I'm With Stupid
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- Joined
- 6 May 2013
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They've also had extremely low attendances too. 23,000 for their League Cup tie against Burnley. Look at all their other big attendances this season: Real Madrid (>83,000), Liverpool (>80,000), Man Utd (>81,000 and >84,000), Juventus (>84,000), Man City (>80,000). Let's just say there's probably a pretty substantial tourist element for all of those games, or fans in the wrong end. In a one-off game, even American football can fill Wembley. Most of their other games are somewhere between 50k and 70k, and their actual average attendance for the season was just under 68,000, which is impressive, but still only 75% capacity. Hence why they're building a 62,000-seater stadium, not a 70,000-seater one.They do in the UK, they’ve had huge crowds for a lot of fixtures this season.
But newspapers aren't really aimed at the match-going fan anyway, they're more interested in the wider market of casual armchair fans. And there, we're probably more interested in things like viewing figures and social media engagement. We were on TV more than Spurs last season, and I can't imagine that they've closed that gap any more this season given how good we've been. In terms of social media, there really is no contest. We're absolutely miles ahead, although newspapers may be more interested in domestic engagement than international fans.
For the record, I'm not saying that we have a bigger fan base than Spurs, just that they're not part of that group of huge, casually supported teams that need pandering to in the papers. If they do get pandered to in the papers, it's because of a combination of London-based journalists (although the thread on the topic put most of them as Arsenal fans), the English factor, and this narrative that they do things the 'right way.' They're almost used as an anti-City.