FIFA Club World Cup Endures A Rough Start With Plenty Of Empty Seats

Before the FIFA Club World Cup kicked off on Saturday, June 14, FIFA President Gianni Infantino championed the revamped tournament, calling it a “big bang” moment and that the world needed a global club competition.

“We’re writing history here in North America,” he told the media in Miami four days prior.

“Today everyone is talking about this new World Cup, that’s why it’s historic,” he added in an interview with Agence Presse-France AFP. “I’m convinced that once the ball starts rolling, everyone will realize this is something special.”

Maybe not as special, at least not yet, as Infantino or FIFA has hoped in the host country, the United States, as they entered the fifth day of the competition on Wednesday.

Many of the problems and challenges that worried players, coaches, observers and media have come to fruition. That includes lagging attendance, which wasn’t helped by high ticket prices, the quality of fields, and the time of the games.

The Club World Cup, which runs through the final on July 13, is being held in the United States a year prior to the FIFA World Cup. Mexico, Canada and the U.S. are co-hosts of that extravaganza. The expanded Club World Cup has 32 teams representing six confederations, including three from the USA.

FIFA officials expected it to play to near capacity stadiums, but it has struggled to entice fans to come out to the stadium in the early days of the tournament. According to The Athletic, FIFA spent in the neighborhood of $50 million to promote these games.

No fan of these games

In fact, the competition has brought out harsh criticism in many parts of the soccer universe.

During an event at the ESADE Business School in Madrid on Tuesday, La Liga President Javier Tebas was asked what FIFA could do better with the tournament in the future.

His answer?

“By eliminating it,” Tebas said, according to ESPN.com. “My objective is that there will be no more Club World Cups, I’m very clear about that.

“There is no room for it. There is no need for another competition that moves money towards the [same] clubs and players. The model affects the entire ecosystem of national leagues, especially in Europe, and there’s no more money in the world of audiovisual rights.

“We have to maintain the ecosystem we have already and eliminate it. Keep [the Club World Cup] as it was before, when it was played basically over one weekend and that was that. There are no available dates.”

Tebas added that he saw part of Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Los Angeles FC on Monday, June 16.

“It looked like a preseason friendly,” he said. “I didn’t see any intensity, at least for the 25 minutes I watched.”

Counting the houses

Crowds have not been as plentiful as officials had hoped. The 1994 World Cup, which attracted a record 3,787,538 spectators, played to full houses from the opening kickoff to the final whistle. The average attendance of 68,991 also is a record.

That has been far from the case for the Club World Cup.

Through Tuesday’s opening dozen contests, games have averaged 36,126 spectators. That is considerable short of other high-profile soccer competitions, such as the 2024 Copa America, which averaged 49,406 in the U.S.

The tournament opener between Al Ahly and Inter Miami CF in Miami, Gardens, some 30 miles from the Major League Soccer team’s home field in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. drew 60,927, which failed to fill up the 64,767-capacity stadium. And that was after FIFA sold tickets for $20 apiece to students at Miami Dade College.

Ticket prices have been slashed considerably over the past several months. For that game, Ticketmaster, FIFA’s official ticketing partner for the tourney, the least expensive tickets were $349 in December. Two days prior to the match, they were just under $80.

For Botafogo’s 2-1 win over the hometown Seattle Sounders on June 15, as 30,151 watched at Lumen Field, which has a capacity of 68,740.

For Chelsea’s 2-0 victory over LAFC on June 16, only 22,137 individuals showed up, filling less than one third of the venue, which can hold as much as 71,000.

And at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., which has a capacity of 82,500, only 34,736 fans showed up for Borussia Dortmund’s scoreless draw on Tuesday, June 17, although it must be noted that the Brazilian team’s supporters were quite energetic during the games, chanting for their side and waving the club’s colors.

In some of those encounters, FIFA has closed the upper decks and moved spectators to the lower bowl, which would look better on TV.

