FIFA reported an attendance of 44 985 for Thursday’s World Cup \u200bmatch between South Korea and the Czech Republic in \u200cGuadalajara, but swathes of empty seats around the stadium renewed concerns over ticket pricing and demand for the expanded tournament.<\/p>\n
While more than \u200b80 000 squeezed into the Azteca stadium to watch the \u200bopener between co-hosts Mexico and South Africa, the optics \u2060of unoccupied rows at the 46 000-seat stadium in Guadalajara, \u200ba city with a deep-rooted football culture, have intensified criticism \u200bof FIFA’s commercial strategy for the first 48-team World Cup.<\/p>\n
Some fans at the stadium blamed the high-ticket prices for the rows of empty \u200bseats and criticised FIFA for their pricing model.
\nReuters has \u200bcontacted FIFA for comment.<\/p>\n
FIFA President Gianni Infantino on Wednesday defended FIFA’s ticket pricing \u200cfollowing \u2060criticism from supporters who argued the cost of attending matches had become prohibitive. He said ticket prices were on a par with other major sporting events.<\/p>\n
FIFA has sold more than \u200b6 million tickets \u200bfor the \u2060tournament and previously highlighted strong interest from across the Americas, with Infantino saying demand had exceeded \u200bexpectations by “a factor of 10 or more”.<\/p>\n
However, \u200bgroups such \u2060as Football Supporters Europe (FSE) had warned that “extortionate” pricing would exclude ordinary fans. According to FSE, ticket prices for this tournament have \u2060jumped fivefold \u200bcompared to the 2022 World Cup \u200bin Qatar.<\/p>\n
South Korea beat the Czechs 2-1 in the Group A match.<\/p>\n
-Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":35279,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[],"class_list":["post-36901","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Some fans at the stadium blamed the high-ticket prices for the rows of empty \u200bseats.","published_date":"","news_description":"Some fans at the stadium blamed the high-ticket prices for the rows of empty \u200bseats.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36902,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/36901\/revisions\/36902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=36901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}