2023-10-08 19:04:40
Barcelona Espanyol tends to save on weekends. The white-and-blue team will visit Villarreal B at an unusual time, on Monday evening (9 p.m., M. LaLiga Hypermotion), which is not unknown to them at all. Les Periquitos are the Segona club that will play the most matches between Monday and Friday if you take into account the matches played and those already scheduled up to matchday 14. Specifically, half of the matches will have taken place outside the weekend. No other team even comes close.
Growth in the number of Spanish League matches during the week in the Cornellà-El Prat era
Espanyol are followed by Zaragoza, Levante, Valladolid and Eibar, with 35.7% of the games outside the weekend. It is no coincidence, however, that these five clubs – all of them considered aspirants for promotion – are the ones with the most games scheduled between Monday and Friday. The reason? Basically, TV ratings. “In Segona they tend to schedule the most interesting matches outside of the bulk of the weekend slots in First Division. Being a team with a higher box office and that charges more for television rights means that we are there more, in this type of schedule”, Espanyol sources explain to ARA.
In Segona, they tend to schedule the most interesting matches outside of the bulk of the First Division weekend slots.”
Spanish sources
Three of the first seven games of the season at Stage Front Stadium are off the weekend: two on Friday and one on Monday. This makes it difficult for many season ticket holders to reach the minimum number of games (16) required to be eligible for a 50% discount on the price quota if the team returns to the First Division in the 2024-25 season. At the moment, it accumulates an average attendance of 18,953 spectators out of a total of more than 24,000 subscribers.
The white-and-blue entity assures that filing a formal complaint would do no good. Of course, last Monday Espanyol held talks with representatives of the League to seek to better adapt the schedules to groups such as fans from outside Barcelona or the youngest, for whom it is particularly difficult to go to the stay on weekday evenings. The League’s response was clear: scheduling games outside of weekends affects everyone. “There are many influencing factors, but not a special strategy for Espanyol”, point out employers’ sources.
More than 70 variables determine the schedules
The League determines the schedules for each day based on an algorithm that takes into account more than 70 variables: from the position of the teams to climatic factors, through the contrasts of light in each stadium, if it is played in Europe, if it is foresees any event or mass demonstration, the expected attendance or the television audience. “Espanyol is doing well these days, it is getting good audiences”, point out from the League. In the first eight days, the white-and-blues have registered an average audience of 17,000 spectators per match. The highest record, the 28,000 and 27,000 spectators registered against Eldenc and Racing, according to Kantar. They are the only two matches that Espanyol have managed to place among the 20 most watched Second Division matches in Spain. The first eight days of last year, in Primera, accumulated an average audience of more than 209,000 spectators.
Espanyol is doing well at the weekends, it’s getting good audiences”
Sources of the League
Espanyol has long since become accustomed to playing a third of its matches during the week. The first four years at Cornellà-El Prat, in which he managed to play more than 20 games on Sundays, are a long way off: in the last ten seasons, he has only done so twice. The extension of the days has led to an increase in the number of matches between Monday and Friday for the white-and-blues: six in 2011-12, eight in 2013-14, nine in 2014-15 and 12 between 2015-16 and 2018-19. The qualification for the Europa League broke this dynamic, which was reactivated a year later: in the 2020-21, in Segona, and 2021-22, in First, Espanyol played 13 League games outside the weekend. A record that could be broken this year.
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