Club World Cup faces big attendance swings

MIAMI (AP):

AS KICKOFF approached it was clear – the fans weren’t coming. The Club World Cup, football’s shiny, new competition, has been billed as the event to breathe new life into the world’s most popular sport.

It began a week ago in the United States, where sports stadiums of monumental capacity and steep tickets prices awaited the rowdy crowds seen at grounds across the world.

But rows and rows of empty seats inside Orlando’s Inter&Co Stadium on Tuesday told another story.

“It’s like playing football during lockdown,” observed one fan on social media.

For days, world governing body FIFA didn’t register the attendance for the game between Mamelodi Sundowns and Ulsan HD on its official website. It took until Friday for a figure of 3,412 to be acknowledged on the site, but by rough count, there were less than 1,000 fans in the stands as the game got underway.

At the other end of the spectrum, more than 80,000 watched Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain versus Atletico Madrid at the massive Rose Bowl in Los Angeles.

The opening week for the monthlong tournament across the United States has seen some wildly fluctuating attendances.

The Mamelodi Sundowns and Ulsan HD game stands out as the low point so far for FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, who is banking on the Club World Cup becoming one of the most popular and valuable competitions in sport.

So sparse was the crowd that the word “ORLANDO” – spelled out in yellow seats on one of the main stands at Inter&Co Stadium – was almost completely unobstructed. Crowd control stewards stood by the sidelines and monitored vast areas of empty spaces in the 25,500-capacity venue.

The home of MLS team Orlando City – among the smallest stadiums chosen to host games for the tournament – was still massively oversized for the match, even with ticket prices falling to US$23.

A group game between largely unheralded teams from South Africa and South Korea was never likely to be a big seller. And storms, which forced kickoff to be delayed by more than an hour, may have led to no-shows.

Still, it was an uncomfortably low turnout and one of three games in the opening week that drew less than 10,000 fans.

There were also swathes of empty seats for Chelsea’s game against LA FC in Atlanta. It was an afternoon kickoff on a weekday, but one of the Premier League’s most popular teams versus an opponent from MLS couldn’t manage to fill a third of the 71,000-capacity stadium, with 22,000 fans showing up.

“I think the environment was a bit strange. You know, the stadium was almost empty,” Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca said, and even with Lionel Messi in town for the second game in Atlanta – Inter Miami’s win against Porto – the crowd was far from capacity at 31,783.