Anfield Capacity And How It Has Changed Over the Years
If you speak to certain opposition supporters, they will tell you that the Anfield atmosphere is a myth. Because the likes of Stoke City, Bournemouth and Ipswich Town turn up for a Saturday 3pm kick-off and don’t find the stadium rocking from the rafters, they think it’s because there isn’t really a good atmosphere in L4. The reality, though, is that the Anfield crowd knows when it needs to go big and when it is a run of the mill match that the Reds should win without their help.
Of course, how good the atmosphere is will change between matches depending on the opposition and circumstance, but that isn’t the only factor to bear in mind.
Considering it’s supposedly a myth that famous Anfield atmosphere has a funny habit of showing up when the Reds need it most!
— Neil Docking (@NeilDocking) November 2, 2024
There have been numerous changes to the makeup of Anfield since Everton departed it for Goodison Park in the early 1890s. Whether it be the conversation of the stadium from a standing one to an all-seater in the wake of the Hillsborough Disaster or the remodelling of the Main Stand, the number of people that can get into the ground in order to watch Liverpool play has changed over the years.
Regardless of how many people have been able to make it into the famous old ground, it has always had the ability to help the team get the ball over the line. Here is a look at how many people have been able to help at one point or another.
Attendances Over the Years
Before we look at the changes that have taken place to Anfield over the years, it is first important to look at the numerous different record attendances that have occurred at one point or another. This information is not exhaustive and the exact figures during the early years are obviously unknown.
| When | Capacity |
|---|---|
| 1884 | ~8,000 |
| 1890s | ~20,000 |
| 1920s | ~50,000 |
| 1952 | 61,905 |
| 1990s | ~45,000 |
| 2016 | 54,742 |
| 2024 | 61,276 |
The 61,905 attendance took place on the second of February 1952 and remains the highest official crowd that has attended a football match at Anfield. It was four a fifth round FA Cup tie against Wolverhampton Wanderers.
@liverpoolfc A special night for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour at Anfield #LiverpoolTSTheErasTour #Liverpool
In terms of the highest capacity ever, Taylor Swift announced during her live show at Anfield in the summer of 2024 that she had broken the club’s attendance record, with more than 62,000 people turning up to see the singer in concert.
When the Ground First Opened
Whilst it is slightly amusing to think of the stadium as having once been the home of Everton before it became somewhere that a successful club moved in, the truth is that the ground was built and opened before Liverpool even existed. When Everton began playing their games in the area in 1884, it had enough room in the stands for the 8,000 or so people who turned up wanting to watch the Blues play their games.
The area itself was capable of hosting in the region of 20,000 people, doing so on more than one occasion. Such was the nature of Anfield that it was considered to be of international standard.
When Everton refused to pay the increased rent that John Houlding asked for, they left for what would become Goodison Park and Houlding was left with an empty stadium. As a result, he created Liverpool FC and Athletics Ground Ltd, with around 200 people showing up to watch the new club’s first game against Rotherham Town on the first of September 1892.
By the time that the team started playing in the Football League, that had increased to 5,000 people, so a new stand was built where the Main Stand exists nowadays, boasting room for 3,000 spectators, with other stands coming along in the years that followed.
The Building of the Kop
Once Anfield had begun to take shape, it remained much the same for the decade or so that followed. That all changed in 1928, however, when the Kop underwent a redesign. It was built to welcome 30,000 supporters, all of whom would be standing for the duration of the match, remaining dry thanks to the addition of a roof.
It was named in honour of the Spion Kop in South Africa, which was also the case with numerous other Kops around the country; the big difference was that the one at Anfield was the largest in the country. The Kop alone could hold more spectators than some entire grounds could elsewhere.
