São Paulo suffer as fans stay away, crowds and revenue drop | OneFootball

On Saturday (25), São Paulo played what was likely its last match in the Brazilian Championship at Morumbi Stadium, facing Bahia. The stadium, which will be hosting a series of concerts in November, will give way to Vila Belmiro as the venue for the Tricolor’s remaining home games in the national competition. And São Paulo fans will witness something unprecedented in recent years: the club outside the ‘podium’ of leaders in attendance and revenue.

In a year marked by a rift between the stands and the pitch after frustrating eliminations from the Brazil Cup and Libertadores, São Paulo has seen a considerable drop in attendance and will close out 2025 with the worst numbers since fans returned to stadiums after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Previously ranked first or second in the last three years, São Paulo is now only the fifth club in the Brasileirão in terms of paying attendance. And that’s on average, with 35,293 fans per each of the 15 games so far, behind Flamengo, Corinthians, Cruzeiro, and Bahia, respectively.

If the comparison is based on total paying attendance, the 494,108 São Paulo fans present at the games drop the club one spot in the ranking, surpassed by rival Palmeiras (with a total of 503,185 attendees).

In practice, the Tricolor has seen its stadium occupancy for Brasileirão matches drop to just over half. In 2023 and 2024, for example, this rate hovered around 65%.

The drop in attendance directly affected revenue. São Paulo is currently only fifth in the ranking, whether by average net income (R$ 1,107,196.18), total net income (R$ 15,500,746.56), or gross income (average of R$ 1,830,396.36). In terms of total gross income, R$ 25,625,549.00, the Tricolor falls to sixth place, surpassed by Vasco.

It’s worth noting that, due to playing at the smaller Santos stadium, the tendency is for these numbers to drop even further.

NEGATIVE RECORDS REGISTERED

In addition to the averages, São Paulo’s 2025 campaign broke negative records when it comes to fans in the stands.

The 15,221 people who paid for tickets to the match against Bahia represent São Paulo’s seventh lowest attendance at Morumbi since fans were allowed back in stadiums after the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, four of the games with lower attendance had capacity restrictions, making the match against Bahia the third lowest attended in this period, ahead of only the loss to Ceará two months ago (12,342) and the win over Coritiba in October 2022 (14,993).

Specifically regarding the game against Ceará, the first after elimination by LDU in the Libertadores quarterfinals, it was marked by more than just the result on the field. The number ended a streak of 82 consecutive games with crowds above 20,000. It was also the lowest Tricolor attendance at their stadium since October 2021, when 9,271 people watched another match against Ceará. On that occasion, however, there was a health restriction: the Covid-19 pandemic limited capacity to 30% of seats.

Excluding matches with attendance restrictions, you have to go back almost six years to find such a low number at Morumbi. On November 28, 2019, only 11,970 paying fans watched the 1-0 win over Vasco. This means the game against Ceará had the lowest attendance in São Paulo’s last 135 home matches at full capacity.

Even so, one record was preserved: since March 2018, the club has brought at least 10,000 people to Morumbi in each of its last 180 unrestricted matches.

The revenue of R$ 480,951 represented the Tricolor’s worst since the club earned R$ 473,115 in the 5-1 rout over Inter de Limeira in February 2023. It was the first amount below half a million reais since April of that same year, when R$ 485,825 passed through the box office.

This negative record also exposed a contrast within Júlio Casares’ administration. It was the lowest attendance at Morumbi since the start of his term, but not the lowest for São Paulo home games in the period. Away from home, there were even lower numbers: 11,948 against Bragantino at Vila Belmiro in November 2023, as well as two matches in Brasília earlier this year, against Inter de Limeira (10,060) and Velo Clube (9,803).

Despite the disappointing number, São Paulo is expected to register its fourth consecutive year welcoming more than one million fans to Morumbi, and this year’s total should be at least the seventh highest in history.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.