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Are you ready for a history-making football match? When Tottenham Hotspur take the field next Wendesday night for their first Champions League home match since 2010, it’s looking like they’re going to smash an attendance record that has been on the books since 1938.
Spurs are playing their home Champions League matches at Wembley Stadium this season due to the partial demolition of White Hart Lane, and they’ll have the full capacity of the Wembley bowl at their disposal. That, combined with an aggressively-marketed ticketing system that includes lower prices for matches than your average Premier League game, means that Wembley is likely to hold just about any Tottenham Hotspur fan who wants to attend (plus some Monaco fans too, I guess).
Tottenham’s single-game home attendance record is 75,038, set back in 1938 at an FA Cup sixth-round match against Sunderland. Think about that for a second — an all-seater White Hart Lane seats just over 36k. Even in an era of terraced stands, that’s more than twice the capacity of a home game at White Hart Lane last season. That’s really packing them in.
According to the Daily Mail, Spurs had already sold over 50,000 seats by Wednesday, and single tickets just went on sale to the general public on Tuesday. Wembley has a capacity of 90,000 seats. So let’s check in with Tottenham’s ticketing website and see how sales are going.
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...OH.
Now, I’ve nearly been burned by this ticketing diagram before when it looked like Spurs had sold out Wembley but they had been holding back significant blocks of tickets for later sales. So I’m hedging my bets slightly and saying perhaps there are a bunch of tickets that have been snapped up for touts or held back for door sales.
But if this is true? Then Tottenham Hotspur just sold out gol-danged Wembley Stadium. That’s astounding. Arsenal’s biggest ever crowd was 73,707, also set at Wembley 18 seasons ago. Suck it, Gooners.
I’m trying to imagine 90,000 Tottenham Hotspur fans singing their hearts out at Wembley Stadium next Wednesday and I can’t quite picture it. It’ll be breathtaking. I wish I could be there.