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After shipping in ten goals in their first two Premier League games of the season, Wigan surprised a lot of football fans with their 1-0 away defeat of Spurs. However a lot of the Wigan fans wouldn’t have seen it because only 60 of them turned up to the game!
The Premiership is turning into a league with quite a few poorly supported teams. Wigan are one of these teams and are only in the League due to outside influences other than the fans.
Football clubs used to survive on fans alone. Stadium attendance was important as it determined the clubs financial situation. Now with the lucrative TV rights of the Premier League, once a team gets there it is easier to stay. The input of an investor and good management can take a team right through up to the top flight and this is what has been happening a lot. The problem is that it means we now have teams in the Premier League with the fan base of a third-tear team.
The problem with teams like Wigan is that they don’t have much potential. Their sole ambition is to stay in the Premier League. They don’t have many fans, they can’t attract big name players and they just turn into nice money-makers for the owners who sometimes lack the passion they should have for the club.
If we look at the favourites to go down this year: Blackpool (1.4), West Brom (2.3) and Wigan (2.32), we also see they are in the bottom five when we look at attendance as well. The problem with this is that it makes a massive divide in the league. It’s easy who will finish in the bottom half of the table come the end of the season and it reduces the excitement of the league.
There are a number of teams in the Championship and lower leagues that should be in the Premier League. They have a large number of fans and big history, but bad club management has caused all sorts of problems and prevented their progress.
If we are to keep the stadiums in the Premier League full, then fans of the likes of Wigan have to be attracted to the games. Ticket prices are important and it might just help to increase the number of supporters if they were reduced a bit.
When you look to make your Premier League bets an often overlooked statistic is the attendance of the games. After all, without fans a football team can’t exist.
