How Stoke City’s average attendance this season compares to recent seasons

The 2021/22 season has been a rather disappointing one for Stoke City so far.

Despite pre-season hopes of a push for promotion back to the Premier League, the Potters find themselves languishing in mid-table in the Championship.

As a result, Michael O’Neill’s side now ought of contention for a return to the top-flight for another campaign.

But just how has that impacted on the number of spectators attending games at the Bet365 Stadium this season, in comparison to previous years?

Here, we’ve taken a look at Stoke’s average attendances across the course of the past few seasons, according to Transfermarkt, in order to find out.

To begin with, Stoke’s average attendance at home games this season is 20,822, the fourth highest in the Championship this season, behind only Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest and Derby.

Beyond that, the fact that games were behind closed doors last season means things cannot be compared with that campaign.

However, that does mean that average attendances at the Bet365 Stadium have dropped from the 2019/20 campaign when fans were last allowed in, when 22,828 supporters attended per home game.

That itself was also a drop from the 2018/19 season, Stoke’s first season after relegation to the Championship from the Premier League, when an average of 25,200 fans atteneded each home game at the Bet365 Stadium.

Perhaps not surprisingly, that in itself was a drop from the average attendance at the club during their final campaign in English football’s top-flight, the 2017/18, when the Bet365 Stadium welcomed an average of 29,280 per game.

Interestingly, that final season in the Premier League had seen attendances rise from the Potters, with the three seasons before that having seen Stoke average between