Celtic Park has had more than its fair share of memorable days and nights over the years. The numerous, unforgettable Old Firm wins and victories over some of the world’s best teams in the European Cup probably rank at the top of the list for most fans of Celtic. This iconic stadium is known throughout the world for its electric atmosphere on match days, thanks to the club’s ever-loyal fan base. Celtic are one of the biggest football clubs in Europe, of that there can be no doubt. The first British club to win the European Cup and one of the most decorated clubs in the whole of Europe with a huge global following.

But when it comes to Celtic’s home match day following, how does the club’s attendance record compare to the rest of Europe’s elite?

Celtic Park has a capacity of just over 60,000, making it the largest football stadium in Scotland and the fifth largest in the United Kingdom.

Zhi Yong Lee from Glasgow, UK, Celtic park 2, CC BY 2.0

When looking at Europe’s elite clubs, we are talking about Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Inter Milan, Liverpool, Manchester City, AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus and FC Porto. These are, in all but a couple of cases, probably the most decorated clubs in European club football history. The likes of Manchester City and PSG may not have the same success over the years as the others, but there’s little doubt that these days, they are considered to be the teams to beat in their own respective leagues.

Out of the list of ten clubs above, only Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Inter Milan, the latter by just 6 people, had a larger average attendance than Celtic during the 2017/18 season. Fair enough, some of the aforementioned clubs have smaller stadiums than Celtic Park, but many of the others have much larger grounds.

The capacity of the Camp Nou, Santiago Bernabeu and San Siro is 99,354, 81,044 and 80,018 respectively. The average attendances inside those three stadiums for the 2017/18 campaign was 66,603, 66,161 and 57,529 respectively.

Compare this to the total capacity of Celtic Park, which is 60,411 and the average attendance during 2017/18 of 57,523 and you begin to see just how strong the support for Celtic is during its home games.

Celtic are not only pushing the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Inter Milan close in terms of average attendance, they are coming very close to capacity week in, week out, something which the other three clubs cannot claim. Yes, filling a larger stadium is always going to be more difficult but if you look at the attendance figures across La Liga and Serie A, they are significantly higher than that of Scottish football.

The Scottish Premiership had an average attendance of 15,896 during the 2017/18 season whereas La Liga boasted 26,939 and Serie A 24,767, which combined sees them averaging close to over 10,000 more than Scotland.

Over one million people watched Celtic at Celtic Park in the 2017/18 campaign as they claimed their seventh domestic title in a row – a fantastic feat and one which the supporters should be very proud of.

How does Celtic Park compare to the biggest sporting venues in the world?

When looking purely at the United Kingdom, Celtic Park is quite high up on the list of the largest sporting venues in terms of spectator capacity. Elsewhere in the world though, there are numerous stadiums, both in football and other sports, that easily surpass the official capacity numbers of the likes of Wembley and Twickenham, the two biggest stadiums in the UK.

The graphic below, created using the information taken from Betway’s recent article shows just how big some sporting venues across the world really are.

We doubt the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang has quite the same buzz as Celtic Park on a Saturday afternoon though.