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Boxing Day Serie A – Also for 2020, the English Premier League is preparing to take to the field for the traditional Boxing Day. Challenges like the one between Leicester and Manchester United, as well as the derby between Arsenal and Chelsea will ignite football fans in the UK on December 26, but not only.
One attempt, if we exclude a couple between the 60s and 70s, lasted only the space of one season in Italy. Two, if we consider the quarterfinals of the Italian Cup 2017/18 played on December 26 (Lazio-Fiorentina) and December 27 (Milan-Inter) in 2017.
In the following season, that 2018/19, the Italian top flight had opted for a round on the Premier League model. A unique soccer day, inaugurated by Frosinone-Milan at 12.30 p.m., continued with five games at 3 p.m. and three at 6 p.m., and closed at 8.30 p.m. with the great match between Inter and Naples, in San Siro (This last challenge unfortunately also remembered for the clashes between fans outside the “Meazza” and the death of Emanuele Belardinelli, ultras of Varese, as well as for the racist choirs in the direction of Koulibaly and the closure of San Siro for two days).
Boxing Day Serie A – Spectator Data
However, the results of that soccer drunkenness had revealed the goodness of the choice to go out to the field during the holidays. Beyond 254 thousand viewers went to the stadium to follow the games, with an average of 25,405 amateurs per game (at the end of the year the Serie A average will be equal to 25,068 spectators per game, the highest since the 2009/10 season).
In particular, six clubs, among the hosts, had registered a number of spectators higher than their seasonal average up to that point:
- Frosinone (15,217 against Milan, average before the game 13,088)
- Atalanta (19,787 against Juventus, average 18,661)
- Cagliari (15,777 against Genoa, average 15,165)
- Fiorentina (31,767 against Parma, average 31,419)
- Torino (20,047 against Empoli, average 19,221)
- Bury (63,946 against Naples, average 62,073).
Four clubs that had registered a lower average, with an appreciable difference only in the cases of Rome and Bologna:
- Bologna (19,230 against Lazio, average 21,511)
- Sampdoria (19,190 against Chievo, average 19,396)
- Rome (35,893 vs Sassuolo, average 38,889)
- Sleep (13,195 against Udinese, average 13,611).
Boxing Day Serie A – television audience figures
Even in front of the television screens, the public was not lacking, at least according to the data revealed at the time by Sky Sport. Throughout the day of Boxing Day, they were more than 670 thousand the average viewers who chose the pay TV channels of the Comcast group, with a participation of 6%.
In particular, Serie A stood out with 5 million viewers Accumulated average of the matches of matchday 18. Good results in terms of audience for the matches of the 15 (including Atalanta-Juventus and Diretta Gol), which collected on average 1 million 847 thousand public. In prime time, Inter-Napoli was seen by 2 million 251 thousand viewers medi.
me 5 million on average they were above 4.8 million average ratings recorded on TV every day by Serie A in the first round (91.5 million total in the first 19 days), also considering that the average ratings of the challenges broadcast on DAZN did not appear in the Boxing Day count.
In short, looking at the numbers alone, there would have been excellent reasons to re-propose the format in later seasons. However, Serie A -after a series of reasoning- had opted for a return to the past, “Liberating” the ball parties.
According to rumors, the “cost-benefit” analysis of the Santo Stefano operation had led the Lega executives to make this decision: the results obtained would not have compensated for the controversy related to the breaking of certain habits.
