Bundesliga to regional league
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In the Germany-wide spectator table for 2024, double winner Bayer Leverkusen is in 18th place, and eight second division teams are ready for the first division, although they did not give their fans at home a reason to celebrate too often. Transfermarkt takes a look at the most visited football arenas in Germany in the 2024 calendar year – the focus is exclusively on league games from the 1st to the 4th division.
In Germany, 46 football clubs welcomed an average of over 10,000 fans to their home games last year. The leader of all regional leagues in terms of average attendance is MSV Duisburg with 13,710 fans; The Zebras were still part of the 3rd league in the first half of the year and are now number one in the West Region. Things went the other way around for Alemannia Aachen, which secured promotion as regional league champions and ranked 26th in a Germany-wide viewership comparison in 2024 with 24,933.
The third division team that plays in front of the most fans is Dynamo Dresden with 28,876 visitors per home game. This means that the SGD leaves six first division teams behind, including VfL Wolfsburg (average attendance: 25,641), VfL Bochum (25,352) and TSG Hoffenheim (25,096).
In the 2nd Bundesliga, this time not the best, but probably the most balanced of all time, Schalke is still very popular with the fans despite some dismal performances. An average of 61,438 spectators flocked to the Knappen’s home games, which is enough for a place on the podium compared to the rest of Germany. The arena was almost always sold out, even though there were only an average of 1.53 points and 1.76 royal blue goals to celebrate.
BVB, Bayern, Schalke & HSV counted over a million viewers in 2024
The supporters of Hertha BSC (52,706) were hit even harder; Although they saw two Berlin goals per game, they only got 1.35 points for that. In the top 20 of this list, only 1. FC Köln gave their fans fewer moments of success. Even after a strong final spurt that left the relegated team overwintering at the top of the table, FC only scored 1.32 points per home game in front of an average of 49,921 spectators in 2024. This puts the Domstadt team in 9th place in the spectators table, ahead of 1. FC Kaiserslautern (45,628).
BVB (81,365) and FC Bayern (75,000) traditionally sit at the top. 1,301,840 fans flocked to Signal Iduna Park in 16 home games, and 1,275,000 spectators attended Munich’s Allianz Arena in 17 Bundesliga games. Schalke also broke the million mark in 2024 with 1,044,441 tickets sold and Hamburger SV with 1,005,670 visitors. The fact that HSV cracked this mark is due to the fact that the Volkspark served as a second division match city 18 times this year.
Stadium occupancy of the clubs by league: Bundesliga, 2nd league and 3rd leagueWhen you look at the number of visitors, not just to the Bundesliga, but also to the lower-class clubs, it becomes clear that Germany is the world leader when it comes to football interest. Even in England, the clubs in the Premier League, Championship and League One do not attract as many fans to their stadiums on average as the Bundesliga, 2nd Bundesliga and 3rd League. And this despite the fact that heavyweights – at least in terms of attendance – such as Schalke, HSV, Cologne and Hertha play second-rate, while clubs with smaller followings such as Heidenheim, Kiel or Augsburg compete with BVB and Bayern.
