Quote Originally Posted by JRSLEFTPEG View Post
The crowd figures given now are a lot more accurate than they used to be . For years there was skullduggery aplenty at the turnstiles and the new system of paying for your tickets beforehand has largely wiped this out. I recall, many years ago, a boy boasting that he had made a few hundred quid at the turnstile after a big cup tie and I knew he wasn't joking .
You may be right about skullduggery, JRS, but you are certainly not right about crowd figures being a lot more accurate, certainly not in respect of Premiership clubs. In days gone by some clubs operated what were euphemistically called "directors' turnstiles" (or skullduggery as you so nicely put it although I infer from your post that you think the turnstile operators were the main culprits of skullduggery). This inevitably led to under-declaring the attendances at games. I cannot be definitive about the lower league clubs (and any over-declaring by these lower league clubs will be relatively insubstantial) but the Premiership clubs take the number of season tickets sold and add to that figure the number of tickets sold on the day. As a consequence, the official attendance does not reflect the number of bums on seats and for some games, particularly those relating to Rangers and Celtic, there can be an over-declaration of many thousands especially when games are played at odd times to suit TV. You may argue that such over-declaration of the actual attendance at a game doesn't matter and you may well be right: but you are wrong to think that the officially declared attendance accurately states the number of fans at any particular Premiership game.