Thursday 13 August 2026 11:06 am
| Updated:
Thursday 13 August 2026 11:08 am
Empty seats marred the start of the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham
Britain loves sport yet ticket sales for the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham have been slow. Ed Warner wonders why.British sport has a capacity problem or a bandwidth one, depending on which way you want to look at it. Too many seats in too many venues with too few bums to fill them. Or alternatively, a time-pressed, financially squeezed population too heavily concentrated in London. No matter that we pride ourselves on being a nation of sports lovers, there’s only so much each of us has the time and wherewithal to follow; 67m people on an island that can be traversed in hours by train is no guarantee of sporting commercial success.This Sunday sees the final session of the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham go head-to-head with the men’s final of The Hundred at Lord’s on the BBC. The track and field has the advantage of BBC1 coverage versus the cricket on BBC2. Yes, there still is a swathe of the population whose viewing habits – or jammed remote controls – are anchored to the nation’s oldest channel. Pity those who would rather have comfy dramas, antiques and wildlife shows wash over them at the close of the weekend.The “sold out” signs are up online for The Hundred’s climax, but the tournament overall has been notable for smaller crowds in this, its sixth season – the first one in which the new owners of franchises have been responsible for their own ticket sales. The opening couple of nights at the athletics were poorly attended too, certainly compared with expectations. I’m told that the Alexander Stadium will be packed at the weekend, but you can still buy seats to see as many fireworks there – sporting and actual – as will be on show at Lord’s.I bought my tickets for the athletics in the first few minutes that they went on sale last August, happy to do my very small bit to assist the event’s cashflow management and seduced by memories of the packed London Stadium for the 2017 World Championships. Turns out I needn’t have been so eager. But what if the event had been in London, even in a venue with roughly three times the capacity of the Alexander Stadium’s 23,000 or so? I bet it would have been almost full for those early sessions.
