Another extract from my forthcoming book 'CROWDED HOUSES,' an account of the rises and falls of attendances in European club football.

HUNGARY

Hungary was one of the few countries to continue to operate a ‘normal’ league for much of the Second World War and an average of 5,337 in 1942-43 for example wasn’t a bad figure at all under those circumstances. Indeed it’s higher than anything Hungary has seen this century.

Hungary’s great days internationally were in the decade following the war when they were generally considered to be the best side in Europe if not the world, despite a controversial loss to West Germany in the 1954 World Cup Final. At club level Hungarian sides were considered on a par with all but the very best in Europe and the fearsome Népstadion (now the Ferenc Puskás Stadion) in Budapest was a venue that filled opponents with both awe and dread.

Much of this came to a crashing end with the failed uprising of 1956 and many of the country’s best players – on tour with Honved at the time – headed by the legendary Puskás himself, decided not to return home and took their boots elsewhere on the continent.

But for a few more seasons Hungarian clubs still had much to offer and Vasas Budapest reached the European Cup semi-finals in 1958, drawing a possible national record 105,000 to the Népstadion for their second leg 2-0 win over Real Madrid. Considering the almost hopeless nature of their task, having lost the first leg 4-0, that was a tremendous exhibition of support in what is now a bygone and unlikely ever to return era. The reasons it’s only a ‘possible’ national record is that exact figures aren’t available and some claim that 104,000 for Hungary v Austria in 1955 is the record holder.

In 2000-01 a mere 800 saw Vasas play Latvians Ventspils in the UEFA Cup. Along with a similar crowd at an MTK Budapest tie in the same competition in 2007-08 that was the lowest ever for a Hungarian side in Europe and demonstrates starkly just how far Hungarian football has fallen from those dizzy heights of the 1950s.

In the league that halcyon era produced some incredible crowds. In 1955 – Hungary’s best attended season - the biggest crowd was 98,000 for Ferencváros v Honved. Ferencváros averaged 51,615 that season as Hungarian football experienced a boom that put even that of England in the shade. Crowds rose by an astonishing 350% in the top division between 1946-1955. For fifteen years the average never dropped below 10,000. Even the tragic 1956 revolution didn’t dampen enthusiasm though the league itself remained unfinished that year.

Decline though was just as rapid with gates more than halving between 1963-1971. And the drop began before club and international football seriously declined. Ferencváros won the Fairs Cup in 1965 defeating Manchester United in the semi-final and Juventus in the final. A year later the national team produced one last hint of a return to the glory days when they reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup, defeating holders Brazil along the way. But by then gates had dropped by almost 3,500 inside two years with almost another 2,000 missing the following season.

Hungarian authorities tried various methods to turn the tide. Top league numbers changed. The season was altered between Spring-Autumn to Summer-Spring more than once as Hungarian football struggled to find a format that would welcome back lost support.

Nothing worked for long. Periods of stabilisation and even modest increases were followed by sharp falls in support. It’s now over forty years since Hungary’s last five-figure average and almost twenty since it last hit 5,000. By 2015 the average barely touched 2,500 – the worst ever recorded – and Hungarian records go back to 1920. Although 2015-16 saw a modest uptick in gates they were still appalling. The only real reason for the minuscule rise was another change in format from sixteen clubs to twelve, adding one or two more home matches to the better supported sides. Only two top division games (both Ferencváros home matches) drew five-figure gates, 17,489 and 11,267 respectively. Ferencváros' average of 7,737 was more than twice that of any other club. Taking them out of the equation the biggest crowd of the season was just 4,580. Twenty-five of the 188 league matches were watched by under 1,000 spectators, three of them (all MTK Budapest homes) by fewer than 500 with 316 the lowest of all. Even that was a vast improvement on 2012-13 when Egri averaged 392 and drew three gates of less than 100 – 67,62 and 56. Average occupancy is 24.62%.    

The great boom of the 1990s and early 21^st century passed Hungary by. It took the authorities a long time to accept the world had moved on from the vast uncovered but primitive terraces of the 1950s but finally they stirred from their slumber and at last Hungary entered the age of the all-covered, all-seated modern world. Twenty new grounds have been built this century, fifteen of them opening within the past five years. Coupled with the revival in fortunes of the national side whose qualification for Euro 2016 saw Hungary take their place at a major finals for the first time in thirty years, maybe, just maybe, some light has been spotted at the end of the tunnel.

Whether that light leads to a path out of the long darkness Hungary has experienced or is that of an oncoming train is something only the next few years will tell.   

