Attendance In Spain Drops

The first half of the sea­son is already in the books, but there were less peo­ple watch­ing. In Spain they are talk­ing about the fact that the game itself could be in dan­ger of chang­ing rad­i­cally in the com­ing months to years.  The sig­nif­i­cant drops in atten­dance across the board are being looked at care­fully; and even though the media there is keep­ing a watch­ful eye and a silent voice regard­ing the mat­ter– the wheels are turn­ing behind the scenes.

Barcelona made his­tory with their incred­i­ble run, but they aren’t the only ones that raised eye­brows (no that’s not a good thing).   The sta­di­ums saw a drop in 432,058 fans across the board as com­pared to this time last year.

If you would like to look at the prob­lem from another per­spec­tive, just check out the tip of the ice­berg.  The Nou Camp was emp­tier by 7,500 fans per match at the Nou Camp, this was more amaz­ing espe­cially after a team like the blau­grana  went through such an amaz­ing run and is on track to win the tre­ble for the first time in Span­ish foot­ball history.

Spain’s eco­nomic cri­sis is the num­ber one rea­son for this dive.   The unem­ploy­ment rate fell to well over 13 per­cent mark.   The eco­nomic cri­sis has finally begun to delve into the sports arena in Spain now and many indi­vid­u­als worry that there might be long-term effects in foot­ball because of it.

Span­ish teams are also mak­ing the same mis­takes that Major League Base­ball has made by mak­ing tick­ets a lit­tle more inac­ces­si­ble in a time when people’s pock­ets are suf­fer­ing, but that is not the only rea­son why.

Another rea­son why they are not get­ting as many fans is because of the times that sev­eral matches are being played (are you lis­ten­ing, Barcelona?)  For a father or any fam­ily, it is not right to take a child or a fam­ily group to a match that is to begin at 10pm.  We are not talk­ing about just Sat­ur­day night, we are talk­ing about a mid­week match some­times.   The Cata­lan derby in the Copa del Rey quar­ter­fi­nals kicked off at around 10pm last week.  So how can you expect fam­i­lies and chil­dren– the foun­da­tion and base of the sport’s future– to want to spend money (or watch on tele­vi­sion) on a prod­uct at that time?  These num­bers are not only affect­ing the big teams, but you have to look at sec­ond divi­sion as well.  In those teams, the lack of spec­ta­tors hin­ders them from being com­pet­i­tive once again. Add to that the fact that that match had the pos­si­bil­ity of vio­lence break­ing out in the stands and there was a poten­tial recipe for dis­as­ter.  So if any­one was a respon­si­ble par­ent, the foot­ball pitch was one place that I would avoid-  espe­cially so late at night.  As that old 80’s song says– the freaks come out at night.

In a time in which Spain is in one of its great­est moments in their foot­ball his­tory, the greed of few seems to have trumped the spirit of the major­ity. Foot­ball, except in the US, is the people’s game. It’s the game of the poor.  It’s a game that helps young boys dream of buy­ing their moms a house in the sub­urbs next door to the bored soc­cer mom.  It’s a game that helps peo­ple get away from the real pain that the world has; and that is being taken away from them too.