Emirates FA Cup in numbers

Saturday 27 May 2017

The Emirates FA Cup kicked off on Friday 5 August 2016 with 736 entrants.

Whittled down to two, either Arsenal or Chelsea will ascend the 107 steps to the Royal Box at Wembley Stadium connected by EE this evening to lift the trophy.

Here are the key facts and figures from the 136th staging of the competition:

• It is the only domestic cup competition open for all clubs to take part, from Step 7 of the National League System all the way to the Premier League

• More than 11,000 players took part in the competition this year, playing in matches attended by more than 1.8million fans across the country

• In total The Emirates FA Cup distributed £15m through prize money with £2.8m paid out to Non-League clubs

• £11m has been generated through The Emirates FA Cup games being broadcast on TV & radio, of which £1.8m went to Non-League clubs

• Lincoln City earned approximately £1.13m in their historic cup run across FA prize money, broadcast and commercial payments

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• The FA has invested £65m into grassroots football this season to improve participation & make football accessible to anyone of any ability

• Budweiser, official beer of the competition, donated £100k to Sholing FC (Step 5) as part of their ‘Club Futures’ partnership

• The total domestic TV audience across the season up to now (live games from first round to the semi-finals) is 82.58m

• The biggest domestic TV audience for this season was the quarter-final fixture between Chelsea v Manchester United which got a peak of 7.74m viewers on BBC One

• Last year’s Emirates FA Cup Final (Crystal Palace v Manchester United) had a global reach of 88m and was broadcast in more than 100 countries and territories

• The Final will be Chelsea’s 16th and Arsenal’s 10th appearance at the new Wembley Stadium, making the Blues the joint-first and Arsenal the fourth most frequent visitors at the new stadium

By FA Staff