Dortmund head coach Niko Kovac understood why soccer fans might not come out to watch his Bundesliga team, as opposed to the German men’s national team, “then the whole country is coming into the stadium and supporting,” he said.

The noon kickoff also was out of the ordinary. Due to getting the maximum out of televising the event, most game starts have varied from noon to 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET.

“It was 12 o’clock,” Kovac said of his game’s kickoff. “I can imagine that there will be more people also watching the game without supporting one team if the time would be different. We need to play four games per day, so it’s not so easy to schedule the games. But for me, it was OK.”

Everything is relative

After his team defeated Urawa Red Diamonds, 3-1, before a crowd of 11,974 at Lumen Field on June 17, River Plate coach Marcelo Gallardo was grateful for the support.

“For us, getting here is not so easy,” Gallardo said. “Especially considering the sacrifices our fans make on travel expenses and so on. We also had the furthest venue of all, with few layover options. I just want to thank those who came, and also those who stayed at home and cheered us on from afar.”

The highest attended match was Paris Saint-Germain’s 4-0 thrashing of Atletico Madrid at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. on June 15.

It should be noted that many European teams have visited the U.S. during the summer as part of their preseason preparation. They target specific areas or cities to play two or three games, knowing that they will fill up the stadium. For example, in 2014, an American-record crowd of 109,318 sold out Michigan Stadium at the University of Michigan in Manchester United’s 3-1 victory over Real Madrid.

Since Many teams have visited the U.S. over the years, and the novelty of seeing these prestigious teams for preseason matches may have worn off

On Tuesday, FIFA announced that close to 1.5 million tickets had been sold. It also announced that 340,000 spectators had attended its opening eight contests, which was a “powerful demonstration of club football’s global appeal.”

As the competition unfolds into the knockout round with much more on the line, perhaps crowds will pick up.

Not necessarily fields of dreams

Several venues, such as Lumen Field in Seattle, Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta and MetLife in East Rutherford, N.J. use synthetic turf. So, they needed to be switched to have grass placed atop for the cup.

On Tuesday, Dortmund goalkeeper Gregor Kobel said that the grass at MetLife was under-watered.

“It was a little bit dry,” he said in the mixed zone. “Of course, you can feel the turf beneath it, so the ball was not bouncing the way it usually bounces. It was a little bit soft, like, the ball didn’t really get the height it normally gets.”

Kovac had similar sentiments.

“The pitch is different turf, different grass than in Europe,” he said. “In my opinion, the pitch was a little bit soft and not dry, but the ball was not traveling as fast as we are used to. This is my impression, my feeling. We don’t search for any excuses.”

Fixture congestion

With so many competitions from a crowded schedule that includes domestic league and cups, and continental tournaments, elite players will get few opportunities to rest and catch their collective breaths. during the 29-day competition.

Next year, a number of these players will participate in the World Cup, which will cut into their recovery and preparation time for next year.

On the flip side, European powerhouses such as Barcelona and Liverpool are not participating in the Club World Cup, even though they just won their respective league titles in Spain and Liverpool. That’s because the 32 finalists were selected prior to the end of the 2024-25 campaign. Along with another well-known Premier League side, Arsenal, it will give their players a great head start to recover for the 2025-26 season.

The future is not written yet

Former Scottish international winger Pat Nevin, who enjoyed a 21-year career with tenures in Chelsea and Everton, had these concerns about the future of the tournament, if things don’t turn around.

“The most concerning thing for FIFA must be the feeble ticket sales particularly at the inflated prices initially advertised for some early games,” he wrote on BBC.com. “Empty stadiums are not a good look, even if you move the fans and instruct the TV cameras to veer away from the empty spaces. With streaming free in the UK and other regions, there have been staggering sums spent on this tournament. If it doesn’t work and the sums do not add up, this loss leader for FIFA could yet become one of the biggest financial white elephants in sporting history.

“If it does work, then this is the future of football and could in time grow to be bigger than the Champions League or the World Cup. This is certainly FIFA’s vision, and it is why the staggering sums have been spent here in the first place.”