The top 8 most empty EFL League One stadiums this season | OneFootball

League One attendances have increased slightly on last year, but it's still a struggle for some clubs to get their grounds more than half-full.

Tens of thousands of people attend League One matches every week throughout the season, but here are the eight clubs in the division whose grounds look the emptiest on a Saturday afternoon.

Even in the third tier of the English league system, attendances are holding up pretty well. The average League One attendance this season stands at just over 10,500, demonstrating that the depth of the game in this country is one of its greatest strengths. This mark an increase of 400 on the average for the whole of the 2024-25 season.

The further down the divisions you go, the more difficult it can be to fill a stadium. Capacity crowds in League One are not particularly commonplace. This should be unsurprising. Ticket prices can be high, and it should also be added that average attendances don't represent the number of people inside a ground on a Saturday afternoon. All season-ticket holders are counted as present, whether they're actually at a match or not.

But it remains a simple fact that crowds remain remarkably loyal and durable. 13 of the 24 grounds in the third tier are more than three-quarters full on average for League One matches, and three of them - step forward Wimbledon, Luton Town and Lincoln City - are over 90% full. At the other end of the spectrum, meanwhile, only four of the 24 League One clubs have an average attendance that is less than half the capacity of their grounds, while none are under a third full for a typical League match.

Doncaster Rovers moved into the Eco-power Stadium in 2007, and this was a ground built with ambition, with a considerably higher capacity than its predecessor, Belle Vue. The intervening 19 years have seen the club spend five years in the Championship but also four in League Two, and their current attendances may be affected by having only won the League Two title last season, as well as having had an indifferent 2025-26 so far, with the team in 18th place in the table and only three points above the relegation places.

It may be something of a surprise to see the division's leaders in this list, but Cardiff City's place on it is largely determined by the size of their ground. The Cardiff City Stadium is by far the biggest ground in League One - it's used by the Wales national team - and, with a capacity of 33,280, it's bigger than eight in the Premier League. With promotion back to the Championship looking near-certain for the Bluebirds, this is a figure than we can expect to rise as the 2025-26 reaches its final stages.

6 ? ? Peterborough United

Peterborough United's attendances have fallen this season, despite an improvement in fortunes on the pitch. Peterborough's average attendance for the 2024-25 season was 9,151, despite the team only finishing in 18th place in the table. This season has seen them drop by almost 10% despite them being in a far more comfortable-looking mid-table position. This lower figure is a reflection on their poor start to the season. Peterborough were in the relegation places until the end of October and have recovered to mid-table since then.

5 ? ? Wycombe Wanderers

Although they're in the top half of the League One table, Wycombe Wanderers still struggle slightly for attendances, with crowds having only got to around five and a half thousand despite having finished in 5th place in the table and being only just short of the play-off places again this time around. Since its construction in 1990, Adams Park has had its capacity increased to just over 10,000 in the three and a half decades since, though further expansion is unlikely because of restrictions brought about by its location at the end of a dead-end road. For now, it doesn't seem that further growth would be necessary.

The Select Car Leasing Stadium was built for Premier League football, and once Reading reached it in 2006 there were even plans to increase its capacity by at least a further 10,000. This never came to pass - they ended up spending three seasons over two spells in the top-flight - and the Royals are now in League One, with crowds having slipped since their relegation from the Championship in 2023 and serious financial difficulties which led to sustained protests against former owner Dai Yongge. With the team currently fighting for a play-off place, this is another club at which we may expect the average for the season to increase as we reach its final weeks.

Two seasons in the middle of League One have had an effect on Barnsley's attendances, with crowds having fallen from an average of 12,631 in 2023-24 to 11,189 this season. Over that time, they've slipped from being a yo-yo club to being a mid-table League One club, and the mood around Oakwell has not been especially happy.

Again, a relatively large capacity is partly to blame, here. Oakwell has a capacity of 24,000, though a reduction in this in 2021 due to safety concerns led to complaints from fan groups. Another mediocre season in League One has hardly provided the encouragement that Barnsley fans need to start attending in greater numbers again.

With their team well adrift at the foot of the table following promotion from League Two at the end of last season, Port Vale have been struggling for attendances, which have fallen slightly on the average of 7,608 who saw them promoted as runners-up to Doncaster Rovers at the end of 2024-25.

But there is also a small historical curio which helps to explain why Vale Park is so high on this list. The ground was opened in 1950, at the peak of post-war attendance boom. And the plans for it were nothing if not ambitious. It was originally intended to hold 80,000 people and became known as the "Wembley of the North" during the planning stage.

These plans were scaled back, and by the time it opened its capacity was 40,000 - although they did manage to pack in almost 50,000 for an FA Cup match against Aston Villa a decade later. The current capacity is now less than half of its original capacity - and less than a quarter of the more ambitious plans for it - but Vale Park does retain the scale of a far bigger ground, even today and is ready for Championship football, even though Port Vale haven't played at that level since the 1999-2000 season.

In terms of attendances, Wigan Athletic are caught by a perfect storm. The ground was built at a time when they were just starting their nine-year ascent from Division Three - now League Two - to the Premier League, but Wigan remains to many a rugby league town, with the Wigan Warriors RFLC having attracted 17,000 to the same venue last season.

On top of that, the club have had repeated financial issues over the last few years, which have affected their league position, and 2025-26 hasn't been especially sparkling either, with the team only just above the League One relegation places. This conflation of issues put the club at the top of this list, with the ground routinely well below half-full for matches.

It's also worth noting that two bigger than normal attendances - 15,112 for the visit of Bolton Wanderers in January and 12,811 at the end of February for a game against Huddersfield Town - in the first few weeks of 2026 have also spiked up their average, somewhat. Attendances to match the size of their stadium have long been an issue for Wigan Athletic, and it's unlikely that there will be much of an upturn in them until fortunes improve on the pitch.