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.
