After a winter pause, the attendance of the Russian Football Championship has grown markedly
One of the trends of this spring in domestic football was a rather noticeable increase in the attendance of the country’s championship matches. According to the results of the championship, it may come close to the numbers characteristic of the pre -icing period with its surge of interest in live viewing of games that have sharply reduced after the implementation of FAN ID. The current surge in the Russian Premier League (RPL) is explained by the sharpness of the intrigue in the tournament, in which several teams are fighting for gold again, as in the last season, as well as “renewal of the audience”, accustoming to the fan map and compensating for the absence of still boycotting matches of fans.
Today, the Makhachkalinsky Dynamo match against the leading in the Russian Championship of Krasnodar is opening the 26th tournament tournament. He will probably fix the already quite obvious trend of this spring, expressed in a rather sharp increase in interest in the “living”, from the rostrum, viewing matches.
Attendance relatively recently was the pride of everyone who is related to domestic football.
After the world championship for the first time in Russia in 2018, at which the hostess’s team reached the quarter-finals, it grew in a stormy pace, eventually exceeding the line of 17 thousand spectators on average in the match. It was close to the indicators characteristic of the flagship championships of the Big Five – English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, although earlier the Russian league was very far from them.
The drop in attendance occurred in 2020 due to the pandemia of the Covid-19, which provoked the introduction of varying degrees of stiffness of restrictions, including the presence of spectators in the games. However, when the restrictions were removed, it did not recover, but, on the contrary, collapsed (see drawing). And this paradox could not be explained by nothing other than the introduction of a system of mandatory identification of visitors to matches known as FAN ID in the Russian Championship in 2022. Her appearance was met in bayonets by the associations of fans of almost all clubs of the highest division, equating the system to violation of personal freedoms and boycotting even important games.
Last two years, the process of getting used to FAN ID was going on.
The government has already softened the procedure for its design (now, for example, it can be carried out remotely, without a visit to the MFC), and the RPL and the Ministry of Cyphra of the Russian Federation constantly reported on the growing number of those who designed it. Currently, it exceeded 2.5 million people. However, the statistics several months ago insisted that the negative “FAN ID effect” in the Russian championship still exists. The average attendance of the current tournament before the winter break that began in December 18 rounds was a little more than 11 thousand spectators, that is, in fact, did not change in any way compared to the previous season.
However, after the pause, the changes occurred, and radical. The Russian Championship resumed in March, and after its restart, seven rounds were played. Very low-9.5 thousand people-attendance was in just one of them, the 20th. In all the others, it exceeded the indicators of the last season, and most often the excess was extremely significant. The peak in this sense was the 23rd tour. The matches within its framework watched an average of 16.6 thousand spectators.
If you take exactly the spring segment, then the average attendance of matches on it was 13.1 thousand people. This is an indicator of a well -like era.
The average attendance of the championship as a whole has not been reached up to 12 thousand. But this mark, for sure, taking into account the trend, will surpass, and next to her she will probably find himself after the completion of the weekend. The fact is that the 26th tour is distinguished by the presence of two Saturday matches at once in the Grand against Grand format, which have exceptional tournament significance. In one of them, Spartak is located in third place, the CSKA defending from him, in another Dynamo, which is two points behind the army, accepts the second “Zenith”: he is separated from the Krasnodar residents – the two -point – the distance. All tickets have already been implemented on the Moscow derby on the hosting 45 thousand people of Lukoil Arena. At a meeting at the Dynamo VTB Arena (it holds almost 26 thousand spectators) on sale on the afternoon of April 24 there were less than a thousand.
In the RPL, however, they do not consider the surge in the demand for the “live” viewing of matches by an unexpected event. In the structure of Kommersant, it was reminded that it “grows stably in the last three seasons”, associated growth primarily with three factors. First – This is a “update of the audience” with a gradual “replacement” by new fans, who are satisfied with the presence of FAN ID, those who have not yet come to terms with its implementation. “We previously saw the same trend in the championships of Italy and Turkey, where the fan cards were also introduced,” the RPL explained.
Second The factor is the organization “League, its partners and the clubs themselves” “Colorful” shows in matches and ensuring “comfortable conditions” for the audience. A third And, apparently, the most important thing is the intrigue in the championship, which makes you return to the stands of even “active fans”, after the introduction of FAN ID abstained from attending meetings.
The highest degree of intrigue, indeed, has become a distinctive feature of the Russian championships. In the spring of 2024, the outcome of the struggle for gold in it decided only in the final round, and three teams participated in it – Zenit, who got the sixth of the row, and missing the excellent chance to win his Krasnodar with Dynamo. Five rounds before the finish of this championship, the Golden Race does not look less dense. “Krasnodar” from the closing top of Dynamo separates only nine points.
