In our second annual review of ticket sales and average attendance throughout the various European leagues, the Spanish ACB confirms its status as absolute leader in Europe.
The Spanish league is followed by the Italian Lega, which reaffirms its status as second. While the ACB improved their average attendance by 9.41% to 6988.12 spectators per game, the Italian League was somehow stable, with a small increase of 3.24% to 3862.13. The huge increase in Spain can be explained by the presence of CAI Zaragoza, the leader in Europe in terms of attendance, moving up to the ACB last summer.
A change has come to third place, where the German Bundesliga passed the French ProA and is now the third most popular league in Europe in terms of game attendance. This increase can be explained by new arenas in Bonn and Berlin which helped the German League improve average game attendance by 5.66% to 3666.15 people per game.
The biggest increase in terms of average attendance was noted by the Adriatic League, which boosted its number by 75.48% to 2069.99. While most games are played in front of smaller attendance, the new arena in Zadar was key, hosting several 10,000+ games in the regular season. The biggest dropoff was taken by LEB Gold, whose attendance decreased by 26.65%, an effect of former LEB Gold teams Zaragoza and Bruesa receiving promotion to the ACB last summer.
Several new leagues have been added to our ranking, including the Spanish LEB Silver and Bronze, Sweden, Bulgaria and Austria are now officially in the Ranking of the leagues as well as specific team rankings. LegaDue Italy has been added too but for now, though no official per team numbers have been released. One of the only bigger leagues where numbers are unavailable is Belgium.
Please note also that all these statistics are based on official numbers published by the various leagues. We therefore cannot guarantee if these numbers correspond to the real number of people in the arenas. All numbers represent regular season figures only.
| League | 2008/2009 | 2007/2008 | Difference | |
| 1 | SPAIN (ACB) | 6988,12 | 6387,0 | 9,41% |
| 2 | ITALY (Lega) | 3862,13 | 3740,8 | 3,24% |
| 3 | GERMANY (BBL) | 3666,15 | 3469,7 | 5,66% |
| 4 | FRANCE (ProA) | 3564,94 | 3503,6 | 1,75% |
| 5 | RUSSIA (Superleague) | 2394,10 | 2276,8 | 5,15% |
| 6 | ITALY (LegaDue) | 2377,00 | 2340,0 | 1,58% |
| 7 | SPAIN (LEB Gold) | 2159,72 | 2944,4 | -26,65% |
| 8 | BALTIC (Elite) | 2118,00 | 2239,0 | -5,40% |
| 9 | ADRIATIC League | 2069,99 | 1179,6 | 75,48% |
| 10 | FRANCE (ProB) | 1779,56 | 1720,0 | 3,46% |
| 11 | ISRAEL | 1670,0 | ||
| 12 | GREECE | 1428,53 | 1228,3 | 16,30% |
| 13 | TURKEY (Beko) | 1368,86 | 1363,3 | 0,41% |
| 14 | GERMANY (ProA) | 1174,26 | 1039,1 | 13,01% |
| 15 | LITHUANIA (LKL) | 1150,00 | ||
| 16 | SPAIN (LEB Silver) | 1038,13 | ||
| 17 | SWEDEN | 994,64 | ||
| 18 | SPAIN (LEB Bronze) | 888,44 | ||
| 19 | FINLAND | 868,05 | 865,7 | 0,28% |
| 20 | BULGARIA | 683,70 | ||
| 21 | AUSTRIA | 680,99 | ||
| 22 | SWISS (LNB) | 679,13 | 678,9 | 0,03% |
| 23 | GERMANY (ProB) | 646,29 | 636,1 | 1,60% |
| 24 | SLOVENIA | 605,0 | 353,0 | 71,39% |
| 25 | BALTIC (Challenge) | 322,00 | 420,7 | -23,47% |
The ranking of most successful teams in terms of average attendance will be published here at BallinEurope.com later this week.
Slovenian leaguge attendance was 605.
Low attendance, but last season was even lower – 353 spectators per game
@zwbgr
thanks for the additional info, i will put that in the table
Nice improvement for Greece and Germany and out of this world improvement for Slovenia and Adriatic.
The Greek league does not count season tickets in their numbers. Panathinaikos had 7,500 season tickets and Olympiacos had 9,500. That means the lowest they could average in any Greek League game is that amount.
But the Greek League does not count season tickets. That’s something that should at least be noted in those rankings as other leagues count season tickets.
@Michael
yes,i know that, but I don’t have any official figures for these season ticket holders from Greece. Additionally, you won’t tell me that all these ticket season holders are present at every game.
That’s why we said in the article that “We therefore cannot guarantee if these numbers correspond to the real number of people in the arenas.”
What about romanian league? There are several teams with 2000-2500 spectators per game, i think the average is somewhere around 800-1000 in regular season.
@Iulian
is there a website that publishes these numbers?
Israeli BSL attendance (reg. season) average this year was 1670.
http://www.basket.co.il/News.asp?id=1405
@ArnoldPettybone
great, i have added Israel to the Ranking and the teams will also be added to the Team ranking to be published later on
@Cristophe: unfortunately, there are no cumulative stats on Federation’s site. They have a statistics site, where are posted all matches stats, including attendance, but no cumulated. Here is the link: http://web1.mbt.lt/prod/frb/
Select the english version (up-right corner), then “Results” from the menu and there is!
I’ll try to cumulate those stats, if it helps.
OK, in the first 70 matches (10 rounds), we have 444,71 spectators per match. Unfortunately, in every round there are two or three matches without attendance stats, so i did count them with zero attendance. In the second part of the championship, the interest was bigger, so this number shoud increase.
hello? game attendance is no way to measure popularity … Germany is much bigger than Greece, but Greek basketball is more popular than its German counterpart – who won the Euroleague? I’d say use the budget also… Best leagues in Europe :Greek, Spanish, Russian, followed by Italy, France maybe some Balkan countries, Lithuania…. but big players: i.e. top level players are mostly (not completely) in the first three….
@Iulian
thanks for your help
@milaz
of course attendance is not showing how good a league is. However, it shows how attractive the LEAGUE is in the countries and cities where its teams play
[...] the League Ranking published a few days ago that saw the ACB confirm its status as most popular league in terms of [...]
Attendence in Lithuania – last year average – 990. This year 1150 (but there were still last 2 rounds to play of regular season. poor nubers here in regular season, mostly because there ar only 2,5 good teams here in Lithuania Lietuvos rytas, Žalgiris and Šiauliai, and always Lietuvos rytas and Žalgiris fights for 1-2 places, and Šiauliai takes the 3rd…
LKL rungtynių lankomumas, lyginant su pernai, padidėjo (vidurkis nuo 990 iki 1150 žiūrovų)
The rise was mosly because of new Šiauliai arena (their atendence rised from 590 to ~2270, who are the second most attended team in Lithuania (right after Lietuvos rytas), Žalgiris are were third in regular season.
@Shilas
do you have a link with the numbers? thank you
Here is the link. Mentioned numbers were said by the official. But as i have mentioned, these nubers were before the end of regular season.
http://www.lkl.lt/index.php/b19sYW5nPWhlJm9fc2Vhcz0xMSZvX2xlYWc9MSZmdXNlYWN0aW9uPXF1ZXN0aW9ucy52aWV3JmlkPTExMw==
Christophe, Israel Last year attendance is also noted at the link Iv posted above-its 1620 Per game. 2006/07-1200 per game.
Spain will be more attractive year 2010…
..is Messina officially the new Rael Madrid coach or I heard just bad rumors????
Cheers
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