2015-16 AVERAGES WITH % OCCUPANCY RATE IN BRACKETS

7737 (35.10) Ferencváros

‪3505 (41.46) Diósgyőr

3010 (14.80) Debrecen

‪2822 (20.90) Újpest Dózsa

‪2797 (32.31) Szombathelyi

1989 (14.06) Videoton

‪1927 (21.41) Vasas Budapest

‪1825 (36.77) Békéscsaba 1912

‪1711 (27.26) Honved

‪1699 (44.52) Puskás Akadémia

‪1303 (21.19) Paksi1964

‪778 (8.64) MTK Budapest

SEASONAL AVERAGES NEMZETI BAJNOKSÁG I

1946-47            4637

1947-48            6360

1948-49            6634

1949-50            7288

1950                 5625

1951                 8447

1952                 10104

1953                 11015

1954                 13365

1955                 17151

1957                 17007

1957-58            14612

1958-59            14636

1959-60            16656

1960-61            15225

1961-62            13245

1962-63            14173

1963                  13881

1964                  16046

1965                  14715

1966                  11967

1967                  11359

1968                  9425

1969                  8363

1970                  8676

1970-71             7059

1971-72             6147

1972-73             7221

1973-74             8173

1974-75             8721

1975-76             10088

1976-77             8817

1977-78             8082

1978-79             6555

1979-80             7647

1980-81             6995

1981-82             7028

1982-83             9578

1983-84             7935

1984-85             7811

1985-86             7580

1986-87             7720

1987-88             7977

1988-89             6995

1989-90             5825

1990-91             5728    

1991-92             5531

1992-93             5550

1993-94             5366

1994-95             5852

1995-96             4951

1996-97             4454

1997-98             5775

1998-99             4872

1999-2000         3688

2000-01             4157

2001-02             3944

2002-03             3384

2003-04             3406

2004-05             3272

2005-06             3134

2006-07             2754

2007-08             2929

2008-09             2952

2009-10             3115

2010-11             2812

2011-12             3858

2012-13             2844

2013-14             2992

2014-15             2504

2015-16             2602

The second tier has gone much the same way as the first with attendances now counted in hundreds. In 2015-16 the highest crowd was 4,300 with one gate of 90 the lowest. And while details are nowhere near as complete for this tier as they are for the first, figures clearly show that for many years average attendances were as good or better than current top flight ones. While there were always quite a few sub-500 crowds this division could, at times, draw crowds approaching 20,000 for big matches. Today, the occupancy rate is down to 15.89%. Format changes are more complicated than the top level, as this division has also been regionalised on several occasions with the number of regions varying between two and four. As with all such cases the averages here represent all matches in the division irrespective of number of clubs or regions.

2015-16 AVERAGES WITH % OCCUPANCY RATE IN BRACKETS

1794 (20.18) Zalaegerszegi TE

‪1530 (59.51) Mezőkövesd-Zsóry

‪1367 (50.63) Gyirmót Győri 

1125 (52.97) Kisvárdai

‪867 (38.53) Balmazújváros

‪693 (20.16) Szolnoki MÁV

614 (13.64) Soproni VSE

383 (7.66) Soroksár

383 (5.21) Siófok

‪360 (6.29) Ajka

‪343 (28.49) Budaörsi

‪337 (3.35) Dunaújváros

‪334 (27.83) Szigetszentmiklós

‪330 (3.67) Vác

‪327 (16.19) Aqvital Csákvár

‪260 (17.33) Szeged 2011

SEASONAL AVERAGES NEMZETI BAJNOKSÁG II

1958-59            2782

1959-60            2632

1960-61            2522

1961-62            2734

1962-63            2582

1963                 2669

1964                 2768

1965                 3339

1966                 2874

1967                 2434

1968                 2333

1969                 2622

1980-81            1546

1982-83            3073

1983-84            2896

1984-85            2411

1985-86            2058

1986-87            2120

1987-88            1970

1988-89            1580

2011-12             453      

2012-13             502

2013-14             773

2014-15             774      

2015-16             690

Nemzeti Bajnokság III is currently in three regions and contains what are – by Hungarian standards – several famous names from years gone by. Reserves also operate at this level. Attendance figures appear only sporadically but they seem to have followed the same familiar downward spiral. In 1966 the average was 1,329 with 5,000 the highest for the season though with many crowds in the 100-500 range. By 1999 the average was down to 579 with no gates higher than 2,000. In 2015-16 the average dropped to 339 though the high was a pretty incredible 10,125 between Csepel and Ferencváros II. There were no second tier crowds bigger than that and only two in the top flight. On the other hand there were fifteen sub-100 gates with 42 the very rock bottom.

The Hungarian pyramid is extensive but below the third tier it goes haywire. From twelve clubs in the top league to sixteen in the second and forty-eight spread across the third, the Megye 1. fourth tier explodes into twenty regional leagues containing over 330 clubs.