Attendance Numbers

To compare the attendance numbers for various Czech football clubs, we used official attendance numbers as stated on the Football Association of the Czech Republic web site: http://www.fotbal.cz/c/index.asp and calculated the average home attendance for each team. We acknowledge that more accurate results will be gained at the end of the 2006/2007 season rather than halfway through the season.  However, even these less accurate results can provide an interesting insight in to the situation of Czech football.

All the clubs participating in the Czech first league, also called Gambrinus League, were sorted in descending order as per their average home attendance:

While these numbers appear to be small in comparison to some other countries, one must keep in mind that they are a reflection of socio-economical issues in the whole society.

As expected, the runaway leader is the most popular (and at the same time probably most hated) Czech club, Sparta Prague.  With a budget that dwarfs budgets of other Czech clubs, this club also boasts the best attendance at its home games.  The second team, Liberec, is the last season champion and therefore, fans flock to its stadium.  Both Sparta and Liberec can offer to their fans a well equipped, modern stadium.  Slavia in the fifth place suffers from not having its own stadium; playing in the asylum in Strahov is clearly detrimental.

And how would Bohemians 1905 stack up against the first division clubs?  Very well, thank you.  Here are the numbers:

Bohemians are fourth in the average home attendance among all Czech football clubs!  Imagine that Bohemians would play in the first league.  What wonders to their average home attendance would matches against Sparta, Slavia or Liberec do.

While we at Bohemians 1905 are proud of the high attendance at our home and even away games, we are equally impressed by the young age of most of our fans.  We are somewhat puzzled that young people who don’t remember the glory days of Bohemka in the early eighties are attracted to the club that until its rebirth in 2005 had stumbled both on and off the field.  There must be an enjoyment in cheering for an underdog, for David in his fight against Goliaths.  Fans of big clubs don’t know what they are missing.