Lech Poznan has welcomed the biggest attendance since Polish football resumed last month as almost 9,000 viewed the game with Legia Warsaw over the weekend.
Some 8,939 fans attended the Polish top-flight club’s Poznań Stadium to see a 2-1 victory for the home team, with 85 per cent of the 10,500 available seats filled.
Lech Poznan’s ticketing partner is Roboticket, whose technology has allowed the club to sit families together and thus increase capacity while adhering to social distancing rules.
Roboticket said its dynamic seating algorithm allows it to sell 18 per cent more tickets than would be available with a static chessboard setup.
Fans returned to top-tier Ekstraklasa games in Poland in June after the resumption of the competition following the COVID-19 outbreak. Most European competitions halted in March, but while many major leagues have resumed behind closed doors, fans have returned to stadiums in Poland, Hungary, Russia and Denmark.
Hungary’s Ferencvaros is believed to have welcomed the biggest crowd since the COVID-19 outbreak having attracted almost 16,000 fans to its game against Ujpest last month.
Meanwhile, Danish club AGF attracted 7,000 to its home game against FC Copenhagen in Aarhus over the weekend after increased attendances were allowed at SuperLiga games.
Last week it was announced that regimented sections of 500 fans would be allowed in stadiums, meaning a total of 10,000 could possibly fit into the 20,000-capacity Ceres Park while maintaining social distancing rules.
“It took a lot of attention from both our organisation and the audience who had to abide by a lot of rules,” said AGF’s Morten Lerke.
“But it all worked out fine and soundly health-wish and according to the new guidelines of the authorities.
“We also had some good feedback from the authorities and the police. So our fans can be proud of themselves – we contributed to the history of football during the reopening after Covid-19.”
The rules at football matches were changed after test games were studied by the National Police, Danish Serum Institute, the Danish Agency for Patient Safety, DBU and the Divisional Association.
The evaluation said increased-capacity games could go ahead with other measures in place, such as having controlled and managed spectator travel in separate sections, as well as one-metre of physical distance between spectators and contact information for contact tracing.
Photo: Roboticket / AGF Aarhus
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