Will FIFA's Club World Cup Be A Success?

Karan Ahgun

— 3 min read
Will FIFA's Club World Cup Be A Success?

Almost a week on from the start of the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup, there hasn't been much to talk about for football fans. Matches have been stale, attendances are low and people just don't seem interested - yet. Whilst there is an expectation that interest will increase during the latter stages of the tournament, FIFA will also be desperate for more engagement, especially as the idea of this tournament was not universally welcomed.

During the first round of group matches, attendance figures have been concerning. More than 400,000 seats have been left empty and half of the matches so far have had attendances less than 50%. This might have been expected due to the scheduling issue FIFA have and the fact that the group stages involve some teams with massively fewer fans than others. For example, the highest attendance game so far was between European Champions, PSG and Atletico Madrid with over 80,000 fans in attendance whilst the lowest attendance was in the match between Ulsan HD (South Korea) and Mamelodi Sundowns (South Africa) where the attendance was just over 3000 fans.

There is also the problem of scheduling. To ensure that most people around the world are able to watch the games, the kickoff times have been adapted in a way that is limiting for American football fans to attend. Some of the group games are scheduled to take place during regular work hours - which is what happened for Chelsea's opener against LAFC. From the TV screen, the stadium looked far too empty, especially when you consider that only 22,000 out of 71,000 seats were sold. It's not like the appetite for football has massively decreased in America but just that FIFA seems to have got the scheduling massively wrong. Furthermore, these American stadium are more than likely going to be sold out when clubs play pre-season matches later this summer. And this will be because they will be playing matches at times when most of the American fans can attend games.

So, despite being the world's largest and most financially-rewarding football tournament, it seems that FIFA have made a few oversights in their planning for the Club World Cup. At the moment, the tournament embodies exactly what many critics had previously labelled it - "a money grab". Accessibility to matches seems to be the greatest obstacle FIFA face and to solve them for future editions, planning should focus on making matches affordable for the average fan and scheduled at time when the majority of fans are able to attend.

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