FIFA Club World Cup Review
Skip To
Attendance - Honestly, the more I look at it, the more I think it was a more of a success than a failure. Could it have been better? Certainly, it was a missed opportunity to do something very impressive and FIFA got distracted by classic short sightedness.
Luck - Chelsea ranked the highest in both metrics: Luck of the Draw and Matchday Luck.
Match Entertainment - Boca Juniors were ranked the Most Exciting Team and their match against Benfica in the first round was ranked the Most Exciting.
My Experience - I went to four matches, all at MetLife stadium, and I spent $1,247 in total.
Suggestions to the Organizers - I have many thoughts of what they could do better.
FIFA World Cup 2026 - It will be expensive and well attended, but there will be opportunities to get some deals.
Analyses
I don’t have time or money to collect that much data, but I got the basics. All of my data is sourced from free platforms like FotMob and Transfermarkt. I wanted to track a few things myself. Attendance, Luck, and Match Entertainment (I’ll get to that later) were three that I was intrigued by that I thought I would dive deeper on. I’ll go through the source, methodology, and results of each of those categories. I’d say the only category that I wish I had a more complete dataset on would be ticket prices… also I’d like to add the caveat that there just aren’t that many matches and this can be quite inconsistent given there are so few data points.
In summary, there were 32 teams playing 63 matches in the Club World Cup across 12 venues (11 cities) over 30 days. There were 195 goals scored, an average of ~3 a game. There were no games decided by penalty kicks in the entire tournament and only three matches went to extra time (overtime) (that’s of the 15 knockout stage matches that could have gone the distance). $1 billion in prize money with Chelsea taking home ~$114.6M all the way to Auckland City getting ~$4.6M.
Series colors are defined by their continent (data source: The Athletic)
You can see that the Europeans took the lion’s share of the $1B prize money, but South America held its own.
Source: Opta Analyst Odds
I compared betting odds before against the final tournament results. This is a bit messy, but at the very least we can see the largest outliers (those who performed best or worst).
Winners:
The Rest of the World (outside of Europe) showed up and surprised everyone.
Fluminense did fantastic earning the coveted title of the last remaining survivor outside of Europe.
Botafogo and Monterrey both upset their groups and got into the knockout stages.
Esperance de Tunis and Al Ain surprised everyone by not finishing bottom of their group.
Chelsea won the whole thing somehow.
Palmeiras went much further than expected.
Al-Hilal taking down Manchester City was a huge result.
Losers:
Atletico Madrid was the biggest disappointment, ranked 8th in the pre-tournament odds and didn’t get out of the group stage.
Don Garber won’t be thrilled by the disappointing showing by MLS pair Seattle Sounders and Los Angeles FC.
Perennial African champions Al Ahly fell flat.
Argentine giants River Plate didn’t do well despite great attendance.
Porto was a mess.
Manchester City was a favorite to win the entire tournament and crashed out to Al-Hilal earlier than expected.
Inter Milan, the runner up in the Champions League, was overestimated.
But, let’s take a step back to the group stage only (because by limiting it to just that portion of the tournament we can compare all teams more fairly).
Based on Squad Values from Transfermarkt
Obviously the European teams had some easier schedules, Borussia Dortmund was basically given a free pass. Al Ain and Wydad both had pretty daunting schedules.
Attendance
I’ve taken this attendance data from FotMob and Wikipedia. It’s not the best research, but it is what’s available to me. We have to assume it’s correct, which always felt slightly wrong when you’re in stadium… but what do I know, aren’t humans bad at guessing how many marbles are in a jar?
Now I can’t prove which fans showed up to which games, but I just took the attendance of each match they played and aggregated it. At the very least, the position on the chart will show who is most popular. I’ll start with just the three matches in the Group Stage. Real Madrid really led the way, followed by the most recent Champions League winners, Paris Saint-Germain. Inter Miami and Seattle Sounders are high on the list because they essentially were playing home matches. South American fans traveled for their teams.
