Club World Cup crowds have wildly fluctuated, from swathes of empty seats to ‘hostile’ atmospheres

MIAMI (AP) – As kickoff approached it was clear – the fans weren’t coming. The Club World Cup, soccer’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 1000 fans in the stands as the game got underway.

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

The opening week for the monthlong tournament across the U.S. 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 $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 L.A. FC in Atlanta. It was an afternoon kickoff on a weekday, but one of the Premier League’s most popular teams vs. 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.

Uncertainty over ticket sales had been a point of debate in the build up to the tournament, with prices falling dramatically before the opening game between Miami and Al Ahly last Saturday. An impressive crowd of nearly 61,000 watched that game at Hard Rock Stadium, though it is not known how many paid anywhere near the $349 that tickets were being quoted at in December.

As of Tuesday, FIFA said 1.5 million tickets had been sold and more than 340,000 fans had attended the first eight games.

Infantino proudly proclaimed the Club World Cup was growing into “the undisputed pinnacle of global club football.”

Numbers in Miami have been good – nothing lower than 55,000 and topping out at a near-capacity 63,587 for Bayern Munich vs. Boca Juniors. Bayern forward Harry Kane described the atmosphere inside a stadium dominated by Boca fans as “hostile.”

Crowds have still come to Miami in a week when the Florida Panthers were playing in the Stanley Cup Final. Boca and Real Madrid fans queued up for hours in sweltering heat after arriving early for games.

The biggest crowd of the opening week was 80,619 for PSG vs. Atletico Madrid in L.A.

For context, that is just short of the 84,163 who watched the English FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium and well above the 64,327 attendance for the Champions League final – European club soccer’s biggest game.

While there was not a sellout game in the opening week, 10 of the first 24 matches have seen crowds in excess of 40,000, for an average of around 36,000.

The average for the Champions League last season was just under 46,000, according to soccer data website Transfermarkt, but like-for-like comparisons are difficult, given this is a totally new format bringing club teams from around the world to the U.S.

At the 2022 men’s World Cup in Qatar there was an average attendance of just under 50,000 per game for the opening week. Of the 20 games played over that period, the highest attendance was 88,103 and all but two of those games had crowds in excess of 40,000.

Focus on the Club World Cup has been intense for more than one reason.

There is still uncertainty over how much of an appetite there is among fans for another elite soccer tournament and it was unknown how many would be prepared to follow their team to the U.S. According to FIFA, the biggest take up of tickets from abroad was from Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

Perhaps more significant is what this tournament says about the men’s World Cup, which is largely being staged in the U.S. next year. The Club World Cup could be seen as a gauge of how America’s interest in soccer has grown since last hosting the planet’s biggest sporting event in 1994.

In that sense, it’s not just about statistics, but optics as well. Which is why FIFA will hope to avoid a repeat of the scenes at Mamelodi Sundowns vs. Ulsan HD.

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AP reporters Jackson Castellano in Orlando, Florida, and Allyn Tucker in Atlanta contributed.