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FIFA’s Club World Cup is being played in quiet stadiums across the United States this week.
Before Tuesday, no match had dipped below 20,000 fans after a strong opening weekend. Then, one contest drew about half that number, and another got less than a fifth of that.
The official attendance of South African Mamelodi Sundowns’ 1–0 win over South Korean Ulsan HD at 25,500-seat Inter&Co Stadium in Orlando was 3,412. Photos of the nearly empty stadium swirled on social media for a match that last week had ticket prices for just $22. At the opposite corner of the country, only 11,974 fans came to Argentine River Plate’s 3–1 victory over Japan’s Urawa Red Diamonds in Seattle. Lumen Field, home of the Seahawks, holds close to 69,000 people. One journalist at the game in Orlando said he counted 600 fans in the stands shortly before kickoff.
In both cases, strong support from fan groups helped the atmosphere. But FIFA is facing an uphill battle with the Club World Cup. FIFA claims the significantly expanded tournament is bringing together the best clubs in the world, but the teams outside of Europe and South America aren’t as well known in the busy U.S. sports market. Plus, to accommodate fans across the world in the competing team’s home markets who want to stream the games on DAZN, matches are happening in the middle of the U.S. workday. And many of the stadiums chosen for the Club World Cup are full-sized NFL venues rather than soccer-specific stadiums, making the empty stands even more noticeable.
On Monday, 71,000-seat Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta hosted just 22,137 fans for a match between powerhouse Chelsea and LAFC. Later that day, in Philadelphia, only 25,797 fans attended a match between Flamengo and ES Tunis at Lincoln Financial Field, which holds close to 70,000. Both stadiums were about two-thirds empty.
“I think the environment was a bit strange, the stadium was almost empty, not full,” Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca said.
The other three matches on Monday and Tuesday were played at football stadiums that held opening games this weekend: Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. All three saw an attendance drop from the weekend games, most significantly in California, where the 80,000-plus Sunday crowd fell to just over 40,000 Tuesday.
The largest crowd of the weekday games was 55,574 fans Monday in Miami for Argentina’s Boca Juniors against Portugal’s Benfica. The early evening game drew just about 5,000 fans fewer than the tournament opener two days prior, showing FIFA made a good pick for its opening match—and that Boca Juniors fans travel well.
Other factors are at play, including an uptick in ICE raids and anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Trump administration that has turned some fans away from attending the tournament. Also, FIFA set high ticket prices initially, though costs have since fallen dramatically. The Club World Cup is also markedly larger this year—expanding from seven to 32 teams with a $1 billion purse—and some fans may have hesitated to try out FIFA’s revamped tournament that as recently as two years ago didn’t play a big role in the international soccer calendar.
FIFA did not respond to a request for comment.
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