Ticket dilemmas: from Club World Cup's empty seats to Queen’s Club controversy
A massively important issue for organisers of big sports events is ticketing: how much to charge, marketing, your refund policy. Two current events are in the spotlight ...
Ticketing at major sports events is often contentious, and it’s currently an issue at tournaments from FIFA’s new Club World Cup (CWC) to grass court tennis championships being running under the auspices of the Lawn Tennis Association in the UK.
We’ll get back to the tennis shortly, but the CWC is free to watch for everyone in the world (online) as long as they have an internet connection and will give DAZN lots of personal details during the sign-up.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino wanted to emphasise the first bit of that (the free bit) in a presentation in early December 2024.
As for the handing DAZN your email address and mobile phone number, and having DAZN bombard you with pro-Saudi propaganda between games - not so much.
The propaganda continues during games too, with non-stop pitch-side hoarding ads for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, PIF.
We know now that the CWC is only in existence because Saudi Arabian money funded DAZN to pay FIFA $1bn for the broadcast rights (with that $1bn now the prize fund), and Saudi Arabia only did that because Infantino’s FIFA handed Saudi Arabia hosting rights to the men’s 2034 World Cup.
I started to write this piece, by the way, on Tuesday afternoon ahead of Fluminense’s Group F opener against Dortmund, with DAZN playing in the background.
Yes: I gave DAZN my email address, and my phone number. And what did I get in exchange? Coverage peppered with adverts to visit Saudi Arabia, which is unsurprising given that PIF, chaired by the the murderous Mohammed bin Salman, came on board as CWC sponsors last week. But I digress.
Today I’m more interested in something else that Infantino said on 5 December last year about his ongoing pet project in the USA.
"This competition will have two, three, four million fans coming to the US,” he claimed. (Source: FIFA).
This statement by Infantino was, and remains, total bullshit.
Let’s assume, for just a few minutes, that two million people will travel to the USA to watch the CWC. That would mean an average of 62,500 fans for each of the competing clubs. And of course some teams will have more fans than others in the States, and there will be some neutrals too. And locals.
But an average of 62,500 fans per club going to America (source: Infantino), would mean an average of 125,000 fans wanting tickets to each game.
And if Infantino was correct that three million people will be “coming to the US” for this competition, that means an average of 93,750 fans per team, or 187,500 potential ticket sales per game.
And if he was correct that four million people will be “coming to the US” for this competition, that means an average of 125,000 fans per team, or 250,000 potential ticket sales per game.
Does he have anyone who might advise him to stop spouting such crap? (That’s a rhetorical question, btw).
River Plate’s win over Urawa Red Diamonds yesterday filled only 17.4% of the capacity of the Seattle venue, with fewer than 12,000 fans.
Mamelodi Sundowns’ win over Ulsan yesterday, even according to FIFA’s own data, was attended by 3,412 people, or 13% of a small venue’s capacity. This is predictably leading to negative headlines.
Chelsea’s boring 2-0 win over Los Angeles FC on Monday attracted 22,137 fans in a stadium (crowd photo below) that can hold 71,000 people, for an attendance that reached 31.2% of capacity.
The BBC headlined their report about the pitiful crowd with “Chelsea play in front of 50,000 empty seats - apathy or bad scheduling?”
CNN’s headline said: “Chelsea beats Los Angeles FC in drab affair in front of ‘almost empty’ stadium.”
France 24’s headline was: “Strange to play in front of 50,000 empty seats: Chelsea's Maresca”. And there were plenty more in the same vein.
Flamengo’s 2-0 win over Tunis in Philadelphia sold 38.2% of the possible maximum tickets, while other fixtures have filled barely half of their venues.
The official attendance for the opening game between Al Ahly of Egypt and Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami was 60,927, which seemed to be a respectable 94% capacity of Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on Saturday.
But FIFA’s “dynamic pricing” meant people sitting next to each other had sometimes paid hundreds of dollars more or less than their neighbours, depending on when they bought tickets. And discount offers meant some fans had paid as little as $4 each to attend the game.
Ticketing has been a huge issue at many Premier League football clubs in England for years, as we examined in a series in May last year. Pricing in general is an issue, and ticket availability, and pricing for season ticket holders, and away fans.
Dynamic pricing is increasingly a contentious issue, brought to the attention of many people not by sport but by sales of tickets for Oasis’s upcoming tour.
Reselling of tickets is also a major issue in some sports in some countries. Again, this is certainly the case in the Premier League in England. Demand exceeds supply, often, creating a tout’s paradise, but there is also the issue that rival fans need to be separated due to historic hooligan issues.
Today’s piece will look at the attendance data from the 12 Club World Cup games played so far, up to and including the games that concluded last night in the USA and in the early hours of the morning, European time.
How good, or bad, have the attendances been, and how do they compare to other major sports tournaments of recent years?
It will also look at a case study in tennis of the Lawn Tennis Association (the governing body of tennis in the UK) having a relationship with an insurance company to supposedly provide refund assurance for buyers. Supposedly is the operative word.