2015 Chinese Super League champions Guangzhou Evergrande has been one of the main draws of the CSL last season. (Photo : Getty Images)
Official reports were out that attendances in Chinese Super League games are starting to become at par with that of Spain's La Liga, Italy's Serie A, and France's Ligue 1 fixtures.
An in-depth research conducted by the Football Benchmark division of KPMG Sports said that games from the CSL, the United States' Major League Soccer, and the newly-founded Indian Super League are beginning to rival those of the Big Five European football leagues namely the English Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1.
World Soccer indicated that although the EPL and Bundesliga are still high on top of the rankings when it comes to total average attendance with 42,700 and 36,000 respectively, the latest statistics reveal that the CSL, MLS, and ISL "are now attracting crowds comparable to those in Spain's La Liga, Italy's Serie A and France's Ligue 1".
CSL pulled off the "highest growth in average attendance of all the named competitions" as it increased by 16.7% in attendance in 2015 compared to the year before with 21,800 average spectators per match, only a few hundred audiences less than that of the Serie A and Ligue 1 in the same time period.
The MLS currently has an average audience of 21,536 while the two-season-old ISL has 26,376, the highest among the three up-and-coming leagues. ISL figures are actually higher than that of the 2015-2016 La Liga season.
It was reported that "The increasing popularity generated by the arrival of internationally recognized players and managers, combined with the growing interest of sponsors and availability of unutilized capacity at certain venues" are the main drivers of the sudden growth of football attendance in China, the United States, and India.