The four lowest attendance clubs are all very far away from the east coast of the United States. Korea, Japan, New Zealand, and South Africa. So it’s possible that it’s just a logistics / financial issue for attendance. Ulsan and Mamelodi being the lowest is kind of funny since a YouTuber I follow specifically went to that game because he anticipated it would be the lowest attended (it was attended by 3,412 people…). I can give Los Angeles FC a pass since they joined late and their matches were significantly far away from their home in California.
Dortmund’s presence as the worst attended for the Europeans, even after Salzburg, is pretty poor. Though, given the strength of schedule chart I showed earlier, it’s possible their supporters just figured they would breeze through that group stage and they would save a few bucks and show up during the knockout rounds. One of their matches against a decently well attended Fluminense accounted for ~61% of their attendance in the group stage. Meaning, as the headliner against Ulsan HD and Mamelodi Sundowns, they couldn’t get people to attend. That said, they were also doing both those games in Cincinnati… which is tough.
This version of the data demonstrates how well FIFA selected the stadiums for them to occupy. Other than for Real Madrid capacity was basically never an issue. Pricing was probably a problem. Casual fans probably recognized one of the teams and were probably confused as to why they were playing one another or were unconvinced it would be a good match.
Groups A and B had an MLS host with a home stadium (Inter Miami and Seattle Sounders). Group H had Real Madrid. Group F was garbage in terms of market appeal. Dortmund, Fluminense, Ulsan, and Mamelodi are just not really big fish in the United States.
And let’s pivot to stadiums / cities.
Here’s that data averaged for each stadium.
Half the venues didn’t crack 50% attendance, which is just a combination of bad planning, marketing, and pricing. I have a hard time believing New York City couldn’t fill up a stadium for a sports event or Seattle couldn’t fill out its stadium better when it has one of the highest attendances in the MLS. I’m always surprised how big of a soccer market North Carolina is. Los Angeles and Florida seem pretty logical. Let’s do a brief dive into Seattle:
Six matches in the group stage were there
Two featured the home team, Seattle Sounders
30,151 against Botafogo
51,636 against Atletico Madrid
Their average attendance in 2024 was 30,377, so they didn’t manage to make the match against Botafogo any more exciting than a typical MLS match; that’s disappointing
The two lowest attendances of 11,974 and 22,992 were both during work hours
The third lowest attendance of 25,090 was a predictable one sided affair between Inter Milan and Urawa Red Diamonds
So, there are obviously other variables that could affect these attendances. Let’s look at Day of the Week / Workday / Time of Day / Stage, starting with Day of the Week.
Well the best performing day is Sunday with an average attendance of 42,122 and 68.37%. Thursday was in second at 39,545 and 62.39%, followed by Monday with 39,705 and 55.00%. Unsurprising that Tuesday and Wednesday are the lowest performing by far, but I was surprised Friday and Saturday didn’t do better. Again, there are just not that many data points, so it could still be heavily skewed by the other variables. Friday hosted the fewest matches (4) followed by Saturday (5). This is because the tournament began on a Saturday evening, had one more weekend, then ended midweek. Right off the bat they should probably do the opening game on a Thursday night, then get a full two weekends in of matches on the weekend.
But let’s try and get more specific. Classifying days as not workdays, workdays, or even the matches as during local work hours we can see the general attendance.
When it’s on a weekend or holiday (Juneteenth was included) attendance was on average 9,574 higher than on workdays. If you just compared to the 12pm and 3pm starts during the weekdays, it’s 11,507 higher. Simple enough, not having the game interfere with work meant way more people attended.
Not filtered for workdays, just time of day, you can see how this relationship changes.
Afternoon Early is typically a noon or 1 pm kickoff.
Afternoon Late is around 3 or 4 pm.
Evening Early is around 6 or 7 pm.
Evening Late is around 8 through 10 pm.
Other than that prime time evening slot games were best attended, there isn’t too much to glean from this. It’s possible that in addition to not conflicting with work hours, the evening games also simply had much cooler weather without the sun glaring down on fans.
And here’s the final view, based on each Round of the Group Stage.
