Now that the three major soccer leagues in East Asia – the Chinese Super League, Japan's J1 League and the South Korean K League 1 – have finished their latest seasons, CGTN has a wrap-up of crowd attendances based on data from German soccer website transfermarkt.com and Chinese sports media outlet, ttplus.cn.
Fans of CSL's Guangzhou Evergrande cheer for their home team in the game against Tianjin Quanjian. /VCG Photo
The total number of spectators for the CSL from 240 games was 5,772,690. Average attendances reached 24,052, lower than the 24,897 from 2017 but still the highest among the three leagues. Two teams, Guangzhou Evergrande and Beijing Sinobo Guoan had the best average attendances of, respectively, 47,001 and 41,743. Titlists Shanghai SIPG had only 21,631 spectators per game.
The three most popular games were all at the Workers' Stadium, home stadium of Beijing Guoan, with Shandong Luneng, Guangzhou Evergrande and Beijing Renhe the opponents.
Of the CSL's 16 teams, two had average attendances of over 40,000, three saw more than 30,000 and three had over 20,000. Guangzhou R & F saw the lowest of 10,255.
Fernando Torres (L) of Sagan Tosu and Andres Iniesta (R) of Vissel Kobe meeting each other in a J1 League game. /VCG Photo
The J1 League in Japan continued to get better as the average attendances this season grew from 18,878 to 19,063. In the 306 games among the 18 teams, there were 5,833,538 spectators. Urawa Red Diamonds were the most popular team with an average audience of 35,502 for each home game, nearly 10,000 more than No.2 Tokyo FC.
Seven teams enjoyed average attendances of over 20,000 (below 30,000) this season. Vissel Kobe should thank Andres Iniesta for their growth from 18,272 to 21,630. On July 22, when the former Spanish star made his debut at the Noevir Stadium Kobe, 26,146 people watched the game, setting a new season record for home games. The same thing happened to Sagan Tosu who signed Fernando Torres and saw their average attendances rise from 14,194 to 18,272.
Teams with fewer than 20,000 average attendances came with happy surprises, too. Jubilo Iwata has only 15,165 seats and 84 press spots at their Yamaha Stadium but saw an average of15,474 showing up for each game. Shonan Bellmare had also as many as 12,120 on average watch every of their home games at the Shonan BMW Stadium Hiratsuka.
A K League 1 game between Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors (green) and Gyeongnam FC (white). /VCG Photo
By comparison, K League 1 in South Korea remained in a slump as there were only 1,071,672 spectators for the 2018 season, fewer than one-fifth of CSL and J1 League. The average attendances were 5,439, lower than half of the bottom teams in the J1 League. FC Seoul (12,981) and Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors (11,243) were the only two teams that had an average attendance of over 10,000.
Half of the league's 12 teams saw fewer than 5,000 to watch home games on average. Choi Kang-hee, new manager for CSL's Tianjin Quanjian, said that he felt very depressed about the depression in South Korea's soccer league. Perhaps that's why a lot of the quality managers of the country choose to go overseas.