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Scottish council areas are listed for each club’s home city or town. Scottish Council areas map, here. ‘List of towns and cities in Scotland by population‘ (en.wikipedia.org). This next map shows populations densities in Scotland, here. You can see the heavy concentration of population in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the Central Belt that connects the two cities. 8 of the 12 clubs in the 2010-11 Scottish Premier League are from this belt, and around 20 of the 24 highest-drawing clubs in Scotland are in the belt {see my map from last season, here, which shows all clubs (24) that drew over 1,000 per game in 2008-09)
Attendances on the map page are for home league matches, 2009-10 season. Attendance was down at 9 of the 12 clubs last season, with only then-promoted St. Johnstone seeing a significant upswing (from 3,516 to 4,717 per game). Kilmarnock saw a modest +4.6% gate increase (of 245 per game), to 5,972, but that’s still well below their past-decade high of 9,422 per game in 1999-2000. This season {2010-11 attendances at E-F-S site, here}, Celtic is currently seeing around a 4,400 per game turnstile increase, to 49,000 or so per game, but still far below their modern era high of 59,353 per game, in 2000-01. All through the decade of the 2000s, Celtic was outdrawing Rangers, often by a 10,000 per game margin. But in the latter half of the 1990s, Rangers were drawing around 49,000 to Celtic’s 48,000. So last season was the first time since the late 1990s that Rangers outdrew Celtic. The basic reason is Rangers’ 2 straight Scottish titles, and Celtic’s two consecutive seasons without a major title. Hibernian has an exciting and improving squad (but are faltering this season, in the bottom half of the table), and have a new stand (the East Stand), and gates have increased. Hibs are pulling in around 13,000 per game this season, which is around 1,200 higher than their 2009-10 gate figures. Inverness Caley Thistle, promoted back this season, for their sixth season in the Scottish top flight, have seen crowds at 5,000, and that is equal to their best (which was 5,061 per game in their second season in the first tier and their first full season in their renovated stadium). Their Caledonian Stadium is right on the shore of the Moray Firth, and seats just over 7,000. Inverness are one of four clubs in the Scottish Premier League with a ground smaller than 10,000 capacity, and one of 8 clubs in the league with a ground smaller than 20,000. And when you factor in the giant capacities of Celtic Park (cap. 60,832) and Ibrox (cap. 51,082), and the crowds that the two Old Firm clubs pull in, you can see why the Scottish Premier League is one of the most lopsided and competitively unbalanced football leagues in the world. In the 1980s, there was hope that Dundee United (1983 title) and Aberdeen could break the monopoly of the Old Firm (until Alex Ferguson left Aberdeen to manage Manchester United, after he had led Aberdeen to a European Cup Winners’ Cup title in 1983, then back-to-back Scottish titles in 1984 and 1985); and in the early 2000s, Hearts looked like they could muscle in (until their owner went nuts, doing things like firing George Burley after he had Hearts start the 2005-06 season with 8 straight wins). These days no one talks of who could have even a ghost of a chance to wrest the title from Rangers or Celtic. It’s been 25 seasons straight that the title has been in the hands of the Old Firm, and the fact that Rangers or Celtic will win the title is a done deal from the get-go. And crowds are way down compared to a decade ago. Last season, the Scottish Premier League averaged, as a whole, 13,920 per game. In 1999-2000, the Scottish Premier League averaged 17,901 per game. That’s a drop-off of 3,981 per game.
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Thanks to Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, (set at Inverness Caley Thistle’s Caledonian Stadium, here).
Thanks to Perthshire Picture Agency, www.ppapix.co.uk, for St. Johstone/McDiarmid Park photo, here.
Thanks to Hibs fan Disco Dave Barlow for the Hearts/Tynecastle aerial photo, here.
Disco Dave Barlow’s photostream at Flickr.com, here.
Thanks to MJM Architect, for the St. Mirren/St. Mirren Park photo, here.
Thanks to www.Glasgow2014.com, for this stunning, giant photo of Celtic Park [it might take a little while to download], here.
Thanks to Football-Pictures.net, for the photo of Rangers’ Ibrox, here.
The next photo came from a site I couldn’t access (I did a screen shot of the Google Image search page for ‘fir park stadium motherwell’), 24th image, here.
Thanks to RSSSF.com, for all-time table in Scotland, here.
Thanks to E-F-S site, for attendance figures, here.
Thanks to Demis.nl, for the base map. Demis Web Map Server.
Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, 2010-11 Scottish Premier League.
