India's fledgling football league has become the fourth most popular in the world after just six weeks, surpassing Italy's long-standing Serie A in average crowd attendance, according to organisers.

The Indian Super League has lured former international veterans such as former Sydney FC star Alessandro del Piero, Sweden's Freddie Ljungberg and Frenchman Nicolas Anelka for the 10-week competition.

Organisers said more than one million fans have turned out, with an average match attendance of 24,357, making it the fourth most popular football league behind Germany's Bundesliga, the English Premier League and Spain's La Liga.

"We have always believed that the sport of football, if given the right platform, has the potential for tremendous growth in India," an ISL spokesman said.

Backed by some of the biggest names in business and sport, the league is modelled on cricket's glitzy Indian Premier League.

Bollywood A-listers and cricket stars are co-owners of the eight city-based football franchises, while Rupert Murdoch's Star TV is broadcasting the games.

India has always fared poorly in world rankings and currently stands at 159 out of 208 countries.

http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/article/2014/11/28/indian-league-draws-more-fans-serie

Very interesting. I have seen one game from this league at it was pretty poor, tbh.

Well India is quite big eh?

But to be honest I think "after just six weeks" is a bit misleading. I would've expected a new league to draw a lot of spectators. Will be interesting to see if they can hold/improve those numbers over a longer period like idk say 10 years.

Btw it's a shame Serie A can't get an average attendance of 25k

i never got why Serie A has such low attendance .

even in the glory days of the 90's i remember the olympico being half empty most of the time .

indeed Serie A 90's had always full stadium .
but many factors in last period... Basically in last 10 years the Italian government so as to cope the ultras has made many decree laws ( nominal ticket,  tessera del tifoso etc) who  contributed to remove ppl from stadiums. Because it is becoming a annoying thing to go at stadiums while before it was the easiest thing .
Besides the pay tvs offer were tempting ( maybe no other European country has so many pay tv subscribers as us) while the italian stadium are always oldest year after year  , very uncomfortable , bad visual , parking ... so  bsically a fan is not tempted to spend money for stadium (considering also the high cost of tickets . And we are in a difficult economic period , worse than others . another factor)

Anyway , India has 1.175.000.000  ppl.

Average over 4 weeks >>>>> years of averages

LOGICAL

Well I mean cmon, irregardless of the sample size, it's quite understandable and not at all surprising that because India's population dwarves Italy's population by 2000 percent, there are more football fans in India than in Italy relatively speaking.

wait for the honey moon period to end and it'll drop off.

When MLS first started like every team was drawing near 25k.

After that though average attendance dropped way off for the majority of teams. lt took about 15-20 years for it to resemble what it was its first go around when everything was new and exciting. Low leagues products tend to stagnate easily, especially when they don't have much money flowing into it. Regardless of population they are going to need to keep improving the product on the field at a steady clip in order to maintain interest.

For some reason all the games seem to be on tv in Australia, the crowd figures have certainly been surprising to me when I've flicked over to watch, not surprising considering the amount of people in India though.

Footballing is piss poor though, hopefully that improves, would be great if India could become a decent footballing nation and add to Asia.

mr-r34 wrote:For some reason all the games seem to be on tv in Australia, the crowd figures have certainly been surprising to me when I've flicked over to watch, not surprising considering the amount of people in India though.

Footballing is piss poor though, hopefully that improves, would be great if India could become a decent footballing nation and add to Asia.

Would be great for Liverpool too as we've started a bunch of academies there.

Liverpool has a decent fanbase here in India.If a ex liverpool player is playing there will be some banners in the stadium from pool fans .The attendance figures are very promising, especially for us Kerala, we have had 100% attendance (56k) in all the matches.

Everything is a step forward for us. Not surprising we amassed such numbers in an inaugural league.

Make the ISL as the official league and bring decent changes into it and we'll be hitting more than that.

Half of the stadiums are 25k so they sell out all the time. Bigger stadiums and i expect a crowd of 30-35k comfortably every game.

VendettaRed07 wrote:wait for the honey moon period to end and it'll drop off.

When MLS first started like every team was drawing near 25k.

After that though average attendance dropped way off for the majority of teams. lt took about 15-20 years for it to resemble what it was its first go around when everything was new and exciting. Low leagues products tend to stagnate easily, especially when they don't have much money flowing into it. Regardless of population they are going to need to keep improving the product on the field at a steady clip in order to maintain interest.

This is the average turnout in various centers after 5 games. Right now as the tournament is gathering steam and is reaching its final stages it would have gone up by at least 3-5 k.



Here at centers such as Kolkata, Goa, the Northeast states and Kerala, Football has a majestic fan following; arguably on par with cricket,which is obviously the countries madness.So at these places crowds will throng regardless. And these 4 constitute 65- 70 percent of the total number of fans right now.

Its other places like Chennai, Mumbai which for the moment has in excess of 20k , that dying down with time, the one you mentioned will occur that too profusely. Especially in Mumbai which is the countries' cricket capital. Unless their team doesnt perform like GOAT, cricket will outweigh. Chennai too has the same fate. Where as the remaining 2 Delhi and Pune their turnout is low even now. So it wont affect much even if that number goes down. In Pune and all the stadium capacity being less is also a reason of the low turnout currently.

Hence even if theres going to be a slash, it wont be much as the large majority of the contributing fans already have a long and rich tradition of watching football.

So comparing with MLS, I dont think its the same here as its there.

But you as well as others who have posted here are right with the 2nd part. The league quality is piss poor right now. I mean the standard of football is. But thats expected I guess. India is 140 something in the world ranking. And the stars who have come here are majorly declined ones or discarded ones. So both the domestic as well as the international quality right now is expected to be very mediocre. But things will pick up hopefully in some years time.