If you watched South Korea vs Czech Republic — the second game of the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the Akron Stadium in Guadalajara — you may have been struck by the sight of large, conspicuous stretches of empty seats. Particularly around the halfway line in the lower tier, patches of vacant red seats were visible throughout the stadium.
The official attendance figure published by FIFA: 44,985.
The stadium’s listed capacity for the tournament: 45,664.
That implied just under 700 empty seats. Anyone watching the game could see that figure did not come close to reflecting reality.
So what was actually going on?
What FIFA Said — and What We Saw
Before the tournament began, FIFA president Gianni Infantino spoke in expansive terms about demand. “Until today, we have sold over six million tickets,” he said at his pre-tournament press conference. “The demand has been unprecedented, not by a little bit, but by a factor of 10 or more.”
Whatever demand looked like globally, the Akron Stadium in Guadalajara told a different story for South Korea vs Czech Republic. Swathes of empty seats were particularly concentrated towards the pitchside VIP section at the centre of the east stand, with patches of unoccupied seats visible throughout — leaving what appeared to be thousands of vacant spots in total.
Tickets in the lower tier cost $500, with those on the sidelines at the top of the stadium bowl priced at $400. A large number of the empty seats appeared to be in hospitality — a category that can cost over $5,000 if purchased by supporters rather than given away by corporate sponsors.
The Athletic asked FIFA whether the attendance figure was based on ticket sales or numbers actually passing through the gates. A FIFA spokesperson was unable to answer directly, stating they could only “refer to the official attendance.”
FIFA subsequently offered this clarification: “Official attendance figures reflect the number of tickets scanned and spectators present within the stadium footprint, rather than visual assessments of seating occupancy at any given moment during the match. FIFA works closely with stadium authorities and ticketing teams to ensure all published figures are based on verified operational data. Please note that, during last night’s match in Guadalajara, several ticketed fans could be seen standing in concourses rather than staying in their assigned seats throughout the match.”
Why This Match Was Always a Risk
This game was the first true test of the World Cup’s pricing plan — and arguably an unfavourable one for a credible attendance test.
Mexico’s home opener at the Azteca Stadium was always going to sell out regardless of pricing. South Korea vs Czech Republic, by contrast, was a different proposition entirely: two nations ranked 25th and 37th in the world, playing in one of the tournament’s poorest host cities.
The supporter breakdown reflected this. Mexican fans still dominated the crowd — conspicuous in their national shirts — with a healthy contingent of South Koreans, but very few Czech fans were visible in the stands. Czech Republic only qualified for the tournament at late notice in March, and will cover the third-most miles of any team in the group stages — a significant barrier to supporter travel.
The broader context of this tournament had already raised affordability concerns. Complaints about ticket prices, travel costs, and visa issues were prominent themes in the build-up, with the three-nation hosting format across Mexico, Canada, and the United States creating logistical challenges — and costs — that many fans could simply not absorb.
Why Official Attendances Are Often Higher Than They Appear
The most straightforward explanation for the discrepancy between the official figure and the visible reality is the way attendance is calculated and reported.
Football clubs and tournament organisers typically publish the number of tickets sold rather than the number of people actually present. This is a widespread practice across the sport, not unique to this tournament or this fixture.
In domestic league football, this means season-ticket holders who do not attend a particular match are still counted in the official attendance. Their seats are paid for. They simply are not in them. The same principle applies in tournament football — if a fan or reseller thousands of miles away purchased a ticket and, for whatever reason, did not travel, FIFA may reflect that individual as an attendee in their official count.
Tournament football faces a particular additional risk: the high proportion of tickets allocated to corporate sponsors. This dynamic is not unique to football — it affects other sporting events, including tennis’s French Open, where corporate sections that are prominently visible on television are often empty or sparsely populated until the tournament’s later rounds. In Guadalajara, the heavy concentration of empty seats around the halfway line — precisely the most visible central area — is consistent with corporate ticket-holders who did not travel to the Mexican city for a group-stage match between two sides ranked outside the world’s top 20.
How World Cup Capacities Differ From Stadium Maximums
Another element of the attendance equation worth understanding is why World Cup capacities at these venues are lower than the stadiums’ usual maximum figures.
Many stadiums at this tournament were not built primarily for football, and required structural modification to meet FIFA’s requirements.
