On any given Saturday, there are hundreds of thousands of football supporters with somewhere to be. They fill trains, cars and buses on journeys intersecting the country, feeding the habit they have neither the wish nor ability to abandon.
It is the national obsession that continues to strengthen its grip and this, undeniably, is its boom era.
For all that the Premier League has achieved in its 30 years, this season is set to be the first time on record that the average top-flight game has attracted more than 40,000 in English football history. Just shy of 99 per cent of tickets have been sold for Premier League games played to date in 2022-23 and, just like last season, the aggregate attendance for this campaign will eventually surpass 15million.
And the hunger to be there watching live football goes all the way down the pyramid.
Across the Championship, League One and League Two, there has been significant growth in attendance since the turn of the century. All three divisions welcome at least 30 per cent more fans than they did 20 years ago, with the divisional average in the Championship now touching 19,000. The EFL’s three leagues are collectively showing a 12 per cent increase on last season alone.
The National League, too, has seen its own marked upturn. Average crowds for the fifth tier in 2018-19 were 1,984. This season, with Wrexham and Notts County going toe to toe, the figure is up to 3,339. In the Women’s Super League, some teams are playing some matches in bigger venues and attendance records are being broken.
It all means that somewhere close to a million people will now attend live matches across most weekends between August and May. Not since the early 1950s, when the United Kingdom was embracing life after the Second World War, has the interest been as high.
Football is in vogue. Any baggage it carried during the 1980s, a time blighted by hooliganism, was cast aside long ago and now it is the place where men, women and children are drawn. Twice as many people now attend live football matches compared to in the mid-1980s.
The shiny stadia of the Premier League, all-seater and safe, have helped create a new narrative about the matchday experience, but increases across the board underline there are other factors in play. There is belonging to be found on terraces; camaraderie and community. Even in a cost-of-living crisis, there is a refusal to give up on live football.
“The media and social media coverage of the game has made it more popular than it’s ever been and it’s always been something that people talk about,” says Malcolm Clarke, chair of the Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) and a season ticket holder at Stoke City. “Even if football doesn’t mean that much to you, it’s part of the national dialogue. It’s become a constant topic of interest.
“For those that go to games, I’m sure it’s being part of the common bond; being close to people around you. These people could be from all different walks of life but on that day and in the moment they have a common purpose.
“It creates a certain spirit and sense of identity that very few other things do.”
The Premier League still has work to do before it can overcome Germany’s Bundesliga (current average attendance of 42,631) as the most-watched league in Europe live, but it is slowly getting there. Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United and Arsenal have all averaged over 60,000 this season, a group that Liverpool will join next season with an expanded Anfield. Everton, albeit anxious with relegation worries, have a new 53,000-seater stadium to move into in 2024-25.
Numbers would be higher still across the division given the opportunity. Arsenal, Everton, Leeds United, Liverpool and Manchester United are among the clubs that operate lengthy waiting lists for season tickets, while demand for away tickets, set by Premier League clubs at a universal £30, never diminishes. It is a far cry from the Premier League’s maiden season of 1992-93, when an average crowd in the top flight was 21,125, almost half what it has blossomed to this campaign.
The reflected glow of the Premier League’s success has undeniably been felt in the Championship, where Sunderland, Norwich City, Sheffield United and Middlesbrough all have average crowds of over 25,000. Derby County, Ipswich Town and Sheffield Wednesday can all claim the same in League One, while Bradford City remarkably average over 17,000, despite this being their fourth season in League Two.
Football has its problems, but its inclusivity has improved. Clubs endeavour to be family-friendly, catering for all ages. The EFL say this has been a record-breaking year for season tickets sold to under-18s.
“The experience is far less threatening than it was, say, 30 years ago,” says Clarke. “A lot more families and a lot more women feel a lot more comfortable going to games now in a way they didn’t use to.
“You only have to look around at any ground and see the number of young children and women now attending games. That’s certainly changed for the better. I’m just coming up to 77 and there aren’t many things that bring together men of my age and their daughters, but football is certainly one of those.”
But why?
It was just before 3am on Good Friday and a minibus had arrived outside of Paul Sweet’s home in the small town of Lostwithiel in Cornwall. An ungodly hour for a religious weekend, but Sweet and 1,000 other Plymouth Argyle supporters had a big day ahead.
“Bloody Morecambe,” he laughs. “It was a 22-hour trip. Something like a 716 miles round trip. I was picked up at 3am and got home at 1am. You’re miles away but there was over 1,000 of us and it was great. If you get into being a football fan then, there’s just something there that’s hard to describe. It’s a buzz.”
This is a vintage season for Plymouth, with automatic promotion to the Championship on the line, but little changes for Sweet. These pre-dawn alarms and days spent on motorways are the norm.
“What happens between 3pm and 5pm can sometimes be the downfall of the day but it’s about more than just the football,” says Sweet, a season-ticket holder at Home Park, where Plymouth have averaged crowds of 15,497 this season, the club’s highest since 2004-05.
“There’s definitely a belonging. The Premier League has come along and it’s changed the dynamic a little bit. You go to these big clubs and there are some tourists but lower down the leagues it’s just people going for this experience. If you’re not at the game, you feel like you’re missing out.”
Sweet has been doing this since the bug first bit in 1983, a grim period when hooliganism was commonplace across English football. That first game at Home Park saw 10,000 Portsmouth fans descend and cause mayhem when celebrating the Division Three title.