I was very surprised that the third and final round wasn’t significantly more attended. The stakes generally increase with each round, so it makes me think that locals simply don’t understand the group stage model very well. A main reason why can be explained with the previous charts. Each Round is only 4 days. Group Stage Round 3 simply doesn’t have any weekend dates, and half of the matches are during work hours. Those two factors are clearly influential here. Casual American soccergoers are simply not as interested in this tournament as FIFA claims. And/or the tickets were just priced very poorly.
Alright, let’s pivot to all match attendance.
The total attendance was 2,492,062. The total capacity was 4,073,500. So, the entire tournament was 61.18% of capacity.
The average per game was 39,557 (if you just looked at the group stage, the average was 34,759). This is actually surprisingly good, better than what I thought. American stadiums are just bigger and look emptier, and the prices of tickets were higher (anecdotally), so it’s frustrating that it could have been better attended if they were more purposeful.
Real Madrid was by far the best attended. They may be the evil empire, but they certainly have personnel. Paris benefited from participating in the most sold match, the final.
Let’s dive into a bunch of the other competitions we’ll compare the Club World Cup 2025 to:
UEFA Champions League - The pinnacle of club competition currently
Club World Cup - What it is replacing
World Cup - What it is emulating
Gold Cup - Regional National Tournament that normalizes (roughly) for location and time
Leagues Cup - Regional Club Tournament that normalizes (roughly) for location and time
Copa America - Regional National Tournament
Premier League - Gold standard of club competitions
Skip ahead to the end of this section if you don’t want to see the data from all of these.
The UEFA Champions League is the pinnacle of Club Competition in 2024/2025 had an average attendance of 44,302 (there were also 188 games, so three times the size of the Club World Cup). So it’s only 12% off of that. The ten year average is 44,224. However there is a noticeable dip there in the past season as they’ve expanded the tournament from 125 games to 188. A 15% drop in average attendance in exchange for 63 more matches…
Here are the previous Club World Cups average attendances, keep in mind these are the weird 7/8 match tournaments in the winter:
7 Game Format:
2023 - 35,270 per game in Saudi Arabia
2022 - 40,325 per game in Morocco
8 Game Format:
2021 - 12,594 per game in the United Arab Emirates
2020 - 3,080 per game in Qatar (COVID related delay)
2019 - 20,803 per game in Qatar
2018 - 19,804 per game in the United Arab Emirates
2017 - 16,571 per game in the United Arab Emirates
2016 - 29,804 per game in Japan
2015 - 34,039 per game in Japan
2014 - 28,503 per game in Morocco
2013 - 34,666 per game in Morocco
2012 - 35,383 per game in Japan
2011 - 38,167 per game in Japan
2010 - 25,031 per game in the United Arab Emirates
2009 - 19,544 per game in Japan
2008 - 44,439 per game in Japan
7 Game Format:
2007 - 45,040 per game in Japan
2006 - 46,450 per game in Japan
2005 - 37,351 per game in Japan
14 Game Format:
2000 - 36,714 per game in Brazil
I was very surprised in this review that South America has only hosted one. And I didn’t know Japan had this strong connection to the tournament.
There are some aberrations with the 2008 Financial Crisis and 2020 COVID Pandemic. Otherwise, other than the UAE and Qatar, attendance has been pretty steady from around 35,000 to 45,000. This tournament is right in line with that, plus it had significantly more games (8x-9x).
Now, let’s add in the World Cup. Sorry, the colors of some of them changed… and I’m too tired to match it.
2022 - 53,191 per game in Qatar
2018 - 47,371 per game in Russia
2014 - 53,592 per game in Brazil
2010 - 49,670 per game in South Africa
2006 - 52,491 per game in Germany
2002 - 42,269 per game in South Korea / Japan
1998 - 43,517 per game in France
1994 - 69,174 per game in United States
The World Cup in 1994 was the most attended World Cup of all time… doesn’t bode well for ticket prices next year! I think the only real variable will be the expansion of the tournament of 63% or 40 games to 104. Will the World Cup be able to sustain that growth? Probably…
All of the stars below are the World Cups.
