Sports fans all over the world love going to watch live events in enormous stadiums. It is where they can support their team and soak up the atmosphere. Mostly, stadiums hold up to 50,000 spectators, but some are truly massive with over 100,000 seats.
Where are the world’s largest stadiums by capacity?
When thinking of huge sports grounds, your mind might imagine vast soccer pitches in South America or perhaps American Football stadiums in the USA. However, the two largest are actually in Asia. One is in Gujarat, India, and hosts cricket matches for a tournament called the Indian Premier League. The other is certainly a surprise. It’s in Pyongyang, North Korea, and mainly hosts soccer matches, but thousands of people also see other sports and entertainment there. After these, the next eight biggest are in the USA.
Over 100,000 seats
For a stadium to be truly massive, it needs to hold over 100,000 seats. Only 11 venues can boast these kinds of figures. India’s Narendra Modi Stadium is widely recognized as the largest because, on this site, 132,000 people can sit and watch the cricket. However, some reports suggest that North Korea’s Rungrado 1st of May Stadium is even larger with up to 150,000 seats. Most sources agree that it’s actually more like 114,000. Perhaps, considering North Korea doesn’t always share the truth with the rest of the world, it can occasionally squeeze even more people in.
The Rungrado 1st of May Stadium is still considerably bigger than the USA’s largest offering, which is Michigan Stadium, hosting just under 108,000. There are quite a lot of other grounds in the USA that are around this size and host football teams. Although, as you can imagine, they also put on other forms of entertainment such as concerts, baseball, and, in the case of Neyland Stadium, Tennessee, even monster truck rallies. All these events are important to help drive the necessary revenue that it takes to make such enormous properties viable.
The smallest 100,000+ capacity stadium
In the land of the giants, a capacity of only 100,077 starts to seem insignificant. However, this is still the world’s 11th-biggest stadium. It’s called the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and it’s a huge space. Cricket and Aussie Rules Football are both treated like religions, with massive crowds assembling regularly to support their teams. Surprisingly for soccer fans, this stadium is significantly larger than huge European grounds such as Barcelona’s famous ground, Camp Nou, which can hold around 99,000 fans.
Seating helps safety
Years ago, stadiums allowed even more people in to watch games. The 1923 FA Cup Soccer Final had an official capacity of over 120,000. However, at this time, lots of people had ‘standing tickets’ so more could be packed into the same space. Subsequently, tragedies happened when crowds became too big and occasionally fans ended up crushing each other. Regulations came in to prevent this and seats were a big part of that. This is why, today, some teams with massive followings need to build stadiums with seating for thousands and thousands of fans.
