figure - not the Police

All the data was supplied to Police Scotland after each match, via the clubs directly. There could be some errors or anomalies in the data, either in the recording of it by the Police or in the recording of the numbers at the turnstiles by the clubs. However these figures are the official numbers the Police hold on record.

Some of the key findings, amongst other topics relating to attendances will now be discussed:

• Average actual attendance

  • The five clubs that count all ticket sales

  • Enforcement policies - Man City too strict?

  • Celtic & Rangers drops

  • Hibs higher average than Hearts

• Turnstile Count

  • Empty seats as a % of capacity

  • St. Mirren case study since cutting Old Firm allocation

• Resale Platforms

  • Aberdeen increase

  • Five clubs have them - but not Celtic

• Impact of Old Firm away support

  • Motherwell’s triple punishment of a bottom 6 finish

  • Kilmarnock & Livingston

• The Derbies

  • Top attendances

  • Simon Murray x Emmanuel Adebayor