FIFA On A Manhunt For Ticket Holders

June 14th, 2010 | by: chris |

DV736234 Anyone who watched the South Korea – Greece game would’ve noticed something peculiar: the stadium looked awfully empty relative to the average World Cup match (you know – full). In fact it was really disappointing just to glance into the stands and see so many cold, plastic seats (or plush sealskin, perhaps).

FIFA was disappointed too, since they claimed to have sold the tickets. A lot of them: 8,000 tickets just decided not to show for the game. And now they’d like to know where they’ve disappeared to.

Let’s work on some theories:

i. The game itself: South Korea weren’t yet exciting and Greece’s 2004 win was at the cost of the spectators, so they’re still not quite putting the duffs in seats like Planet España. If you’re a neutral planning to spend some hard-earned for a tournament with plenty of available tickets, this isn’t going to be the game to choose.

ii. The vuvuzelas. Not a gripe, but if you’ve purchased tickets and didn’t quite realize what 90 mins of vuvus in your ear sound like, the television might just sound like the answer.

iii. The Jabulani. The game is entirely different. It’s nothing even close to the quality we’re used to, unless you happen to prefer crosses sailing 50 meters high every single time. In which case your taste is suspect.

iv. The time – 1:30p. The World Cup is a big deal, but so isn’t making a living, and if one must work, one must punch that timesheet.

v. FIFA lied and far more tickets went unsold than declared.

I’m working on the last theory, for one reason: this isn’t exclusive to South Korea – Greece. Most games have featured a number of empty seats, and today’s game between Japan and Cameroon was a prime example. There seemed thousands and thousands of empty seats, even up to 30% to the naked eye. And this with an African country in participation.

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In a word: dreadful.

The day’s glamor game from a footballing perspective, Netherlands versus Denmark, saw Soccer City with a number of empty orange seats surrounded by Oranje fans. At least that was uniform. The day’s biggest name, Italy, enjoyed some empty seats, but also a great deal of rain, so that can be forgiven.

For whatever reason, the World Cup is appearing on television to be anything but a World Cup in the stadiums. Just another day in the life of FIFA.

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LaurieInSeattle

Gotta agree with you 100% on the Jabulanis. If I didn't know these were the best players in the world and hadn't seen them play elsewhere, I'd never watch football/soccer/whatever again. With a few exceptions, these games are BORING.

Hope it gets better as games become must-win and the players get used to the ball. Or altitude. Or whatever is making them suck.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bryan-Crossland/799300175 Bryan Crossland

How about this: SA is hella far and hella expensive to get to. I've already spent a loads of money to reach SA, imagine the people who don't have near a good job as I. Imagine those who bought tickets 1.5 years ago (like I did) without realizing it would cost another $4k to get to SA with air and bed. Deal with it.
Sairax

Nah that can't be it :P
pylean

I don't think the Jabulani has anything to do with boring games. First games of WC tend to be more boring than the later ones. This WC is especially bad because everybody is playing to not lose his first game: stay back to avoid counterattacks and defend strongly waiting for some mistake of the opposing team. I am hoping that as teams are forced to win games to stay in the tournament they will start playing more attacking football.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Cory-Roth/100000697296441 Cory Roth

my theory is that a main reason it is in south africa is so fifa execs, namely Jack Warner, Sepp and Glazer could make a huge stealing, im guesing the seats have something to do with this.
1_Luka

It's fitting because the 2002 World Cup (in Japan/Korea) was plagued with half-empty stadiums for most of the group stages.
http://www.mcalcio.com Marco P.

The irony Laurie? That FIFA changes balls to make it more difficult for goalkeepers, and thereby produce more goals at the World Cup.

Not so funny when half of the players' shots go sailing over the crossbar huh, Blatter?
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/7YILBJLH6RZHQ4D4GOWWGUO46I Ridwan

yes, there's a much soot from those player's that can't made a goal
http://twitter.com/rolyman Roland Lipman

Attendances havent been great for the smaller games and yes some of the less fashionable games have not been full, this was bound to happen but the averages so far are not too bad compared to 2006 considering way less foreigners have arrived than originally expected due to a number of issues.

in my eyes issues are transport and ticketing system related as well as the world economic situation.

this according to wikipedia
Attendance 583,207 (53,019 per match) (11 matches played)

yes there is a long way to go but so far South Africans are going all out to be part of the WC and hopefully make it a success, despite all the outcry about the vuvu its been great so far.