West Ham United reported massive attendances in the Premier League last season, despite being relegated after an abject year left them finishing eighteenth in the league. These numbers which the club reported, often way up in the sixty thousands, it turns out, were grossly overstated.
Official statistics obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request from turnstile software managed by Newham Council paint a very different picture as quite literally hundreds of thousands of WestHa fans voted with their feet and stayed away.
As reported by fourfourtwo.com, it turns out that the West Ham figures reported were inaccurate to a staggering degree.
“Data obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request from turnstile software managed by Newham Council has revealed an average discrepancy of nearly 13,000 unoccupied seats per Premier League fixture at the London Stadium during the 2025/26 season.”
Which works out at something around a quarter of a million missing fans who were claimed to be attending games in 2025/6 – but were not.
“While the club reported selling an average of 62,455 tickets across 19 home league matches – representing a 99.92% capacity fill rate – turnstiles recorded an actual average attendance of just 49,567 spectators, placing true stadium occupancy at 78.66%, meaning a total of 244,870 paid-for seats remained empty on matchdays across the campaign.’
The board would have had the same turnstile figures but of course, with the boycott of games and supporter protests, would have sought to win the PR war and over-inflated the numbers based on ticket sales rather than attendees. At least, that’s my take on it.
The worst reported discrepancy was for West Ham’s relegation derby with Nottingham Forest on January 6th when there were over 29,000 empty seats for that particular fixture.
Talk about voting with their feet. To my mind it is a scandal that the board could get away with reporting inaccurate figures just to save face. Just call me Mr Angry.
The way premier league clubs do their season ticket accounting to spread the income over all home games is to say that ticket sold that day. So even if 40,000 people turned up due to the club selling 55,000 season tickets means a minimum attendance of 55,000. It’s all for tax purposes as they spread their taxpayments over the year rather than 1 lump sum.
I to attended most home games last season.
No way were there that many empty seats!!
Im sorry but these figures just don’t ring true. Im a season ticket holder, I never miss a game.Im sure that I would’ve noticed that many empty seats around me and I never.Plus this year 60k+ season tickets have sold, so the support is clearly there. IMO its more that people work and can’t get there in time/ get home too late or that people bring their children/ grandchildren who have school the next day. Either way this negativity really isn’t necessary. The boys are flying right now. Get behind them instead of writing this stuff
You’ve clearly never sat in band five of the Billy bonds stand.
At least this season therell be many 3 oclock Saturday fixtures.
Seats around me are still empty now even when we’re winning loads of games back to back. People don’t turn up for one reason or another and they can’t be bothered to put the ticket on the ticket exchange. Mind you when I’ve not been able to attend a game I put my ticket on the ticket exchange. The club offered me £13 if it sold but it didn’t. Nobody wanted the ticket. It didn’t sell. Which is probably why a lot of people don’t bother putting their ticket on exchange when they can’t attend. Ruins the atmosphere though with so many empty seats.
But the seats were still paid for whether anyone chose to turn up for the game or not.
With the way we have been playing the few years,
Why would you pay a ransom to watch?
Time to lighten up, Martin. Wake up, smell the coffee. Today is going to be a good day.
I struggle to get home in reasonable time for evenning fuxtures so i dont always go. Club should move to 19:30 kick offs for night games.
I was at that Forest game, and there were indeed plenty of empty seats but I think I would have noticed if HALF the ground was empty!
I have season tickets for 2 grandsons and myself, we live in Chelmsford, they cannot come to evening matches because we wouldn’t get home until midnight and the article I read was particularly mentioning evening matches. There must be many supporters in the same position.
All that tells me is there are far too many people that have too much money that weren’t really club fans and shouldn’t have been season ticket holders. Think we’ll find this season will have rectified that quite a bit.
Anyway this kind of negativity we shouldn’t be broadcasting. This season is about reversing divisions, building back up to something like our former selves and above all celebrating heroes like Ludo. Please pass on the memo.
Looks like this is a sour note.
Hope figures are more accurate this year.
The club has never claimed the numbers they are reporting are based on turnstiles, it is aiways seat sales that are reported,
The club should arrange with the London Stadium to paint the seats Claret because if you look around at matches this season, the empty white seats come staring back at you, maybe less than last season, but nothing has changed.
I can’t attend every match, especially the night games, however, I do try to make sure there’s a West Ham fan in them for every match
The club should encourage snd help season ticket holders to give their seats away if they cant sell them 24 hours before kick off, local school kids for example.
Ps check the seats available for sale the day before the match, and you’ll see plenty available.
What happened to taking tickets away from people who consistently fail to turn up?
On a day we lose one of our greatest only west ham fans can find some negativity to cast a shadow over big boy .jeez I hate our fans sometimes.
👏🏾⚒️👏🏾
Good article Mr Angry
As someone who didn’t miss a home game last season I would dispute that. There is no way that any game had that many empty seats.
Agreed
Yeah mate, I think we should be questioning those Newham council figures as well.
so we could have stayed at Upton park and all the tourists could just jog on.