Anfield tops the Google ratings as Stevenage's SPORTA Arena brings up the rear
For years, football fans have been leaving their thoughts on Google Maps after a visit to a ground – rating the atmosphere, the pies, the view and the experience of turning up at their club's home. Now The Knowledge has crunched every single one of them.
It began with a reader's simple curiosity. “As someone who occasionally has to search for stadiums to find directions and the like, I always enjoy that people take the time to rate their experience of visiting a football ground,” wrote Will Unwin. “Hull City, for example, have 4.3 stars from 3,655 reviews. I therefore ponder … which grounds have the highest and lowest Google rating?”
Pete Tomlin came up clutch with one of the most impressive tables in Knowledge history, having searched every home football ground in the Football League via Google and recorded the rating and number of votes for each one.
“The range is not particularly large – the highest recorded rating is 4.7 and the lowest is 4.0,” Tomlin said. “Therefore, where the scores are tied, I have used the higher number of votes as the decider with the largest number of votes being the winner. Not surprisingly, the bigger and more successful clubs tend to have the higher ratings. The nine highest-rated grounds are all Premier League clubs.”
Anfield leads the way
The highest overall rating belongs to Liverpool's Anfield, with a score of 4.7 from an enormous 54,546 votes. Only two other clubs have achieved a 4.7 rating: Tottenham Hotspur (26,545 votes) and Nottingham Forest's City Ground (2,245 votes).
| Ground | Rating | Votes |
|---|---|---|
| Anfield (Liverpool) | 4.7 | 54,546 |
| Tottenham Hotspur Stadium | 4.7 | 26,545 |
| City Ground (Nottingham Forest) | 4.7 | 2,245 |
| Old Trafford (Manchester United) | 4.6 | 54,535 |
| Emirates Stadium (Arsenal) | 4.6 | 34,778 |
| City of Manchester Stadium (Manchester City) | 4.6 | 32,246 |
| Stamford Bridge (Chelsea) | 4.6 | 25,434 |
| St James' Park (Newcastle United) | 4.6 | 12,116 |
| Elland Road (Leeds United) | 4.6 | 10,066 |
Just behind on 4.6 are Old Trafford (54,535 votes), the Emirates (34,778), the City of Manchester Stadium (32,246), Stamford Bridge (25,434), St James' Park (12,116) and Elland Road (10,066).
Across the divisions
The highest-ranked ground from the Championship is Wolverhampton Wanderers' Molineux, in 11th position overall with a rating of 4.6 from 7,408 votes. League One fares even better, with Leicester City's King Power Stadium in 10th place (4.6 from 7,573 votes), while League Two's top-rated ground is Exeter City's St James' Park – 31st overall with a score of 4.5 from just 246 votes.
At the other end of the scale, the lowest-ranked Premier League ground is Hull City's MKM Stadium (4.3 from 3,676 votes), and the lowest in the Championship is QPR's Loftus Road, down in 85th position with a rating of 4.1 from 3,458 votes. Only two grounds in the Football League have been rated as low as 4.0: Oxford United's Kassam Stadium (2,506 votes) and, in 92nd and final position, Stevenage's SPORTA Arena (350 votes).
Tomlin's complete colour-coded list, broken down by division, accompanied his answer – confirming that when it comes to Google ratings, history, atmosphere and, above all, winning, still count for an awful lot.