Seats remained empty
FIFA defends viewership figures in Mexico
June 12, 2026 – 11:24 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
In the run-up to the World Cup, FIFA spoke of half a billion people interested in tickets. Nevertheless, seats remained empty at the game between South Korea and the Czech Republic.
Lots of empty stands – and still almost sold out? FIFA has defended its statement on the number of spectators for the World Cup game between South Korea and the Czech Republic. This reflects “the number of scanned tickets as well as the number of spectators actually present within the stadium grounds,” said the world football association. The number is not based on a “visual assessment of seat occupancy at any point during the game.”
For the second game of the World Cup in the USA, Mexico and Canada in the stadium in Guadalajara, FIFA had given the number of spectators at 44,985, the capacity is 45,664 seats. Thousands of seats remained empty around the halfway line, which raised the question of whether the FIFA figure corresponded to the actual number of fans in the stadium.
“Please note that at the match in Guadalajara, several spectators with valid tickets were observed loitering in the circulation and lounge areas of the stadium instead of remaining in their assigned seats throughout the match,” FIFA wrote. They are working “closely with the stadium operators and ticketing teams to ensure that all published figures are based on verified operational data”.
Fifa President Gianni Infantino emphasized at the beginning of the year that 500 million ticket requests had been received and that all World Cup games had already been sold out. Tickets are still available, especially for games with smaller nations. Fifa’s ticket policy and sometimes exorbitantly high prices caused a lot of criticism in advance.