What Is Groundhopping? The Beginner's Complete Guide
New to groundhopping? Discover what it is, where it came from, and how thousands of football fans are using TheFans to track every ground they visit.
There's a moment every football fan knows. You're in an unfamiliar town, it's a Tuesday night in November, the floodlights of a ground you've never visited are cutting through the drizzle, and something just clicks. It doesn't matter that the teams are mid-table in the seventh tier. It doesn't matter that you drove two hours to get here. You're exactly where you want to be. That feeling — that specific, slightly obsessive, completely wonderful feeling — is what groundhopping is all about.
So, What Exactly Is Groundhopping?
Groundhopping is the pursuit of visiting as many different football grounds as possible. At its simplest, a groundhopper is someone who travels to football matches with the primary goal of experiencing a new stadium or ground — rather than following a single club. The match itself matters, but the place matters just as much.
That said, groundhopping isn't one-size-fits-all. Some hoppers set strict personal rules: the match must be a competitive fixture, or it must involve a first team, or it must be at a ground they've never visited before. Others are more relaxed — a pre-season friendly at a new venue counts, a behind-closed-doors reserve game does not. The beauty of it is that you define your own criteria. There's no governing body handing out certificates (well, not exactly — more on that shortly). It's a deeply personal hobby built on a shared passion.
What unites all groundhoppers is curiosity. A curiosity about football in its rawest, most local forms. About the corrugated iron stand held together by decades of paint and stubbornness. About the tea hut that's been run by the same volunteer since 1987. About the way a ground tells the story of its community just by existing.
Where Did Groundhopping Come From?
The roots of groundhopping stretch back to mid-twentieth century Britain, where a small but dedicated band of supporters began keeping meticulous records of every ground they'd visited. Long before the internet, these were pen-and-paper affairs — notebooks, index cards, hand-drawn maps. The Football League's 92 grounds became a natural first target for many, and the term "doing the 92" entered the football fan's vocabulary.
But the hobby didn't stay British for long. By the 1970s and 80s, groundhopping had taken hold across continental Europe, particularly in Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. German groundhoppers — Groundhopper is actually a loanword used directly in German football culture — developed some of the most rigorous tracking systems and largest communities in the world. Fanzines were swapped, lists were compared, and a genuine subculture emerged.
The arrival of the internet transformed everything. Forums, spreadsheets shared via email, and eventually dedicated websites meant groundhoppers could connect globally, compare notes, and discover grounds they'd never have found otherwise. A Sunday league pitch in rural Wales. A crumbling municipal stadium in rural Romania. A floating ground in the Netherlands. The world opened up.
Today, groundhopping is a genuinely global pursuit. Fans from over 200 countries are actively tracking grounds, and the community has never been larger or more connected.
Why Do People Do It?
Ask ten groundhoppers why they do it and you'll get ten different answers — but a few themes come up again and again.
- The variety. No two grounds are alike. A Premier League arena and a non-league roped-off pitch are both football, but they're completely different experiences. Groundhopping lets you taste all of it.
- The history. Many older grounds are living museums. Craven Cottage's Stevenage Road stand. Bramall Lane's Victorian bones. Roots Hall, Bootham Crescent (now gone, and mourned), Feethams. These places carry weight.
- The community. Away days and groundhopping trips breed friendships. You'll find yourself chatting to a retired steelworker about the 1974 FA Cup run, or swapping ground lists with a Dutch hopper who's visited more English grounds than most English fans.
- The challenge. There's something deeply satisfying about a list with boxes to tick. The 92. The Scottish Premiership grounds. Every ground in the National League system. Every UEFA-registered stadium in Europe. The targets are endless.
- The escape. Football at the lower levels is refreshingly uncommercialized. No VAR controversies, no £80 replica shirts, no corporate hospitality packages. Just football, a pie, and a programme that costs a quid.
How Do You Get Started?
The honest answer is: you probably already have. If you've ever been to a match at a ground you'd never visited before and thought "I'd like to come back here" or "I wonder how many grounds I've actually been to" — congratulations, the groundhopping instinct is already in you.
Getting started properly is straightforward:
- Start logging what you've already visited. Most people are surprised how many grounds they've already been to once they sit down and think about it. School trips, family days out, away ends followed across the country — it all counts.
- Set a target that excites you. The 92 is the classic starting point for English fans, but don't feel constrained by it. Maybe you want to visit every ground in your county. Maybe you want to do every National League ground in a single season. Pick something that feels achievable but stretches you.
- Embrace the lower leagues. This is where groundhopping really lives. Non-league football is accessible, affordable, and often more atmospheric than you'd expect. A cold Saturday afternoon at a Step 4 ground with 200 people and a proper half-time Bovril is an experience money genuinely can't buy.
- Travel with purpose. Plan trips around fixtures rather than the other way around. Check non-league fixtures websites, look at what's on near wherever you're already travelling, and never drive past a floodlit ground without at least checking who's playing.
How TheFans Makes Groundhopping Better
Keeping track of grounds visited used to mean spreadsheets, notebooks, or trying to remember whether you actually went to that ground in 2009 or just drove past it. TheFans was built to solve exactly that problem — and then some.
With over 25,000 grounds in the database, from the Premier League's biggest arenas to Sunday league pitches that barely have a name on a sign, TheFans lets you log every visit, build your personal ground history, and see your collection grow in real time. Tick off the 92. Track your non-league adventures. Log that tiny ground in the Faroe Islands you visited on holiday on a whim.
The app's badge system turns groundhopping milestones into something tangible — earn badges for hitting visit counts, completing regional sets, or ticking off specific competitions. It's the kind of thing that sounds simple but becomes genuinely motivating when you're three grounds away from a milestone and there's a free Saturday coming up.
Perhaps most importantly, TheFans connects you with a global community of groundhoppers. See what grounds others are visiting, discover places you'd never have found on your own, and share your own visits with people who actually understand why you drove to Cumbria on a Wednesday night for a Northern Premier League fixture. Because they've done exactly the same thing.
Groundhopping has always been about more than collecting grounds. It's about the stories those grounds hold, the journeys you take to reach them, and the community of people who share the same slightly mad compulsion to see as much football, in as many places, as possible. TheFans just makes sure you never lose count.
Ready to start your groundhopping journey? Download TheFans free on iOS and Android.