Mexico City /
The image went viral on social networks: an immense Cuauhtémoc stadium looked half empty in the game on Matchday 9 between Puebla and Pachuca. And yes, for each of the 7,676 fans who were present there were in proportion up to six empty seats. And it has not only happened in Angelópolis, but also in Ciudad Juárez, Mazatlán, Torreón, Pachuca, Querétaro and Mexico City, places where in some matches did not exceed the barrier of 10 thousand attendees.
This has been the constant in this Opening 2024which just halfway through the season is on track to become the tournament with the lowest attendance since Covid-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted. In total, in the 83 games that have been played to date, One million 581 thousand 281 fans have attended the 17 stadiums of the First Divisionfor a average of 19 thousand 52 followers per game.
Just to give us an idea of the drop, last semester in the regular phase of the Closing 2024 averaged 23,314 people per game, more than four thousand fans in each game. A year before, in the Clausura 2023 there was also a good average with 23,173 fans. Of course, attendance has always decreased in the tournaments that end in December, since in 2022 only 19,960 followers entered per game and in the Apertura 2023 there were 20,651.
light and shadow
While Tigres and Monterrey remain the teams with the best tickets, occupying more than 80 percent of the capacity of its stadiums (Striped with an average of 41,840 and felines with 40,966), there are others that come in free fall unexpectedly.
The most specific cases are Puebla and America. For example, the last tournament The Strip It had an average of 17,473 people who attended Cuauhtémoc in each game. Today, that figure has been reduced by half, as barely counts 8 thousand 667; It is even the team with the worst percentage according to the capacity of its stadium, barely occupying 18 percent of the available seats.
For the Eaglesthe drop is more alarming because after years of alternating between the second and third best teams with assists, now that he had to leave the Aztec Stadiumhis people decided not to follow him to the Sports City. From an average of 42,162 attendees, now It went to 14,563, a decrease of almost 28,000 people. Yes, although the capacity of the Azteca is much greater than that of the Ciudad de los Deportes, with the inertia it had, it would have a full stadium every 15 days, something that has not happened.
Not even on TV
In addition to the low attendance in the stadiums, the audience for Liga Mx matches is also not high. To begin with, of the 83 matches played so far, only 31 have been on open televisionthe others went to pay channels or streaming services.
According to HR Media, a company dedicated to audience measurements in Mexico, Only 10 games have managed to exceed 5 points in the rating (under a methodology where one point corresponds to 201,119 homes that tuned in to the game), of which the National Classic reached a 10.8an acceptable figure that is far from, for example, the 14 points that the Final of the last tournament between América and Cruz Azul had, which was replicated on both Channel 2 of Televisa and Channel 7 of TV Azteca. As for the pay TV matches, Juárez against América reached 2.3 on Fox Sports.
RGS
