UK sports attendances touch 75m in 2018
Our live UK sporting attendance infographic shows the number of people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who have attended a sporting event today (GMT). And according to our research, attendances across the region will hit 75 million in 2018.
To create this live infographic, we used insight from our database of sporting attendances and fixtures – the biggest in the sports industry – and understanding of what impacts attendances in professional sport from our work driving event-day revenue growth for UK rights-holders since 2011.
Our definition of “attendance” is the amount of people who have gone, or will be going, to a ticketed sporting event; that means any sporting event a fan can attend without a ticket is not counted, including mass elite participation events such as cycling tours or marathons, or any recreational sport.
In 2018, the most attended sports day of the year in the UK is Wednesday December 26th – when we predict just over one million people will spend their Boxing Day watching sport at a venue somewhere in the UK.
Boxing Day has been dominated by sport in the UK since the 19th century, as not only do domestic football and rugby union leagues hold a full round of fixtures, there are also a number of major horse racing meetings (including the King George VI Chase at Kempton) and rugby league pre-season friendlies.
Thursdays are the lowest-attended day of the week from a sporting attendance, while Saturdays account for 36 of the top 40 most-attended days for sport in 2018.
Our research also shows that 2018 is a record-breaking year for the amount of fans attending elite women’s sport; women’s sporting attendances will break the half million barrier for the first time in 2018, increasing 49% on 2017 to hit 682,000.
You can read more about our research on women’s sports attendances on the BBC website.