The most significant issue involves field width. An American football field measures 53.3 yards (48.8 metres) wide. A football pitch typically ranges between 75 and 80 yards (68.5 to 73.2 metres) in width. To accommodate a football pitch of sufficient size, seating sections must be removed and pitchside areas reconstructed.
SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles — officially renamed Los Angeles Stadium for the duration of the World Cup — provides the clearest example. It averaged an attendance of 73,325 for LA Rams games last season. Its World Cup capacity is 70,492 — a reduction of nearly 3,000 seats due to the reconstruction required.
Beyond field dimensions, capacity is also reduced by administrative changes: additional space for advertising hoardings, expanded international media facilities, and other tournament-specific infrastructure requirements all reduce the number of seats available to the public.
| Stadium | Normal Capacity | World Cup Capacity | Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| SoFi Stadium (Los Angeles) | ~73,325 (avg NFL attendance) | 70,492 | ~2,800 |
| Akron Stadium (Guadalajara) | — | 45,664 | 2nd smallest WC venue |
The Akron Stadium in Guadalajara is the second-smallest venue in use at this World Cup, behind Toronto — a fact that limits both the scale of any crowd issues and the revenue potential for a host city that was always likely to generate less international visitor traffic than Mexico City or Los Angeles.
What Are the Rules for Declaring Attendance?
In short: there are very few binding rules, and considerable discretion is left to the organiser.
Local law enforcement and crowd safety authorities — such as the Sports Ground Safety Authority in the United Kingdom — request gate statements from clubs for policing and crowd management purposes. Premier League clubs are required to provide these figures. But clubs and tournament organisers are otherwise at liberty to publish whatever attendance metrics they choose.
Some clubs and competitions voluntarily announce actual attendance through the gate. Others prefer to publicise the number of tickets sold. According to one source familiar with the inner workings of an EFL club — who requested anonymity to protect professional relationships — data companies may also ask clubs for actual attendance figures, which can affect sponsorship arrangements and go some way toward explaining why there is a widespread perception of attendance reporting inconsistency.
FIFA’s own position — that their figures reflect “tickets scanned and spectators present within the stadium footprint” — suggests they are counting people who entered the building at any point, including those who may have been standing in concourses rather than occupying assigned seats during the game itself.
Is FIFA Struggling to Sell World Cup Tickets?
The broader question that the Guadalajara images raise is whether demand for this World Cup is quite as overwhelming as FIFA has suggested.
In January, FIFA reported it had received more than 500 million requests to buy tickets during its application window following December’s draw. Shortly after, Infantino stated that “every match is already sold out” — a claim that was quickly walked back by the governing body.
FIFA is understood to have held some tickets back for the highest-demand games, which has the effect of creating an apparent scarcity. For certain fixtures — Mexico’s 2-0 win over South Africa in Mexico City, for example, was played in front of a genuine sell-out, and the atmosphere around the city suggested demand could have been twice as high — that scarcity is entirely real.
For other fixtures — a group-stage match between the 25th and 37th-ranked nations in a regional Mexican city — the equation is very different.
The resale market around the USA’s opening game against Paraguay offers a useful data point. According to reporting by The Athletic, as of last Sunday night, approximately 10,000 tickets to that fixture were listed on various resale platforms:
| Resale Platform | Approx. Tickets Available (USA vs Paraguay) |
|---|---|
| FIFA resale platform | 5,311 |
| SeatGeek | ~3,000 |
| Ticketmaster | ~2,000 |
| StubHub | Several hundred |
| Other platforms | Additional listings |
For one of the most anticipated fixtures of the group stage — the co-hosts opening their tournament on home soil — the volume of resale tickets available suggests that demand, at least at current prices, has not been quite as frenzied as FIFA’s messaging implied.
The empty seats at the Akron Stadium during South Korea vs Czech Republic are most likely explained by a combination of factors: corporate ticket-holders who did not travel; a pricing structure that priced out many genuine fans; a fixture with limited natural supporter bases in the host region; and an attendance reporting convention that counts tickets sold rather than bodies in seats.
None of that means the 2026 World Cup is in crisis. Mexico’s opening game demonstrated what this tournament can look and feel like when conditions are right. But the gap between FIFA’s language of unprecedented demand and the visual reality of a half-empty VIP section in Guadalajara is a reminder that tournament attendance figures, across football and sport more broadly, are rarely the straightforward measure they appear to be.
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