European football in rude health but Uefa should not rest on its laurels

The European football pyramid is in rude health. That is, at least, the broad conclusion of a report from Uefa that charts the club game’s structural and demographic progress over the past 12 months. It shows that more supporters of men’s and women’s football are passing through the continent’s turnstiles than ever, and that lower-tier crowds are underpinning a 7% surge in uptake.

There is plenty to admire about the findings of Uefa’s club talent and competition landscape report. It makes clear, from its analysis of the 2023-24 season, that the bounceback from Covid-19 lockdowns is complete. Nobody would suggest, after a look at the data, that football’s appeal is waning and that modern attention spans cannot survive 90 minutes, or in most cases a significant degree longer, inside a stadium. The sport has a captive audience that far exceeds most other forms of entertainment and keeps on coming back.

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Some of the attendance figures are eye-catching. A 27% hike in Norway’s Eliteserien, for example, along with 26% rises in the Polish Ekstraklasa and Romania’s SuperLiga. The latter two, in particular, have worked hard to make flagging products more appealing domestically. None of those leagues possess sides that are genuinely competitive on a continental level, perhaps save for the laudable Norwegian champions Bodø/Glimt. But there is clear evidence that, if you build a likable local product, they will come.

That goes for crowds in lower divisions, which increased by 11.7%. This is traditionally a figure driven by events in England and Germany, where sizeable clubs with large stadiums routinely yo-yo between the top two leagues. It is little different this time: tiers two to five in those two countries had rises of 24.4% and 15.2% respectively.

So where may any warning signs lie? Perhaps they can be found at the very top. The report points out that, last season, Serie A was the only “big five” league to have higher aggregate attendances, although an increased average in Ligue 1 suggests its lower total figure, owing mainly to a reduction in size to 18 teams, is deceptive.

The decreases in England, Germany and Spain (4%, 8% and 2% respectively) owe something to a league’s constituent parts in a given year: replacing Elland Road with Kenilworth Road in last season’s Premier League, for example, sends the numbers in one direction. There is less space to grow into for most of the biggest leagues, too, with most grounds generally operating at close to capacity. Perhaps that opens space for a fresh wave of supporters to take a look at football in the divisions below.

It does, though, suggest a fragility in the rosy picture Uefa is rightly keen to present. The governing body has moved sensibly to impose caps on away ticket pricing in European competitions, reducing them this season, but it cannot stop clubs gouging their fans locally. There is surely a limit to whatever makes a viable price for football entertainment, particularly when there are question marks over the competitiveness of all those leagues whose attendances dropped.

That competitive balance is crucial in sustaining football’s vitality. Another section of the report – which also deals with matters such as player usage, the job security of head coaches and the amount of time added to games – lauds the sport’s meritocracy and highlights that 564 different clubs have played in continental competitions over the past decade, 210 of them reaching the group stage.

Introducing the Conference League has bolstered those numbers. But will the bloated new formats of all three European tournaments, with extra games and structures that many of the public are yet to fully grasp, serve to expand the widening gap between haves and have-nots? Clubs across Europe are holding their breath to see how the revamped events play out, how they affect domestic football and what may need to happen next. It is only five years since Andrea Agnelli, the former European Club Association and Juventus chairman, proposed a 14-match group stage and suggested top clubs might field junior sides in their national leagues. That kind of eventuality has been fended off for now but we are arguably halfway there.

The urge, upon seeing the boom in domestic attendances, must be to ensure such progress is preserved and built upon. Uefa issues a separate annual report that deals with financial trends; its next release will give context to the claims that football is bigger and better than ever. Therein will lie a number of red flags and, on a continent-wide level, it may be worth monitoring whether television revenues can continue to rocket as football constantly expands. The disastrous situation in Ligue 1, which fell wildly short of its aim for a €1bn deal in striking an agreement this summer with Dazn and Amazon, has harmed clubs and offers a warning to leagues whose superpowers become overly fattened. Fifa’s inability to reach an agreement with Apple for media rights to the enlarged Club World Cup, instead opening them to tender in July, also hints that those who fund the sport’s excesses may one day have had enough of a good thing.

Maybe football’s foundations are so solid that any collapse in support for the bigger leagues would send even more punters elsewhere in the pyramid. Uefa’s figures show a continent whose love for the game, and actively participating in it, has little parallel: the difficult task ahead is not to take that for granted.