For many years, even academics dismissed the issue. Why worry about attendance when the ticket has been sold? Why care about an empty seat when the revenue is already booked? Schreyer spent the next 20 minutes demonstrating just how flawed that logic is.
Why an Empty Seat Is Never Neutral
An empty seat is a missing customer: someone who doesn’t park, doesn’t drink, doesn’t buy merchandise, doesn’t participate in atmosphere and doesn’t contribute to the home advantage. Clubs feel the loss in their matchday spend; broadcasters see it; VIP guests notice it; future fans internalise it.
Empty seats send a message — and not the one a club wants.
Even worse, the psychology behind attendance is contagious. When supporters regularly see empty patches in the stadium, the perceived value of attending drops. Empty seats breed empty seats.
The No-Show Rate: Football’s Most Underrated KPI
Schreyer challenged clubs to treat no-show management as a core metric, not a curiosity. The share of distributed tickets that go unused reveals more about a club’s health than most operational dashboards.
A high no-show rate can signal three underlying issues:
- A demand problem – the product isn’t compelling enough.
- A distribution problem – tickets are not allocated to the right segments.
- A no-show problem – people who want seats aren’t the people who actually use them.
Across European football, he explained, a rate of around 8% can be considered good; below 5% is excellent. Some Bundesliga clubs achieve this. Many others, across leagues, sit far higher.
Why Fans Don’t Show Up — The Value–Cost Equation
Using years of research and millions of attendance decisions, Schreyer showed that the decision to attend a match is a simple but powerful trade-off: perceived value versus perceived cost.
Value drivers
Fans show up when the opponent is compelling:
- high-value squads
- rivalries
- star players
- historical tension
Supporters buy season tickets because of the home club — but they attend because of the opponent.
Cost drivers
Fans bail when the cost outweighs the moment:
- extreme weather
- inconvenient kickoff times
- travel distance
- fatigue
- work and family commitments
One of Schreyer’s most striking insights was demographic: the most reliable attendees are the very young and the very old. The least reliable? Those in the “peak life commitments” years — the group with the most disposable income but the least disposable time.
Season Ticket Holders: The Heart of the Problem and the Opportunity
Many clubs assume season ticket holders are their most reliable attendees. Schreyer’s data tells a different story.
Most season ticket holders expect to miss 10–15% of matches. They buy as a form of identity, belonging and contribution — not because they intend to attend every fixture.
This leads to the central principle of the presentation:
No-show management is season ticket holder management.
Without strategies to encourage release, resale or reallocation of unused seats, clubs lock out demand while still staring at empty patches across the stadium.
Strategies Emerging Across Europe
While no universal playbook exists, Schreyer highlighted a range of tactics being tested across the football industry:
1. Increase actual usage
- reminder systems
- awareness campaigns
- light incentives (positive or negative)
- adjusting payment systems
- reducing season-ticket volumes to encourage scarcity
2. Increase ticket release
- opt-in systems (fans must confirm attendance)
- opt-out systems (unused tickets automatically released)
- structured secondary markets
- direct club-to-fan matchmaking
3. Cure the symptoms
- controlled overbooking in very specific segments
- using previously “blocked” seats for dynamic allocation
Some clubs lean into demand-driven experimentation:
- larger away allocations in markets where local demand is soft
- mystery-ticket campaigns that generate publicity and convert previously unused seats into sold inventory
Each of these approaches works only when there is one essential resource: excess demand.
Growth Before Optimisation
Schreyer closed on a counterintuitive truth: no-show management is, ultimately, growth management.
If a club wants fuller stands, it must first expand its audience — its physical and mental availability. That means:
- winning new fans
- staying visible
- creating distinctive brand assets
- innovating ticket products
- investing consistently rather than relying on loyalty
Clubs cannot fix no-shows without first broadening the pool of people who want to attend.
Conclusion
Professor Schreyer’s presentation reframed the no-show debate entirely. It is not a nuisance metric. It is a window into demand, pricing, product quality, season ticket strategy and brand strength.
Empty seats have consequences — financial, operational and emotional. And while clubs cannot control the weather or the opponent, they can engineer scarcity, offer smart mechanisms for releasing tickets, and design fan journeys that reduce friction and increase perceived value.
No-show management is not about filling every seat at all costs. It is about building a healthier, more resilient stadium ecosystem — one where atmosphere, revenue and demand reinforce each other rather than erode.
Five Key Takeaways
- An empty seat is never neutral — it affects revenue, atmosphere and future demand.
- No-show behaviour follows a value–cost equation; fans attend for the opponent, not just the club.
- Season ticket holders expect to miss matches, making them central to any strategy.
- Innovative mechanisms — opt-in, opt-out, automated release, incentives — can materially reduce no-shows.
- Sustained audience growth is the foundation for solving no-show problems long-term.