“They wrecked the place,” remembers Sweet. “There were fights everywhere. God help us, it was awful. But it didn’t turn me off football.
“We played Arsenal in the League Cup the next season and that’s what really sold football to me. An evening kick-off, the floodlights, the smells… Bovril, pasties, smoke, beer. There were 20-odd thousand there. I went home from that game and told my mum I wanted to go to the next game.”
Sweet is well-positioned to pass judgement on how football has come so far in the last 40 years.
“More and more people have been starting to watch football since the Premier League came along but I can only talk about Argyle, and it’s got a real place in the community.
“That’s encouraging more kids to come along. The youngsters coming out to watch live football, they’re hooked. They love the buzz of the crowd. Everyone’s got a certain level of disposable income to spend and what are you going to spend it on? For a lot of people, that’s going to a football match.
“You still get the odd nutter about — you might never get rid of them — but there’s a far greater focus on families and enjoying the matchday experience. And it’s all unscripted. Who knows what’s going to happen when you turn up? You just never know.”
He brings up Newcastle United’s demolition of Tottenham Hotspur last weekend as a case in point.
“Five up after 20 minutes!” he says. “And the Tottenham fans. Should they be refunded? No! Tough shit. You travel and you support your team. You’ll look back on that day and have a laugh.”
Sweet is not unique in his devotion. Thousands at all levels will give up weekends to travel around the United Kingdom to follow their club in all weathers, all bound together by blind faith.
At the opposite end of the country is Keith Elliott, old enough to know better at 68 but seldom missing out on a Carlisle United game. Any given season will see him rack up over 10,000 miles following the League Two club at a cost he estimates to be in the region of £2,000.
Carlisle’s season finishes at Sutton United on the Bank Holiday Monday that follows the Coronation of King Charles III. “It’s a 12.30pm kick-off, so we’re leaving at 3am. We’ve got two coaches on for that one; they’re full. I wouldn’t miss this game. It’ll be a great occasion.
“I’ve not seen a Coronation so it’ll be a great weekend, especially if we do end up winning promotion. Scoring a last-minute winner at Sutton? I’m sure even King Charles would get wind of that.”
Elliott’s first game was in 1963 and the subsequent 60 years have been spent following Carlisle home and away. The Cumbrian outpost, eight miles from the Scottish border, does not have an EFL ground within a 90-minute radius. Even Barrow, where promotion hopes were kept alive with a 1-0 win last weekend, is a 170-mile round trip for Carlisle fans.
“It’s for the love of your club,” says Elliott, who attends games with his wife. “I love watching Premier League and Championship football on the TV, don’t get me wrong, but supporting your hometown club is different. It’s fantastic.”
Like Plymouth, Carlisle are among those enjoying their own attendance boom this season. The success inspired by Paul Simpson, the hometown boy returning as manager last February, has driven that, and Brunton Park has attracted an average crowd of just under 6,000. Not since 2008-09 has the figure been higher.
“Social media has got a lot to do with it, it’s a promotion of the game,” says Elliott. “It’s so easy to communicate that way and people become involved and invested.
“I’ve lived through the bad days with hooliganism in the 70s and 80s. There were some grim times, to be honest. Crowds fell away. Ours were down below 3,000 but this season we’re up at 6,000. It’s a boom time, really.”
If football was wringing its hands with worry during the COVID-19 pandemic, wondering if life would ever get back to normal, it turns out there was no need. Attendances have not been diluted by changes to a routine during that joyless 2020-21 season. Instead, the crowds have come back bigger than ever.
This season’s average across all four divisions currently stands at 17,826, the highest since 1951-52.
Average attendances in the last 30 years
1992-93 | 1997-98 | 2002-03 | 2007-08 | 2012-13 | 2017-18 | 2022-23 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Premier League |
21,125 |
29,190 |
35,464 |
36,076 |
35,921 |
38,317 |
40,174 |
Championship |
10,626 |
15,091 |
15,435 |
17,022 |
17,493 |
20,496 |
18,640 |
League One |
6,310 |
6,346 |
7,051 |
7,922 |
6,299 |
7,796 |
10,550 |
League Two |
3,334 |
3,202 |
4,362 |
4,343 |
4,389 |
4,491 |
5,627 |
“During the depths of lockdown, I always thought it could go one of two ways,” says Daniel Gray, a Middlesbrough fan and the author of The Silence of the Stands, an book examining that season played behind closed doors.
“I thought we’d all be terrified of being next to each other again or we’d see a boom, knowing what we’d seen after the Second World War.
“There was a real need for communal activity again and, for a lot of people, that’s going to football: that need to be in a crowd and having that sense of belonging; to be back there and do that again. That was vital. We missed it so much. There was this pent-up love for our clubs that we needed to express as well.
“We had football, routine and belonging robbed from us. Being locked out of your ground was a huge thing as well. They’re second homes. You buy a season ticket and it becomes your seat. After that absence, you appreciate going to games again. People have soon got back in the habit.”
And how. At all levels, there has been a spike, with absence making the heart grow fonder. Football’s popularity has been entrenched by a global pandemic and is yet to discover its own bounds.
“I first started going to football matches in 1988 and, when you look back at that time, football fans were so castigated and stereotyped,” adds Gray. “It wasn’t cool to go into work on a Monday and say you’d been to the match. Now it’s the other way around: you’ve got people starting conversations around football when they’re not really into it. It’s a complete change in society.”
Football has never meant more to the UK. Just ask the million or so attending games this weekend.
(Top photo: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)