As a keen football fan, you’ll know that there’s a whole lot more to a game than just which team wins. In fact, the atmosphere at the stadium matters almost as much as the game, and fans pride themselves on out-doing their rivals in the noise department.
There’s nothing worse than sitting in a quiet stadium where no one seems to be having any fun. Oh wait, there is one thing worse: paying almost £8 for a pint of beer. But luckily, that only happens in London, for the most part.
So, if you’re all about the atmosphere, you might be interested in finding out which stadiums do the best job of keeping things fun. We didn’t have quite enough time to visit every single Premier League stadium and see for ourselves, so we did the only reasonable thing; we took to Tripadvisor to see what real fans have been saying.
We looked for mentions of words like “good atmosphere," "singing," and “bouncing” and rated each stadium based on how many people had this sort of feedback.
Here are the final rankings, according to said reviews:
Stadium | Reviews | Keywords | % |
---|---|---|---|
Selhurst Park Stadium | 196 | 44 | 22.45% |
Gtech Community Stadium | 124 | 24 | 19.35% |
LCFC King Power Stadium | 574 | 108 | 18.82% |
Molineux Stadium | 124 | 23 | 18.55% |
Portman Road Stadium | 134 | 23 | 17.16% |
The City Ground | 133 | 21 | 15.79% |
St Mary's Stadium | 587 | 85 | 14.48% |
Vitality Stadium | 75 | 8 | 10.67% |
London Stadium | 1814 | 178 | 9.81% |
American Express Stadium | 647 | 58 | 8.97% |
St James' Park | 2089 | 164 | 7.85% |
Emirates Stadium | 2006 | 151 | 7.53% |
Anfield Stadium | 8155 | 537 | 6.58% |
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium | 885 | 41 | 4.63% |
Old Trafford | 6723 | 303 | 4.51% |
Aston Villa Stadium Tour* | 1628 | 69 | 4.24% |
Craven Cottage | 1338 | 56 | 4.19% |
Goodison Park | 1285 | 45 | 3.50% |
Etihad Stadium | 5348 | 186 | 3.48% |
Chelsea Fc Museum & Tours* | 4409 | 117 | 2.65% |
*Both Aston Villa and Chelsea don't have direct Tripadvisor pages for their stadiums Villa Park and Stamford Bridge, only museum or stadium tour review pages.
We can now exclusively reveal that the stadium with the best atmosphere is Selhurst Park, according to Tripadvisor reviewers. With a rating of a massive 22.45% on our scale, 18 people called out a “good atmosphere”, while eight reviews mentioned singing.
According to one review, “The atmosphere inside the stadium was incredible; the Palace fans know how to enjoy themselves!!” Although the same person did say that Selhurst Park is “like stepping into a time warp, in a good way." Whatever that means.
The Gtech Community Stadium came next, with 19.35%, based on 24 keyword mentions out of 124 reviews. Brentord’s 17,250-seater stadium got lots of positive reviews, with words like "chanting," "singing," and “loud” all being mentioned.
“Friendly atmosphere from home fans and stewards alike, limited food and drink offered in the away end but was very good value, especially for London”. Good value for London? I had to verify these prices myself, and can confirm that you’ll get a pint and a sausage roll for just £9.45. That’s enough to lift the atmosphere in any stadium.
Coming in at a respectable third place, LCFC King Power Stadium got 18.82%, with 71 reviews using the words “good atmosphere" and 11 even saying it had a “top atmosphere”. If you’re a fan of Leicester City, or a travelling supporter, you’ll be well-acquainted with this 40,000-seater stadium. Home fans have had a lot to sing about since 2015.
One review said “top place for food and football the atmosphere is electric and the staff are great”, while another lavished praise on the experience in the hospitality suites. There was even great feedback on concerts at the venue - what more could you want?
Down the other end of the scale, we found some seriously sad stadiums. Right at the bottom of the list, with just 2.65%, was Chelsea’s stadium, albeit the stadium itself is not on Tripadvisor, only the museum tour. Still, visitors who attended matches felt obliged to leave reviews here, and while you might think Stamford Bridge would have quite a good atmosphere, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all.
Most of the complaints were about the tour rather than the atmosphere at actual matches, but according to one reviewer, “Awful ground with dated stands and an awful club with fans that only support the club because of the bottomless pit of money paid for players.”
Another person said they “hope we get relegated," so do with that what you will.
Second from the bottom, Etihad Stadium scored 3.48%, with just 186 keyword mentions from over 5,000 reviews. The Etihad (or The Emptyhad) can seat over 53,000 fans, making it the seventh-largest football stadium in England, so you’d expect that all those people could create quite an atmosphere, right? WRONG.
While perhaps not a direct complaint about the atmosphere, one review said, “Awful, staff treated me abhorrently. Kid spat at me. Some big Norwegian fella pushed me over. Definitely wouldn’t recommend”. We genuinely don’t know what’s going on there, but we just keep picturing the scene in my head, and I wanted you all to have the same pleasure.
Rounding out the bottom three (or should we say, “in the relegation zone”?), Goodison Park received a rating of 3.50%, with absolutely no one even bothering to use the word "vibrant." No one used the word "limbs" either.
One person said, “The service for food and drink can best be described as poor and extremely slow as well as selling out of many products. The atmosphere from the Home supporters was also poor; not sure if this was down to Everton losing or the apparent desire to want the Manager out”.
Although, that comment was from February 2019, and Everton has had six managers since, so maybe the atmosphere has improved a little in the intervening years?
Casinos.com utilised Tripadvisor reviews to do an in-depth analysis of phrases associated with atmosphere to determine the Premier League stadium that has the best atmosphere. We calculated the percentage of view-related mentions in the total Tripadvisor reviews.
The data and graphics on this page are free to use as long as proper credit is given by linking to the original article.
The data in this article is intended for entertainment purposes only. Casinos.com does not claim any one stadium to necessarily have better atmosphere than another. Please don’t use the information presented in this article as completely factual but rather a representation of real visitor reviews left on Tripadvisor.