Now let’s compare it to more regional tournaments. Both held in the summers and in the United States, the Gold Cup (National Teams) and the newer Leagues Cup (Club Teams) are both good examples. The Gold Cup is a shorter, but similar format tournament that occurs every two years (much to my chagrin, it should be on a four year cadence like other regional national tournaments), and the League Cup only has a few iterations, but has a similar size format to the Club World Cup. Let’s add in the Copa America as well. It is a good example of why the United States is considered such an in demand destination for soccer. Comparing the five most recent times the Copa America was held in South America (excluding a COVID tournament) the average attendance was 33,231. In the two held in the United States, the average attendance was 47,746. That’s a 44% increase just for holding it in the United States. If you reasonably assume ticket prices are higher stateside than in South America, it makes it glaringly obvious why they do it.
But I digress, back to the Gold Cup and Leagues Cup. While neither of these tournaments are considered particularly successful, and it would have definitely been a disaster for the Club World Cup to perform worse than them. The Gold Cup averages 32,344 and the Leagues Cup only 17,532. Curiously you can see the Gold Cup took a pretty substantial plummet given it shared the same calendar space with the Club World Cup. If I were CONCACAF I would request reconciliation from FIFA for those 10,000 attendees a game that would have otherwise come to the Gold Cup.
Okay, one final comparison, before we show everything on one chart. Might as well look at the Premier League. It’s the gold standard, so let’s just show that for posterity’s sake. Over the past 10 seasons in the Premier League, the average attendance is 38,589 (though at a massive 380 matches).
Alright, so here’s everything together and how the Club World Cup 2025 stacks up. Red are club competitions and blue are national team competitions. Gray is the average matches in the respective competition for reference.
If I were FIFA I assume the goal was to make the Club World Cup the premium international club competition, similar to how the World Cup dominates the national competitions. That means targeting the Champions League. The incumbent. They got pretty close to matching the revenue (the winner of the Champions League this year got around $120M and the winner of the Club World Cup got around $115M), so matching the attendance should have been their main operational focus. An average attendance of 45,000 would have been an absolute victory, instead they fall short for no reason other than incompetence.
So they successfully priced (eventually) and selected the correct venues for 14 matches. Let’s say 21 to be generous. That’s only one-third of the matches. You could argue that the remainder are all incorrectly priced which is a pretty abysmal hit rate.
The five lowest occupancy matches were (all were group stage):
14% - Ulsan HD v. Mamelodi Sundowns
16% - Urawa Red Diamonds v. Monterrey
17% - River Plate v. Urawa Red Diamonds
20% - Mamelodi Sundowns v. Borussia Dortmund
22% - Mamelodi Sundowns v. Fluminense
The five highest occupancy matches were:
98% - Chelsea v. Paris Saint-Germain
98% - Bayern Munich v. Boca Juniors
96% - Real Madrid v. Al-Hilal
96% - Real Madrid v. Juventus
95% - Palmeiras v. Chelsea
A PR spin they could try is that the Champions League and other tournaments lost average attendance when they expanded the tournament, there’s a narrative here that this tournament was a success because they increased average attendance and vastly increased the number of games. The model has been proven and the next iteration will be even better. I certainly don’t think it was a disaster, but the prices and the unused capacity are still very disappointing.
Prices are definitely a huge missing piece of data and I don’t have a great route to getting it for all of these. Some anecdotal searches have revealed that tickets to prior Club World Cups have been affordable.
Low end (group games): $5–$15.
Typical average ticket: ~$40–$60.
High end (finals): $80–$200.
