FIFA may not have seen last of sparse crowds in Atlanta for Club World Cup

Factors such as game times and dates haven’t helped. The Chelsea-LAFC game began at 3 p.m. on a weekday, and Chelsea played at MBS the past two years, perhaps reducing its drawing power. LAFC didn’t qualify for the tournament until May 31, and its fan base is a continent away.

Club Leon of Mexico, which originally was slated to play opposite Chelsea but was removed because of a breach of FIFA rules, surely would have drawn much better than LAFC. Further, the tournament itself has little name recognition.

And other sites have drawn far better. Through Monday, four games had drawn 45,000 or more, all on weekends or weeknights.

But the ticket prices surely have helped this event miss the mark thus far. The get-in price for Monday’s game at MBS was around $50 on the Ticketmaster website, with the highest-priced seats going for around $230.

Images of the empty stadium circled the globe through the game broadcast and social media. BBC in England and France’s sports daily L’Equipe were among influential international outlets giving headlines to the paltry showing.

“I think the environment was a bit strange,” Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca said after the game. “The stadium was almost empty, not full.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reached out to FIFA representatives Tuesday morning seeking comment on the ticket pricing for Monday’s game and if the organization was considering lowering prices for the remaining games. (FIFA is using a dynamic-pricing model for the tournament, giving it the ability to raise or lower its prices based on demand.) FIFA did not respond by midafternoon.

FIFA may not be done absorbing blows to its reputation. There are five more Club World Cup games left to play at MBS among the 63 games in the entire tournament, including Thursday afternoon’s matchup between Inter Miami of MLS (Lionel Messi’s team) and FC Porto from Portugal. Sales appear better for the two remaining group-stage games, though not markedly so.

For the three knockout-round games at MBS, including a July 5 quarterfinal, it appears FIFA may be resorting to a tactic that must be a bit humbling for an entity that operates the World Cup, the most-watched sporting event in the world.

On Tuesday, on the website for Ticketmaster — which is FIFA’s official ticketing partner — tickets were being sold almost entirely only on the south side of the stadium for those three games. Those are the sections that are visible for the standard sideline camera shot on TV broadcasts.

It would suggest that either nearly all of the tickets on the north side and end-zone sections have been purchased and no one is trying to resell them — which is highly implausible — or it would appear that FIFA has given up on selling enough tickets to fill the stadium for its “unforgettable spectacle” (in the words of FIFA president Gianni Infantino) and apparently has been reduced to trying to manufacture the appearance of a sold-out stadium to TV audiences.

That’s something that you might see from a struggling professional sports league, not a tournament featuring the best clubs in the world that Infantino called a “global football festival.”

And, what’s more, even with a drastically reduced inventory, most of the seats were still available Tuesday. That perhaps isn’t a surprise given that the least expensive tickets on Ticketmaster were $193 and premium seating was in excess of $500.

Ticket sales will pick up as the identities of the clubs playing in the knockout rounds become known. Soccer fans will have interest to watch world-renown clubs such as Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund from Germany and Paris Saint-German from France. Whether they have the resources to pay for tickets is another question.

For the sake of the game and for soccer fans in Atlanta, it would be ideal if prices were lowered to make it more accessible. But if FIFA maintains this apparent “stadium as TV studio” gimmick, especially when it has the ability to lower prices, it will deserve every ounce of scorn and mockery sent its way.

FIFA surely could have sought help from U.S. soccer leaders and local organizers — people highly invested in the event’s success — on how to best market the event. But the pricing strategy strongly suggests that FIFA officials either didn’t make much of an effort to do so or ignored the counsel.

It’s not the end of the world for FIFA. The Club World Cup still will be a useful trial to test stadiums and fields that will be used for next summer’s World Cup, including MBS, to give organizers experience and to give participating players familiarity with the venues and cities they’ll be playing in.

And for all we know, this might merely be a trial to gauge the limits of the market for next year’s World Cup. Maybe some empty stadiums are a small price for FIFA to pay for data on how much it can soak fans in 2026.

Part of me hopes that sales don’t pick up for the knockout-round games. Because if Infantino still wants to make it look like it’s a full crowd, he’s welcome to stage the games in my backyard.