The Kop at Anfield under construction in 1928. This was built on the original banking known as The Kop and a roof was also added. It had a capacity of 27,000. The term Kop was first used for this area at Anfield in 1906 pic.twitter.com/jxdDnBtEgg
— Historic Sports Pictures (@HistoricSports2) October 21, 2024
The improvements to the Kop remained the only change to the ground until 1963, which was when £350,000 was spent turning the Kemlyn Road stand from a traditional one into a cantilevered stand that was able to house 6,700 people. Two years after that, changes were made to turn the Anfield Road End into a covered standing area. Next it was the turn of the Main Stand, which was partially demolished and rebuilt in 1973, extending it backwards and adding a new roof.
During the 1980s, seating was introduced to various parts of the stadium, including the paddock of the Main Stand and at the Anfield Road End of the ground.
Becoming an All-Seater Stadium
In the wake of the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989, when police negligence led to the deaths of 97 people, the Taylor Report recommended that stadiums around the country become all-seater affairs. The club had until May 1994 to make that a reality, with part of the changes including adding a second tier to the Kemlyn Road, making it a double-decker location that included function suites and executive boxes and allowing it to house 11,000 people.
The need to go all-seated had a massive impact on the Kop. Although it remained single tiered, it saw the capacity drop down to 12,390 from around 30,000 before that.
In 1998, the Anfield Road End was once again redeveloped, making it two-tier, but initially being quite unsteady and eventually requiring the introduction of stanchions and support poles. Even so, it was still felt that Anfield wasn’t big enough for a club of Liverpool’s stature, with the Reds falling behind the likes of Manchester United, who had been through the process of redesigning Old Trafford to make it significantly bigger than Anfield, therefore offering them more money each time they played a home game.
Discussions initially centred on the idea of leaving Anfield for a new home, perhaps at Stanley Park, with a 61,000 capacity.
Redeveloping Anfield
The arrival of George Gillett and Tom Hicks at Anfield initially promised the building of the new ground, but the two cowboys were more interested in fighting with each other and taking money out of the club to actually do anything about a new ground. It wasn’t until Liverpool were bought by Fenway Sports Group in 2010 that serious discussions around what should happen next began to take place.
Having already successfully redeveloped Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox, the hope was that they would be able to turn Anfield into the fortress that Liverpool needed it to be, rather than move to a new home.
That is precisely what happened, starting with the redevelopment of the Main Stand. Plans were revealed in the April of 2014, showing that the new stand would add 8,500 seats and take Anfield’s capacity to 54,742. Work began at the start of December 2014, with the aim being to build most of the new stand whilst the old one remained operational.
@alfredosolotravels Hanging out at an empty Liverpool Anfield stadium doing a tour. It’s really amazing ! • • • • • #anfieldstadium #liverpoolfc #liverpool #solotravel #travelgoals #bacpacking @liverpoolfc @liverpool_oneofficial
The old stand didn’t undergo demolition until the summer of 2016, with the new-look Main Stand opening on the ninth of September 2016, whilst internal work involving the building of a new media area as well as new changing rooms carried on until the April of the following year.
Although the new Main Stand looked impressive and boosted Anfield’s capacity, it still didn’t do as much as supporters and the owners wanted. As a result, the Anfield Road End was next up for redevelopment, with the plan being to add another 4,825 seats, which would take the ground’s capacity to 58,000. That was based on a design from 2014, but in 2019 those plans lapsed and new ones were drawn up, with the plan being to see the capacity go above 60,000.
Once again, the plan was to build the new stand in a way that allowed the old one to remain open, whilst building work was delayed owning to the global health crisis of the time.
The moment the first spade went in the ground on Liverpool’s Anfield Road expansion project, September 30, 2021. Tomorrow, it plays host to 60,000 fans and the biggest-ever crowd for a league game. pic.twitter.com/AQT0qgxvf8
— Paul Gorst (@ptgorst) February 9, 2024
Initially, work was intended to be finished during the 2023-2024 campaign, but that was thrown into doubt when the Buckingham Group, who were the contractor, went into administration in the August of 2023.
One the seventh of September, Liverpool took control of the project and put Rayner Rowen Construction in place, aiming to open it by the end of 2023. In the end, the new stand opened in stages, with the majority of it opening in time for the Reds’ game against Burnley on the tenth of February 2024.
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