They should have started pricing at these levels or just slightly above them and created great atmospheres and demand. Starting minimums at 2-3x these previous averages was a misstep. The group stage was always going to be a struggle, but it may have been wise to start with larger attendances than the stumbles in the early stages that created a dark cloud over the rest of the tournament. They tried it for the opening match with the infamous $20 for 5 tickets. But why didn’t they just expand this for everything on Matchday 1 to get the local and social media to show demand (I mean I obviously want them to do it for all matches, but Matchday 1 was the least they could do)
While FIFA eventually cut ticket prices around 50% by the middle / end of the group stage, dynamic pricing really took over in the knockout stages. At that point it seemed like whatever price floor they had was eliminated and they let market economics truly take over, and it finally worked in the favor of attendees. As the reserved tickets and other unsold tickets hit the market and demand remained low, tickets dropped to incredibly affordable levels. If I was in the country and was nearby the games, I would have gone to more matches. The great example being brought up were semifinal tickets for Fluminense and Chelsea going for $13.40 after being pushed for $250+.
FIFA, it looks worse going one way than the other way. Start low, keep your hospitality high and oversell to your VVIPs, but no high paying customer is going to feel good looking around at all of those empty seats. So what if you leave a few dollars on the table because of low priced tickets? You’re making most of your revenue from broadcasting rights anyway.
Luck
Another interesting aspect I wanted to look at was the inevitability, given the short length of the tournament, of luck. There are two aspects to look at:
Luck of the Draw
The teams drawn against you in the group and in the knockout tournament
Match Luck
Here’s my Luck formula. We have five components:
Finishing Overperformance
Goals - xG (expected goals)
Opponent Underperformance
xG - Goals
Wins Within 1 Goal
Extra Time Win (if applicable)
Penalty Kick Win (not applicable since no games went to penalties)
I didn’t weight anything, and just gave a basic amount of points for everything, everything is only relative within the tournament, so I figure we don’t have to mess around with it much.
Luck of the Draw
First, I looked at Opponent Group Stage Total Value, then Opponent Round of 16 Value, then Quarters, and Semis. I took the average of the Opponent Squad Values and if you had a large enough deviation from the average, I gave the team either a +1 or a -1 depending if their opponents were more valuable or less valuable than the average.
e.g. Borussia Dortmund’s three Group Stage opponents were worth a total of $38M which is $212M below the average of $250M. That’s a +1. They were the luckiest team in the Group Stage draw. In the Round of 16 They drew Monterrey with a squad value of $92M, $463M below the average of $555M. That’s another +1. Then they got Real Madrid in the Quarter Finals, who are the most valuable team remaining, and got a -1. This gave them a Luck of the Draw score of 1.
Here are all of the results. I only did the knockout round teams to save some time.
Sorry Chelsea, but you definitely got lucky. The left side ($4.0B) of the bracket was inherently easier than the right side ($4.8B). They owe Al-Hilal a great deal who knocked out the favorites (Manchester City) on that side. Then they got lucky again that underdog Fluminense who beat Al-Hilal. All the while they had to play Benfica, Palmeiras, and eventually Fluminense to get to the final. Of course… you still have to win the matches, but you have to recognize the ease of schedule. Let’s take a gander at our next category.
Match Luck
All the data is taken from FotMob. I wanted to avoid anything subjective, like VAR decisions, late goals, refereeing decisions, etc. So it’s a bit simple, but I think it’s a good list still.
So I just took the standard deviation from the difference of Goals - xG to get Finishing Overperformance. Then the reverse to get Opponent Underperformance. I added 1 point for every 1 goal margin win a team had, plus another point if they had an Extra Time Win or Penalty Kick Win. There were no penalty kick shootouts in this tournament. Pretty straightforward, it revealed some simple answers.
Chelsea (4.8)
Botafogo (4.1)
Borussia Dortmund (3.2)
Real Madrid (3.0)
Bayern Munich (3.0)
Caveat for Bayern Munich, they get a bit punished for their 10 goals and 4.3 xG against Auckland City. If you remove this stat, they drop to 17th, and are replaced by Al-Hilal (2.9).
The average score was 0.7. I wouldn’t necessarily say the lowest scored teams were the most unlucky, but we might as well call them out while we’re here:
Pachuca (-2.3)
Al Ain (-2.1)
Auckland City (-1.9)
If you remove Auckland City’s match against Bayern Munich, Seattle Sounders (-1.6) takes the fifth slot.
