senator
JF-Expert Member
- Aug 9, 2007
- 1,924
- 66
FIFA happy despite empty seats
FIFA has given a guarded thumb up to hosts South Africa after the first few days of the World Cup, but issues with poor attendances and criticism of the way ticket sales have been handled remain a concern.
The majority of World Cup games have failed to sell out.
"So far we are quite happy ... but it's a bit early to draw conclusions," FIFA's Nicolas Maingot told reporters. "There have only been eight out of 64 games. Generally, we are happy."
But only four of the first 11 games have been sold out, and official attendance figures have been questioned by those at the grounds. The opening match between South Africa and Mexico was reported to be a sell-out but there were empty seats to be seen.
There were almost 11,000 empty seats at Saturday's game between South Korea and Greece in Port Elizabeth and the official attendance at the Algeria-Slovenia clash in Polokwane was 30,325, almost 11,000 below the capacity.Critics are blaming FIFA's pricing strategy - the cheapest seats are still way out of reach of the majority of the black community, where football has its real base in South Africa.
But FIFA is quick to point out many tour and corporate groups failed to take up their tickets because of perceived safety issues and also the effect of the global recession.
"Some ticket holders have not come," Maingot said. "We are not talking about unsold tickets, we are talking about sold tickets which have not been occupied. It's not nice to see empty seats in a stadium but the attendances have been good.
"You need to look at the bigger picture & [and] the bigger picture is we have now the second highest attendance since 1982. [But] we are working on different measures to improve distribution of tickets."
Source: Soccernet.com
FIFA has given a guarded thumb up to hosts South Africa after the first few days of the World Cup, but issues with poor attendances and criticism of the way ticket sales have been handled remain a concern.
The majority of World Cup games have failed to sell out.
"So far we are quite happy ... but it's a bit early to draw conclusions," FIFA's Nicolas Maingot told reporters. "There have only been eight out of 64 games. Generally, we are happy."
But only four of the first 11 games have been sold out, and official attendance figures have been questioned by those at the grounds. The opening match between South Africa and Mexico was reported to be a sell-out but there were empty seats to be seen.
There were almost 11,000 empty seats at Saturday's game between South Korea and Greece in Port Elizabeth and the official attendance at the Algeria-Slovenia clash in Polokwane was 30,325, almost 11,000 below the capacity.Critics are blaming FIFA's pricing strategy - the cheapest seats are still way out of reach of the majority of the black community, where football has its real base in South Africa.
But FIFA is quick to point out many tour and corporate groups failed to take up their tickets because of perceived safety issues and also the effect of the global recession.
"Some ticket holders have not come," Maingot said. "We are not talking about unsold tickets, we are talking about sold tickets which have not been occupied. It's not nice to see empty seats in a stadium but the attendances have been good.
"You need to look at the bigger picture & [and] the bigger picture is we have now the second highest attendance since 1982. [But] we are working on different measures to improve distribution of tickets."
Source: Soccernet.com
