Empty seats, exhausted players, excess heat – the tournament that could embarrass Fifa

Telegraph

9 hours ago

Judging by the stadium availability maps that present themselves on Fifa's official ticketing website for its Club World Cup, there may be many stadiums over the next few weeks in the United States where the crowds are massed in the stand that faces the cameras.
Glance at the ticketing arrangements for some of the more problematic games for ticket sales, a pattern emerges. For Tuesday's collision of South Korea's Ulsan HD and Mamelodi Sundowns of South Africa, only tickets on two sides of the Inter&Co stadium in Orlando are available. Of the two greyed-out stands only the area immediately behind one of the goals is available for sale and the cheapest tickets are just $11 (£8).
It may well be the same for Mexico's Liga-MX Pachuca against Red Bull Salzburg in Cincinnati on Wednesday, although the pattern is harder to read in that respect. There seem to be large parts of the vast MetLife Stadium in New Jersey that have also been retired for Thursday's game between Palmeiras of Brazil and the Egyptian club Al-Ahly, although time will tell. There were still tickets available for the opening game between Al-Ahly and Inter Miami at the latter's Hard Rock Stadium in the hours before kick-off.
Just a few hours left until the FIFA Club World Cup kicks off, and less than half the tickets are sold for the opening match.
FIFA partnered with Miami Dade College after poor ticket sales. Every student who buys 1 ticket for $1 gets 4 extra tickets to help pack the stadium. pic.twitter.com/9VbOGUpqYB
— Cricket Business HQ (@cric_businessHQ) June 14, 2025
Of course, closing parts of a stadium to save on stewarding and concessions – and then pointing the cameras away – is an old trick that many sports deploy when ticket sales fail to meet expectations. Fifa's dynamic pricing model – a euphemism for wringing the most out of the paying fan – means that the price in some cases is starting to shift. There have been suggestions that Fifa has been obliged to refund part of the cost paid by some supporters who bought their tickets early, only for the price to fall dramatically.
As of Saturday one could watch Bayern Munich play the amateur side Auckland City, from New Zealand, on Sunday for as little as $52 (£38) in Cincinnati. But if Bayern reach the final at the MetLife on July 13, the cheapest available ticket is currently $657.71 (£484.86) as a resale on the official site.
The size of the crowds has the potential to be an embarrassment for Fifa in the early rounds of the competition at least. There are many ways, when it comes to the television coverage, that a skilful match director can conceal the swathes of empty seats but nothing that anyone can do to stop those attending the game posting pictures of empty seats on social media. The Fifa president Gianni Infantino insisted that his Club World Cup project was played in the bigger stadiums rather than those smaller stadiums in the next tier, many of which were MLS only.
Fifa is not saying much when it comes to ticketing other than that its biggest ticket sales have been in the US, followed by Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Canada. The sales of tickets in Britain is only 11th on the list behind France, Japan, Germany, Portugal and Saudi Arabia. At a Fifa event last week, Infantino said he expected 'a full stadium' for the opening game between Miami and Al-Ahly, and doubtless efforts were made with discounts and other offers.
It is a reminder that this is a tournament that has not been driven in any way by match-going fan demand. Instead the match-going fans have been retro-fitted around it. The tournament itself, as has been well trailed, is a political play by Infantino to make an incursion into the lucrative broadcast rights for the elite club game – by which one means Uefa and the Champions League primarily. The location and the suitability or otherwise for a global, international tournament has been largely incidental. It ended up in the US because of the proximity of next summer's Fifa men's World Cup but it was originally intended in 2021 for China.
There may well be big attendances at some of the games, and perhaps the latter stages might even attract the kind of sell-out crowds of big venues like the MetLife of which Infantino has dreamed. But that is not why the tournament was conceived. There was no groundswell of opinion that the fans wanted a 32-team summer tournament that would settle the argument once and for all as to whether Mamelodi Sundowns were a better side than Ulsan HD, or indeed that there must be a world champion. At least not a world champion that took four weeks and 63 games to decide.
There was none of the fascination that existed, for example, in the post-war years with the relative merits of one style of European club football over another, which led to the establishment of the European Cup.
This was entirely confected to demonstrate that Fifa and its president could create a tournament that might rival the Champions League. One so totally out of kilter with the rhythm of club football that it needed someone to tell Fifa that players' contracts could conceivably expire midway through it unless they changed the rules. It has been an extraordinary demonstration of the power of a Fifa president – who has pushed it through regardless of legal challenge and widespread opposition.
Ideally for Infantino most of the big European teams stay in it to the end as well as a selection of the South Americans. It may suit the streamer DAZN and all its sub-licensees if the European teams dominate but, for Infantino, it will look like an unnecessary re-run of the Champions League. The best chance that challengers from South America and elsewhere might have is the indifference of some of those European-based players after a long, hard season and the punishing temperatures of the eastern US in summer. Bad for the players, but good for business.
That said, the shortest-priced non-European with the bookmakers is Brazilian club Flamengo at around 33-1, placed behind nine European clubs in terms of the favourites.
Either way, come July 13, one would get very long odds on Infantino declaring it anything other than a huge triumph. It does not matter how many seats are empty, how tired some of the players look or whether the wealthiest European clubs dominate the final stages – or whether some flop in the US heat. Infantino has got his tournament and all else will be secondary to that.