We don’t have the plastics like United and Liverpool have. Even Arsenal are suffering from empty seats at the Emirates. Only United and Liverpool can fill their stadiums for most home games. A few empty seats have started to appear at United of late.
What we do have is a solid and expanding hardcore of fans. The vast majority are low to middle income working class fans, with a small percentage of wealthy fans. We’ve also got a slowly growing fan base from outside Manchester. This is evident in PL games, and more so in CL games. We also get a lot of football tourists coming to watch City at weekend home matches
But we’ve lost a lot of local fans through season ticket and match day ticket price increases over the years (here jrb goes again), and through forced relocations inside the stadium on different occasions and throughout the years to make way for new corporate areas and seating. We need to get those fans back for a start. And also attract new local City fans with more cheaper season ticket and match day ticket prices. The games in the early rounds of the Carabao Cup, FA Cup, and CL group stages prove cheaper tickets do attract more local fans. Over the last few seasons we have had 50,000+ attendances for early round FA Cup games.
If the club expands the North Stand it has to somehow balance match day income with cheaper season tickets and match day tickets in an effort to attract those City fans that have walked away and City fans who are desperate to watch City, but are priced out at current season ticket and match day ticket prices. If City did that they could fill an expanded North Stand and a 60,000 capacity Etihad.