Eredivisie reports record early-season numbers
October 12 – The Eredivisie has opened the season with record crowds and its strongest early-season television figures, giving the Dutch top flight an encouraging start to a new media cycle.
After seven rounds, average attendance stands at 20,251 per match – almost 700 higher than at the same stage last season – with grounds running at around 95% capacity.
That figure is now well above the pre-Covid levels. In 2019/20, occupancy hit 86%, while average gates across the years immediately before the pandemic were generally fixed below 20,000.
The rise has not been entirely linear. Average attendance reached 20,030 in 2024/25 before dipping to 19,558 last season, partly because of changes in the make-up of the division and the size of the promoted clubs’ grounds. Even so, occupancy continued to climb.
On that measure, the Eredivisie now sits alongside Europe’s best-supported leagues. Its 95% figure trails only the Premier League on 98% and Bundesliga on 96%, and is sat comfortably ahead of Ligue 1, LaLiga and Serie A.
The television picture is moving in much the same direction. The division released figures that ESPN is averaging 207,000 viewers per live match through the first seven rounds, up from around 150,000 in 2016/17 and the highest figure recorded at this point of an Eredivisie season.
Audience share has grown even faster, from 3.7% in 2016/17 to 8.1% this season.
Ajax against PSV on September 5 has been the biggest draw so far, reaching almost 1.4 million unique viewers and averaging more than 800,000 across the match, with a 17% audience share.
ESPN holds the domestic rights through to 2030, while the league has also taken greater control of its international distribution since the start of the 2025/26 season. IMG and Infront were subsequently brought in on five-year deals to sell and distribute those rights abroad.
Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV still do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to nationwide audiences, but full grounds are no longer confined to just the big clubs, with NEC Nijmegen, PEC Zwolle and Excelsior among those regularly operating close to capacity.
That may prove to be the more significant part of this story. Dutch football is not just drawing bigger audiences on television; it is doing so while more people are still turning up in person.
Contact the writer of this story, Harry Ewing, at [email protected]