Urawa Red Diamonds (-1.9)
Al Ahly (-1.5)
Not nearly as insightful. /shrug
Anyway, there you have it. Chelsea was both luckiest in games and luckiest in terms of other teams and the format helping them out. However, they still had to win their games (especially against an incredible Parisienne side that is one of the best I’ve seen) and that randomness will always be an essential part of sports.
Match Excitement / Entertainment
Now breaking down the attendance and who is lucky are fine, but at the end of the day, we’re just spectators, and I wanted to see which were objectively the best games to watch. I use the terms Excitement and Entertainment interchangeably, but it’s the same metric.
Here’s my formula, again trying to avoid subjectivity, simply as a neutral (I’m also open to suggestions):
What are the Stakes?
1 point for an elimination game
0.5 points for a game that matters still
0 points for a game where the result has no bearing on the tournament
Comeback / One-sided?
1 point for a comeback
0.5 points for both sides scoring at least a goal
0 points for only one team scoring goals
Expected Goals (xG)
1 point if combined xG is greater than 4
0.5 points if combined xG is greater than 2
0 points if combined xG is less than 2
Discipline (cards)
Created an score where 6 yellow cards equals 1 red card and 1 red card equals 1 card score
1 point if combined card score is greater than 2
0.5 points if combined card score is greater than 1
0 points if combined card score is less than 1
Late Goals
1 point if someone scores a relevant goal after the 80th minute
0.5 points if someone scores a relevant goal after the 70th minute
0 points if no one scores a relevant goal after the 70th minute
Relevant goal is one that is within 2 goals of parity including parity
e.g. a goal that brings the score from:
1-0 to 1-1 or something that draws the game
1-1 to 2-1 or something that takes the lead
2-1 to 3-1 or something that closes the game out
Or other goal situations that have similar results
Attendance
0.5 points if attendance is greater than 40,000
+ another 0.5 points if occupancy percentage is greater than 80%
0 points if it’s under both those thresholds
Major Upset
1 point if it was a major upset (defined as a lesser value team beating a significantly higher value team)
0.5 points if it was just an upset (defined as a lesser value team drawing a significantly higher value team or beating a slightly higher value team)
0 points if it was as predicted
So technically the perfect game would be a 7 by this rating system. It would have a large crowd and matter, it would have cards, goals, a comeback, a late decider, and be an upset. While nothing can have all of those, here are the results by Match:
It should be noted that this is obviously for a neutral with no additional subjective narratives. The 10 Most Exciting Matches are (links are to the YouTube highlights):
Match 7 - Boca Juniors v. Benfica - 6
Boca Juniors went up 2-0 in the first half, then Benfica dominated the second half to come back to draw it, oh, and sprinkle in two red cards in there too
Match 54 - Manchester City v. Al-Hilal - 5.5
An absolute shootout of a match that went to Extra Time, and the underdog won in the end
Match 35 - Inter Miami CF v. Palmeiras - 5
Inter Miami was up 2-0 with 10 minutes to go and Palmeiras scores twice for both teams to progress to the knockout rounds
Match 60 - Real Madrid v. Borussia Dortmund - 4.5
This is a tad inflated in my opinion, but 3 goals in stoppage time and a red card meant that it was worth staying until the end
Match 59 - Paris Saint-Germain v. Bayern Munich - 4.5
Battle of two European juggernauts that will never not get top billing, two late goals with two red cards just meant it was tense until the end, unfortunately though Jamal Musiala suffered the tournament’s worst injury
Match 50 - Benfica v. Chelsea - 4.5
Scorelines can be deceiving, a last minute goal sent this game into extra time where Chelsea eventually turned on and won
Match 22 - Flamengo v. Chelsea - 4.5
Not only an upset, but in hindsight the only team to beat the eventual champions, plus we always like when the European clubs lose
Match 62 - Paris Saint-Germain v. Real Madrid - 4
This was a demolition, proving that team building is more important than galactico collecting
Match 58 - Palmeiras v. Chelsea - 4
Great goal by future Chelsea player Estevao, and the game was only resolved on a cruel own goal
Match 52 - Flamengo v. Bayern Munich - 4
Bayern going up by 2 with Flamengo clawing their way back was just an exciting match
Let’s break the Match Excitement out by Stage just by averaging all the game’s scores:
Quarterfinals are the sweet spot. Fewer one sided affairs than the Round of 16, just enough hope for underdogs, all the stakes, opportunity is ripe. I’m surprised that Group Stage Round 2 ranked higher, but here’s my made up narrative on it. Round 1 people just don’t want to lose, play conservative keep yourself with hope. Round 3 has some games that are duds since the table standings are already locked in or close to it. So theoretically round 2 is when teams are forced to go for it.
