Leeds United draw biggest Championship TV audience for six years in record-breaking start to new EFL season

Over half a million supporters were at the opening weekend, with three of the top five gates at Yorkshire grounds.

With the Premier League not starting until this coming weekend, the second, third and fourth tiers took the spotlight on an opening weekend which started at Hillsborough for Sheffield Wednesday versus Southampton and ended with the biggest crowd of the lot as 43,000 were at Sunderland's televised game with Ipswich Town.

The 543,168 aggregate attendance for 35 matches was the biggest opening weekend gate of the century, up 20.7 per cent on last season.

Yorkshire clubs more than played their part with 36,368 at Elland Road, 29,359 watching Middlesbrough v Millwall – the only fixture in the top five not shown live on television – and 28,558 witnessing Sheffield Wednesday's return to the Championship.

Sunday's early kick-off between Leicester City and Coventry City was the third-best attended game of the weekend (31,763).

Sky's four televised matches drew an average of 631,000 viewers, up 77 per cent on last season's figure. The peak viewing for Leeds' game was close to a million.

Viewing figures for the first Soccer Saturday since the retirement of iconic host Jeff Stelling, were also up 50 per cent on last season's opening weekend.

Even with one match postponed and comfortably the division's best-supported club, Bradford City, away at Crawley, 62,000 supporters went to League Two matches.

Wrexham's much-hyped return to the Football League drew 10,206 fans but the Dragons' capacity is around 7,000 below Bradford's average gate last season. More than 7,000 saw Harrogate Town's 1-0 win at Doncaster Rovers.

More than 13,000 watched the best performance of the opening weekend as Barnsley beat Port Vale 7-0 at Oakwell.

Huddersfield Town, Hull City, Rotherham United, Bradford and Harrogate have their first home league games this weekend.