The necessarily misnamed “Euro 2020”, one of the largest soccer competitions worldwide, had to be postponed until June 2021 due to pandemic restrictions. The winner of the European Championship was Italy after beating England 3-2 in the final on penalties. Webley Stadium in London hosted the semi-finals as well as the final on 7/6, 7/7 and 7/11 respectively. We employed our international data to see whether the European sporting events are heading back to normality.
With some of the pandemic restrictions still in place, the stadiums had to set limitations on the number of spectators on each game. Wembley, a venue with a capacity of about 90,000 seats, was allowed to offer around 60,000. Our data shows that each day had an average attendance of almost 60,000 spectators. More specifically, on 7/6 the estimated number of fans was 47,900 while for the next day 61,200. The final game that took place on 7/11 had an estimated number of 68,350 fans.
We also looked at two more stadiums where the Quarter-finals took place: Stadio Olimpico in Rome and Allianz Arena in Munich. Stadio Olimpico was allowed to host about 16,000 fans on the game on 7/2: our data shows there were 15,524 visitors. As for Allianz Arena, the limit was set to 14,000 spectators; our data estimated attendance is 19,246.
