A Saudi Pro League fixture was hit with another abysmal attendance figure.
The football world eagerly anticipated the rise of the Saudi top tier as a powerhouse division last summer when world renowned stars like Karim Benzema, Neymar and N’Golo Kante followed Cristiano Ronaldo to the Middle-Eastern nation.
But while there has been some buzz to watch the stars of yesteryear perform, Saudi’s less glamorous sides have repeatedly struggled to entice supporters to attend.
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It has become a rather embarrassing running trend where many of the games have attracted even fewer fans than non-league fixtures in England. And those struggles were on show again as Damac FC hosted Al-Taawoun last Friday (April 26).
Damac, in eighth place, welcomed fourth-placed Al-Taawoun, who sit above Benzema’s Al-Ittihad and Steven Gerrard’s Al-Ettifaq. The fixture took place at the Damac Club Stadium, which has a capacity of 5,000 seats.
Yet the official attendance figure for the late afternoon fixture stood at a measly 337. That bleak number came despite Damac averaging 4,860 fans per-game this season.
Will players keep going to Saudi? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
The fans had to sit through a drab 1-0, with the action only spicing up in the 88th minute when Ahmed Youssef Abdullah Al Zain of Damac was sent off. And the away side scored the winner just a minute later as Joao Pedro Pereira dos Santos netted a tap-in from a cut back.
In October, Al-Ettifaq - the former club of Jordan Henderson - attracted attention for hosting a match with just 696 supporters in a 1-0 defeat to Al-Riyadh.
Several other games taking place on the same weekend failed to break the 1,000 mark, including the 532 fans who turned up to watch Al-Hazm’s 4-3 win over Al-Raed.
For context, several clubs playing in the National League, England’s fifth tier of football, manage to bring in more fans to matches on a consistent basis.
Chesterfield boast an average attendance of 7,893 for the 2023/24 season, while Oldham Athletic and Southend United are also in the 6,000s.
The Saudi Pro League’s persistent struggles to fill its state of the art stadiums show that while bringing in big names is not a problem, motivating those players with packed out stadiums and a vibrant atmosphere is a different story entirely.
