While star signings like Cristiano Ronaldo have managed to bring tens of thousands of fans to Saudi Pro League games, some clubs have struggled to bring in mere hundreds to watch them
Two Saudi Pro League sides saw an abysmal attendance of just 315 fans for a game on Thursday (January 9).
Al-Riyadh, who are currently sat in seventh place in the league standings, welcomed Al-Khaleej to the Prince Faisal bin Fahd Stadium for a 3pm kick-off. And despite the game resulting in a 2-2 draw following a nail-biting second half, there were merely hundreds in attendance to witness the action unfold.
The stadium, which is nestled in the capital city of Riyadh, has a capacity of 22,188, However, many of the seats were unfilled during Thursday’s clash, when just 315 people turned up to watch along – with a sea of blue seats overshadowing the fans in attendance.
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However, it’s not the lowest attendance that Al-Riyadh has ever witnessed – the side embarrassingly endured a 1-0 loss to Al-Okhdood in September 2023 in front of a shocking 133 fans.
Al-Riyadh’s embarrassing attendance this week is a far cry from Al-Nassr’s own crowd later in the same day – with 16,458 making the trip to Al-Awwal Park to watch Cristiano Ronaldo convert a penalty and Sadio Mane bag a brace in the side’s 3-1 win over Al-Akhdoud.
Elsewhere, even sides playing in the sixth-tier of English football have achieved larger average attendances than the number of fans at the Prince Faisal bin Fahd Stadium on Thursday, with Vanarama National League North side Leamington welcoming an average of 689 fans to their home games in the 2024/25 campaign.
Their lowest home attendance this season was 434 in fixtures with Curzon Ashton and Carlton Town. The struggle to fill seats in the Saudi Pro League shows that there’s still a gulf between the four PIF-owned clubs, which have spent massive amounts of money on attracting stars to the Middle East.
The highest attendance figure of the current campaign goes to first-place Al-Ittihad – with 55,120 in attendance at the King Abdullah Sport City in December to watch the league leaders’ 2-1 win over Al-Nassr. However, with stars like Ronaldo, Mane, Karim Benzema, Fabinho and Ngolo Kante involved in the fixture, it’s hardly surprising that so many decided to invest.
Meanwhile, the league’s average current attendance of 8,183 is highly impacted by the smaller sides struggling to attract the same levels of fans. That hasn’t seemingly put off the Saudi Ministry of Sport, however, which is currently planning on revamping the Prince Faisal bin Fahd stadium to a capacity of 46,865 for the 2027 Asian Cup and the 2034 World Cup.