Football is by far the biggest sport in the world on almost every level from money, tv viewership, social media and what not. Europe’s top 5 professional football leagues (English Premier League, Italian Series A, Spanish La Liga, French Liga 1, Germany Bundesliga) are in the top 10 list of most lucrative professional league of any sport but over the last couple of decades other sport leagues has over taken football leagues in terms of average season attendance and today we take a look at top 10 leagues according to average attendance.
IPL is one of the top leagues in cricket and Australian BBL also at top of the list
American Football’s NFL is by far the highly attended professional league of any sport. There are around 32 teams divided into two divisons of 16 teams each and around 256 matches are played each season including the playoffs and the big super bowl.
Average attendance from 2015 was around 68,776 per game with total season attendance reaching 17.6 million making it the highest attended pro league in the world. While Germany Bundesliga and English premier league are second and third in the list with average attendance of around 43,000 and 37,000 respectively.
But if we also include sports like Formula 1 and MotoGP they will easily come into top 5 places of average attendance. Formula 1 2015 season had around 20 grand prixs and the average weekly (Friday to Sunday) attendance was around 161,000 a week through out the season with total 2.7 million people visited F1 circuit during grand prix. But since Formula 1 is more of international sport its unfair to put it along other domestic professional leagues. So Below is the list top 10 highest attended professional sports leagues in the world.
The attendance figures are taken from official sources of the respective leagues. We have only considered domestic league competitions around the world.
- NFL(American Football)
Average attendance of 68,550 and 17.6 million Season attendance,Consisting 36 teams/256 matches in the tourney
2. Bundesliga(German Football) 
Average attendance of 43,500 and 13.3 million Season Attendance,Consisting 18 teams/306 matches
3. Premier League(England Football) 
Average attendance of 37,400 and 14.1 million Season Attendance,Consisting 20 teams / 380 matches
4. AFL(Australian Rule Football) 
Average attendance of 33,600 and 6.9 million Season Attendance,Consisting 18 teams / 207 matches
5. IPL (Indian T20 cricket) 
Average attendance of 32,800 and 2 million Season Attendance,Consisting 8 teams / 60 matches
6. MLB(American Baseball) 
Average attendance of 30,500 and 73 million Season Attendance,Consisting 30 teams / 2426 matches
7. Big Bash(Australia T20 cricket) 
Average attendance of 29,000 and 1.1 million Season Attendance,Consisting 8 teams / 35 matches
8. La Liga(Spanish Football) 
Average attendance of 27,200 and 10 million Season Attendance,Consisting 20 teams / 380 matches
9.Nippon Pro League(Japan Baseball) 
Average attendance of 26,450 and 22 million Season Attendance,Consisting 12 teams / 864 matches
10.UEFA Champions League(Football) 
Average attendance of 41,500 and 5.1 million Season Attendance,Consisting 32 teams / 125 matches.
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