Football League World
·2 November 2024
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·2 November 2024
Attendances have dropped at Loftus Road since 2014/15
Queens Park Rangers have had a poor start to the new campaign, and their lowly position in the Championship may have had some fans reminiscing over a time when they were battling the best of the best in the Premier League 10 years ago.
The Hoops have been a perennially bottom-half team in the second-tier for the last nine seasons, yet things looked to be on the up with the appointment of Marti Cifuentes last October, as they climbed out of the relegation zone and survived comfortably with hope that they could push for a top-half finish and beyond this term.
This season has only seen them sink back down to their previous depths, however, with just one league win in their opening 12 games, leaving them in 23rd place heading into a tough run of fixtures.
QPR have certainly not always been around the bottom of the Championship, though, and were a top-flight team 10 years ago under the guidance of Harry Redknapp, as infamous ex-owner Tony Fernandes plowed sizeable investment into their transfer dealings in the hope that they would survive and become an established Premier League side.
That may not have happened, as the R's finished bottom of the league with 30 points, but their top-flight status did mean that large crowds packed into Loftus Road every other week to watch their team take on the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City.
With that in mind, Football League World have compared QPR's average attendance at Loftus Road in the 2024/25 season to the 2014/15 campaign, using Transfermarkt's figures.
It will not be a surprise to learn that QPR's attendance figures for this season are lower than that of 10 years ago, with an average of 12,353 fans in the six games at Loftus Road so far this term, compared to 17,809 across the 19 games in the Premier League in the 2014/15 season.
Loftus Road has an official capacity of 18,439, and the R's best home attendance so far this season came in their season opener against West Brom, with 15,900 supporters watching on as they took an early lead through Lucas Andersen, but the visitors came away with a 3-1 win thanks to Josh Maja's hat-trick.
That is a sizeable drop when compared to their highest attendance in 2014/15, which saw 18,098 supporters cram into Loftus Road in January 2015 to watch Manchester United emerge as 2-0 victors, with strikes from Marouane Fellaini and James Wilson.
Given their smaller stadium, and poor form so far, it is also not a shock to see QPR in the bottom three when it comes to average attendance in the second-tier for this term up to now, according to Transfermarkt's figures.
The R's average of 12,353 is only bigger than Luton Town's Kenilworth Road attendances, at 11,645, and Oxford United's Kassam Stadium, at 11,440.
Blackburn Rovers' average attendances are next closest to the Hoops, with an average of 14,636 fans at Ewood Park so far, which is surely set to improve as the season goes on if their good form continues.
The largest attendances in the Championship so far unsurprisingly belong to table-toppers Sunderland, who boast an average of 40,738 fans at each second-tier outing as they hunt for promotion to the top-flight.