Why The Fuss Over Hibs Barca Attendance?

There’s been a lot of gloating among Hearts fans lately about the size of the crowd likely to turn out for Hibs’ forthcoming pre-season friendly against Barcelona at Murrayfield.

Hearts staged a similar match last summer, and on a gloriously sunny Saturday afternoon were able to attract a bumper crowd of more than 58,000 to the home of Scottish rugby, which was the biggest
number of people to have attended a Hearts ‘home’ match in many a year.

However the return of the Catalan giants to Edinburgh this summer does not appear to have captured the imagination of the Edinburgh public in quite the same way this time around. It’s being reported that Hibs have sold around 12,000 tickets for the match, and even if they do manage to sell a few more by the day of the match, it’s unlikely that they’ll get near even half of the figure that Hearts managed to attract last year.

But before people start getting overly smug about this, they should consider a few things first to give us a reality check. Barcelona coming over to Edinburgh last year was a novelty as it was the first time for many years that this had happened, so for it to happen again so quickly, just for another friendly, was hardly going to capture the imagination of the general public in quite the same way. Also, anyone who attended last year’s game would surely have to admit that, although there were some great footballers on display, the match was pretty much a damp squib in terms of it being a serious contest. For the Barca players it was little more than a training exercise and frankly, most of us were bored by half time. With this being the case it’s unlikely that many neutrals would want to come back for more of the same just a year later, and there’s also the fact that the Hibs match is on a Thursday night rather than a Saturday afternoon, which is always something that adversely affects attendances.

I do think that when all things are equal, Hearts tend to get bigger crowds than Hibs. This has been the case for pretty much all of the time I’ve been a Hearts supporter – we’ve always had slightly (and at times significantly) bigger crowds than our Edinburgh rivals, but I’ve never completely bought into this ‘big team, wee team’ thing as the difference isn’t really great enough to justify it. I’m quite sure that had it been Hibs playing Barca last year with exactly the same set of circumstances as we had, then they’d have struggled to attract more than 50,000, but they’d definitely have had a healthy turnout – what that would have been is anyone’s guess, but they would have gotten a big turnout.

I’m all for having a dig at Hibs for a laugh, but on this occasion I’m not sure if we’ve got much of a case……..or have we? Let the abuse begin……..!