Reply With QuoteI’m impressed you didn’t manage to make it to the end of the second sentence of my three sentence post…Originally Posted by Mr Ducie
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Bradford is larger , but Newcastle is smaller according to ONS data
I’m impressed you didn’t manage to make it to the end of the second sentence of my three sentence post…
It’s irrelevant, as I’m sure we were talking about Cardiff’s population within England and Wales. It would be interesting to know how many people in Gateshead support Sunderland.
It’s cool though , if you think 11,000 is great numbers. Hopefully we will see a few more before the season starts, especially if new owners are installed
The population of Bradford includes all the towns around Bradford like Ilkley and Shipley. Cardiff is a bigger city than Bradford.
Coventry and Bradford have larger populations
They don't
Population data is pretty meaningless if it's based on local authorities. For example Newcastle ceases to be Newcastle when you cross the river. Same with Manchester. Nottingham Forest don't even play in Nottingham etc.
https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/
Have a play around with this. Within a 10km radius of the centre of Cardiff, there’s 442k people.
Coventry - 500k
Southampton - 529k
Leicester - 597k
Nottingham - 663k
Newcastle - 691k
Bradford - 715k
If you want to be properly nerdy place the centre point on each club’s stadium. I can’t be arsed however.
Regardless of what arbitrary boundaries on a map say, Cardiff is not a “big city”. It’s medium sized and growing.
Within a 10km radius of Bradford, you get half of Leeds
I've lived in Leeds, trust me, Bradford is not a big city.
I was thinking the same , looking at the population figures for 2025 , Cardiff is the 8th or 9th biggest city in England and Wales, it’s growing rapidly, and is also the second largest city on the UK with one professional football club. 11,000 season ticket holders isn’t that big a deal.Within a 10km radius of Bradford, you get half of Leeds
I've lived in Leeds, trust me, Bradford is not a big city.
Cardiff has a very large student population, the ages 18-22 are by far the biggest demographics in the city.
Many university towns are similar, but it is especially pronounced in Cardiff.
I don't think many of them end up going to watch the City.
There are also plenty of competing things to do - rugby, ice hockey, cricket etc that some other football towns don't have.
But the biggest thing is we had 20 years bumping around the bottom 2 divisions, in front of a few thousand fans, in a dilapidated old ground - in the middle of which the Premier league was formed and football underwent a massive increase in exposure and money - so there have been entire generations with far more liverpool and man u fans than Cardiff ones. In the towns and cities where they have very impressive attendances you just wou;dn't get a local kid being a ilverpool fan - you're from there, you support the local team. If that link ever existed in such a strong way in Cardiff it was certainly completely broken by the time I was in school.
It would probably take a decade of sustained success to significantly change that.
Change it to 5km then. Bradford still comes out on top.Within a 10km radius of Bradford, you get half of Leeds
I've lived in Leeds, trust me, Bradford is not a big city.
346k compared to 249k.
The fact is, the number of people living within X distance of the CCS is not within the top 8 or 9 cities in the UK.
Attendances last season of this season L1 sides, with an average greater than 11k
Bolton 21k
Cardiff 19k
Huddersfield 18k
Bradford 17k
Plymouth 16k
Reading 12k
Barnsley 12k
Luton 11k
CricketHow many weeks does a cricket season overlap the football season?
Professor Stockholm.
Canton Kev is the new DML. Zzzzz.
Cardiff is a bigger city than Bradford. It is not a debate. I know both cities extremely well, Bradford isn't a big city at all.
Who?
And I know Nottingham and Newcastle very well. Both of which feel considerably bigger than Cardiff. Yet neither cracks the elusive top 9
Nottingham isn’t that big? Population 330,000, that’s probably anywhere between 50 and 100,000 less than Cardiff these days. Two clubs and plenty big ones close by like Leicester, Coventry and Derby…. we have virtually nothing and if you consider little old Welsh Wigan then nothing at all really
It's not as simple as populations. They typically refer to local authorities which in few cases represent the Urban areas of cities. For example Penarth isn't in Cardiff even though you cross a bridge and are in it and it's closer to the city than St Mellons.
So urban areas are a better judge, but thats also not that helpful - South Hampshire for examples dumps Portsmouth and Southampton together. It includes under Leicester, towns that most definitely are not part of Leicester and would vociferously not want to be!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...United_Kingdom
The reality is its actually a pretty complicated thing to work out. Urban area is a factor, catchment area is a factor too. So Merthyr, 20 or so miles from Cardiff is in ours, but Wigan, 20 or so miles from Liverpool isn't in there's.
Then we need to consider how many other teams there are, so Sheffield gets cut in two for example. And do we actually include Merthyr in our catchment area? Or does that come under Merthyr Town FC? What about Newport? Did we lose them when they got back in the football league? And what of Plymouth and Cornwall? Should they support Plymouth cos they happen to be the nearest team, even though they may be a couple of hours drive away and in a different county?
Then you also need to think how many other professional sports teams there are really, Bradford has the City and the Bulls. We have double that, and the national rugby and football teams (I know a few people who get their sporting fix by watching 2-3 international games a year, who presumably in other cities would get that fox by watching their local league team). There's loads to do in Cardiff. Less so in Sunderland or Preston.
Cardiff is a medium-large city with a large catchment area and as the only professional football club for some distance around I think it's fair to say we are a pretty big club potentially with a large geographic area to pull from.
On that basis, generally, in my lifetime at least, I think we have significantly underperformed support wise.
Having lived in Nottingham, it definitely feels smaller than Cardiff
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