Professional sports events held in the UK attracted a total of 67 million paying fans during
2014, according to analysis by Deloitte's sports business group.

Football remains the UK’s most popular spectator sport, with a total of of 42.8m tickets sold.

The 1.3m tickets sold for the 11-day Commonwealth Games in Glasgow offered a boost to the overall figure, although this year's total is less than the 75m tickets sold for UK sports events in 2012 - the year of the London Olympic Games.

Deloitte says that stripping out London 2012 and Glasgow 2014, attendances at all other professional sports events grew by 3 per cent over the two years.

Excluding Glasgow 2014, the top 10 best attended individual sporting events of the year had a combined attendance of 2.5 million, with Wimbledon topping the list. Five of the 10 most attended events were horseracing and equestrian events.

Dan Jones, partner in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, said: “2014 proved to be another hugely successful year for sport in the UK.

“Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games was a highlight, with 1.3m tickets sold for the 11 days of sporting competition, making it Scotland’s biggest-ever sporting event. Across all professional sports events, the total number of spectators exceeded 67m in 2014, which demonstrates the UK public’s huge appetite for watching live sport.”

Findings from Deloitte’s analysis include:

• The Premier League (13.9m) and the Championship (9.4m) had the first and fourth highest aggregate attendance of any domestic football league in Europe in 2013/14.

• Rugby Union attendances reached 4.9m in 2013/14, and are expected to increase further in 2014/15 as the excitement builds in the run up to Rugby World Cup 2015 beginning next September, with a projected 2.3m tickets sold for that event.

• Cricket’s overall attendance of 2.2m in 2014 was boosted by a record number of spectators (707,000) for the domestic T20 competition, in what was the first year of its revamped schedule.