FIFA Club World Cup achieves incredible empty seats milestone so far – Who’d have thought it… | OneFootball

The FIFA Club World Cup has made headlines.

The tournament passing an incredible milestone.

The first 16 group matches have seen a total of over 400,000 empty seats so far!

A BBC Sport report (see below) detailing how there have been actually 423,004 unsold seats across the first 16 games, which averages out at 26,437 empty seats per match so far.

This is despite FIFA drastically slashing ticket prices.

Amongst the matches with a very embarrassing number of empty seats, Chelsea beat Los Angeles in front of only 22,137 at the Mercedes-Benz stadium, with around 50,000 empty seats.

This is where Atlanta United play their home games and when Chelsea played a friendly against Newcastle United there two years ago (26 July 2023), there were 70,789 paying spectators.

This is a contrived forced tournament that nobody wants, apart from FIFA boss Infantino with his empire building and club owners desperate to get their hands on the ridiculous amounts of cash that have been promised, so that clubs will take part. If Man City or Chelsea go on to win the tournament, they would bank almost £100m from FIFA.

If the number of empty seats at matches is embarrassing, then I can’t imagine how much worse the TV viewing figures will be. FIFA/Infantino appearing to not understand that the (PROPER!) World Cup is so popular because fans of all clubs come together to support national sides and take an interest, indeed many people who usually have little/no interest in football, will take active interest when a World Cup is on.

With this ridiculous FIFA Club World Cup, it will be only some fans of each of the various competing clubs that will take an interest. Even then, as has been the case previously when fewer clubs have taken part, this FIFA Club World Cup isn’t seen as a serious competition, more a glorified set of friendlies.

‘More than 400,000 (423,004) seats have been left empty during the opening round of Club World Cup group matches in the United States.

Stadiums have been 56.8% full, with more than half a million (556,369) spectators attending.

Nine stadiums have been used for the first 16 matches of the tournament, with a combined capacity of 979,373.

The expanded tournament is being treated as a dress rehearsal for the international men’s World Cup next summer, which will be held in the USA, Canada and Mexico.

Of the 16 matches played so far, half of the matches have seen attendances below 50% of the capacity of the stadium.