I don’t know why but ever since my early schooldays, I have always been fascinated by attendance figures at football matches. Whether it was some kind of self-affirmation that I was not alone in my childhood obsession with the game or just the opportunity to take consolation from the fact my club gets more through the gates than local, better performing rivals – I don’t know.
This started in the late 1970s/early 1980s, a period that saw a sharp decline in the numbers attending football matches. I would imagine there are thousands of books, blogs and sociological studies into the reason for this. But as a lazy blogger I haven’t read any of them and we can hypothesise about this topic at a later date. In any event, the post-Italia 90 surge interest in the game has seen crowd sizes return to, and in some cases surpass, levels last seen in the inter-war period. In turn, this has created a situation where elite level players can earn more in a week than a suspended TV newsreader can make in a month!
Such riches have yet to trickle down to Step Six. Neither of the two away grounds I have visited this season have a specialist cheese bar, luxury retail experience or even heated seats. And this is part of the non-league appeal.
Now, I don’t know how much it costs to run a Step Six club but I bet it’s somewhere around the ‘quite a lot’ level. Without the benefit of lucrative TV deals or the backing of a scrupulously honest Russian oligarch, a significant part of the operation budget must come from gate money, which brings up back on topic.
I wondered how Droitwich Spa FC’s attendances compare with other clubs at the same league level and compiled this table showing total and average attendance figures for Hellenic League Division One during August 2024.
It turns out they compare pretty well. The Saltmen have attracted the highest average attendance within the division at 227. The wide geographical distribution of clubs with the division has to date shown a visible reduction in the number opposition supporters coming to Kingys. This is supported by the fact that our home opener against nearby Redditch Borough attracted the highest gate of the regular season. The only other club with a triple digit average attendance is Abingdon with 157.
This information led me to wondering how this compared with other Step 6 clubs nationally. Fortunately (as it took me ages to compile the table above) the brilliant people @nonleaguecrowd have done the heavy lifting by posting the following figures:
As we can see, the latest attendance at Kingys was the 11th highest in the country, despite being slightly below the Saltmen’s season’s average. Bearing in mind the on-going holiday season, this must be seen as positive. I’m sure the support we give the team helps them raise their games and that every penny taken at the gate helps maintain and develop the facilities.
I intend to update this blog later in the season to see how trends develop.
Hope you enjoyed reading this blog. Please feel free to like, comment and reply. I would love to hear from you..
Cheers
Steve
FOLLOWING THE SALTMEN 
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