August 15 – The Premier League’s three-day opening weekend with fixtures across Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday smashed the opening round attendance figures of last season. With 407,000 tickets available to fans across the 10 home fixtures – more than 6,000 tickets over last 2016/17 – just 8,030 were unsold compared to 16,116 last season.
Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Newcastle United all reported more than 99% of their stadium capacity full while eight teams were over 95% full.
West Brom, with 93.15% of their stadium full, came bottom of the Premier League table.
Most notable amongst the figures was Newcastle’s attendance. In their 2015/16 relegation season the club were consistently below 90% capacity at St James’s Park. A victorious season in the Championship under new(ish) manager Rafael Benitez has brought the Toon Army flooding back. The test will be how long they stay for if results start to go horribly against them and they find themselves in a relegation dogfight.
Chelsea once again proved how desperately they are in need of a new, larger, stadium with just 47 seats unfilled at their 41,000 capacity Stamford Bridge stadium. Everton, also with a a new stadium in the planning phases, filled Goodison Park’s ageing structure with just 1,112 seats unfilled, though fans would argue they are the broken seats in a stadium that is creaking with the expectation of a return to the good times of league and cup wins.
Insideworldfootball figures are taken from the official reported ground capacities and match day attendances. They do not take into account any seat kills for media or safety reasons.
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