HEAVEN 'N EFL
Championship rakes in second biggest crowds in the WORLD as 12.7million attend games
England way ahead for numbers of spectators - all the way down to the sixth tier
THE Championship was the second-biggest attended league in the WORLD last season.
Figures compiled by Uefa found the 24 top tier EFL sides were watched by 12.7million fans in 2023-24.
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It was a figure bigger than the attendances in any league except the Premier League - which had total gates of 14.7m.
And England’s love affair with the game was shown with 44.7m supporters walking through the turnstiles from the Prem down to Tier 6.
That was nearly 50 per cent more than the nearest rival, Germany, where the game attracted a total 30.6m fans.
The figures were contained in Uefa’s updated European Club Talent and Competition Landscape report, which included a huge number of statistics about game across the continent.
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Uefa noted: “The Championship showcased substantial support last season, with its average attendance of over 23,000 per match ranking seventh among European leagues and the nearly 13 million in aggregate crowds ranking second in world football.
“The depth of support in England is unmatched, with more than 5 million attending third-tier matches, almost 3.5 million attending fourth-tier matches and almost 3 million attending the three leagues in tier five and six.”
Six Prem sides - Manchester United, West Ham, Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City - attracted aggregate league gates of more than 1m fans last term, with Old Trafford hosting 1.834m supporters across all United’s home matches.
That was a total exceeded only by Borussia Dortmund, whose 1.95m came with an average attendance of just over 81,000, and AC Milan.
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Among the other findings, Uefa confirmed that Prem refs allowed more stoppage time than any other league last season.
Prem matches saw an average of 11 minutes and 33 seconds of added time, with 68 per cent of matches lasting more than 100 minutes as PGMOL officials adopted new Fifa guidelines.
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However, with refs’ chief Howard Webb asking his officials to adopt a new approach this term, the average amount of added time so far in the Prem has dropped to nine minutes 59 seconds per game.
Across European football, the summer transfer window saw a drop in spending of eight per cent, from 2023’s £6.16bn to £5.66bn this year.
For the first time since the Covid pandemic, French, Italian and German clubs were “net spenders” alongside the Prem and Saudi Pro League.
Prem sides, despite a slight spending reduction to £1.75bn, paid an average of £13.2m for each signing.
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