Following Manchester City’s first Champions League game of the 2021-22 season, a 6-3
win over RB Leipzig, Pep Guardiola expressed his disappointment with the attendance at the Etihad.
"I would say the last three games we played here we scored 16 goals," Guardiola told BT Sport. "So
I would like more people to come to the next game on Saturday, we need the people next Saturday.”
There were a lot of empty seats.
Just over 38,000 were in attendance in a stadium with a capacity of over 55,000.
It’s strange. City have one of the most talented coaches of all time, a squad to envy,
and a stadium with excellent sight lines from all sides, so why does this seem like a common theme?
First, a distinction: while rival fans refer to the Etihad by the mocking,
but not to original “Empty-had” nickname,
Manchester City’s attendances in the Premier League are actually very good.
In the 2019-20 season, they had an average attendance of 54,391, which is 98.9%
of its 55,017 capacity. Not bad at all. In fact, across town and during the same season,
Manchester United averaged a home gate of 72,726, which is 98.1% of Old Trafford’s capacity.
Also, at the time of Guardiola’s remarks,
many City fans had been combatting issues with the club’s digital ticketing services
and confusion over the Ticket Transfer system ahead of the Leipzig game.
Long term, though, Europe has been a problem for some time and City have played in front of
small crowds in the early rounds of continental competition before. The Etihad’s capacity for
European games drops to 54,000, but during the last full-season of Champions League football in
front of crowds, 2018-19, City averaged 49,535 fans during their run to the quarter-finals.
The year before, 48,050. And the year before that, in 2016-17, 47,065.
In the 2015-16 season, the first at the present capacity, the average was still just 47.780.
For a team who enter most Champions League seasons with a legitimate chance of winning
the competition, those are surprising figures. Yes, the club have enjoyed an
antagonistic relationship with UEFA and fans have frequently booed the Champions League anthem,
but the empty seats need further context. And, in response to Guardiola’s remarks,
Kevin Parker, general secretary of the official supporters’ club, was quick to provide it.
"He doesn't understand the difficulties that some people might have
getting to a game at the Etihad on a Wednesday evening at 8pm.
They've got kids to think of, they might not be able to afford it, there are still some COVID
issues about. I don't see why he comments on it. He's absolutely the best coach in the world but,
in the nicest possible way, I think maybe he should stick to that."
It’s a fair point. A game kicking off at 8pm on a weeknight would finish, at the earliest,
at 9.45pm. There’s a tram which runs from the Etihad Complex back to the centre of Manchester,
but on match nights it can be crowded and getting away from the stadium can be time consuming which,
for young children or those who have to get up early for work, can make for a very late night.
For a team like City, or any major club used to cruising through the group, the lack of jeopardy
also partially explains why some stay away - particularly now, with the economic hardship
of the coronavirus and the lingering fear many have of returning to crowded, communal spaces.
As of September 2021, Manchester actually has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the UK,
with only 56.4% of those eligible having received both doses.
But, vaccination levels aside, these are universal issues, so
why do they manifest more at the Etihad?
Because of the nature of City’s fanbase and the club’s history.
According to a report released by the City Group back in 2018, celebrating a decade
of their ownership, the club they bought had just six official overseas supporters groups.
That number grew to 116 over those ten years and continues to rise, but it remains some way
behind the 262 officially recognised Manchester United supporters clubs in 89 different countries.
As they do in the UK itself. In a May 2021 survey entitled the True Colours of Football,
which measured Premier League clubs’ popularity by search volume,
City actually ranked as the seventh most popular club in the UK,
behind Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and even Leeds United.
Combined, those statistics describe a few issues. The first, is that City have relatively few fans
for a club of their standing and the level of demand for their tickets is obviously
comparatively low. The second is that they don’t benefit from football tourism in the
same way as other clubs, and are less able to fill the gaps that appear in their stadium
as a result. A 2019 Visit Britain survey recorded that 800,000 tourists watched a
Premier League game during that previous season, the most of any league in Europe,
but that the top three destinations were Stamford Bridge, Old Trafford and the Emirates Stadium.
City, by contrast, are less able to count on demand from outside their catchment area.
A 2014 YouGov poll revealed that, of those surveyed, 49%
of Manchester City fans lived in the North-West region of England,
compared to 28% of United fans. Those numbers might have changed in the years since, but not
dramatically so, depicting the City fanbase as being more reflective of its region – of the
5.4% unemployment rate in Greater Manchester, which is above the United Kingdom’s 4.6%,
and the average house price, which is £241,000 to the UK average of £255,000.
In other words, being more susceptible to the issues described by their Supporters Trust
in response to Pep Guardiola’s criticism.