Most Exciting Teams are:
The average score was 2.5, so around the Los Angeles FC and Seattle Sounders FC point.
It would track that some of the most entertaining matches would feature the most entertaining teams.
My Experience
I went to four matches, all at MetLife stadium and I spent $1,247. I am, predictably, one of those people who can’t really divorce the price from the experience. In my effort to always be transparent, here’s the breakdown. It does not include Food and Beverage bought prior or after the match. I often ate lunch in Ktown near Penn Station, and grabbed to go beers to drink on the train (those amounts are not included).
Let’s call out the elephant in the room. I vastly overpaid for the final. It’s an indisputable fact, just something to live with! As FIFA began releasing the tickets they had been withholding or had been returned to them by sponsors and other hospitality options, dynamic pricing dropped the tickets to as low as $200 (also in the second tier with shade). Here are three screenshots of the ticket prices that weekend. I purchased mine in a presale ages ago, but I do think if Real Madrid had made it into the final it would have been around $300-$400.
I bought tickets to the Palmeiras game the morning of and the Real Madrid semifinal the day before. I think both were fair prices to pay for tickets. I’ve already spoken about the Dortmund tickets, which I had purchased in a fan presale. The Dortmund adjusted ticket price was also pretty fair and equitable. Again, I’m very surprised and grateful that FIFA refunded me (update, I received the notice on June 9th and it was in my bank account on June 15th).
Beer was $15 at the stadium (16 ounce can), though some select beer stands do have a value beer for $6, which is a 12 ounce can of Busch Light or Miller High Life. They can be hard to find and often go fast. Chicken tenders and fries are $14. Bag check is $5.
I took New Jersey Transit from Penn Station. It wasn’t that bad, but to be fair, I do this trip quite often. You should download the app so you can buy the tickets digitally and not stand in line. You can purchase from New York Penn Station to Secaucus Junction (not MetLife Stadium / Meadowlands), this saves you a whopping $3 round trip. App is easy to use and makes the process pretty seamless. You take the train one stop to Secaucus where you just follow the flow of people and hop on a shuttle train to the stadium. You generally don’t have to wait too long. On the way back we took the bus, we found it pretty quick. There was a dedicated bus lane, so it moved pretty fast. All in all, I would get from the stadium back to Astoria within 1.5-2 hours. Those extra crowd control barriers add a good amount of time. I’ve seen people complain about them, these are nothing compared to Qatar.
We participated in none of the pre-match village sponsored activations. They just looked sad and so barren in the parking lot.
Well to the soccer itself. The first two matches were nil-nil draws. Pretty underwhelming. There were a handful of good chances, but overall, the only highlight were the Brazilian fans who created a great, albeit one sided atmosphere. Will brought up that it was the best atmosphere he had ever experienced in person at a soccer game in the US. Our seats for Dortmund were great, right in the heart of the fan section. Unfortunately for Dortmund, while there may have been many supporters, most of us couldn’t speak German or knew the chants. The Dortmund faithful were not deterred, in classic German fashion at halftime, they convened and adjusted their tactics. Going with melodic chants with few words, or simple chants and call and response chants to include their international brethren.
Both the semifinal and final were first half blow outs and pretty much killed the game and atmosphere early. The PSG ultras at least were as loud as they could be through the second half of the semifinal, the same cannot be said for Chelsea during the final. Chelsea supporters seemed to outnumber PSG, but it was pretty quiet throughout the affair. A couple “C’mon Chelsea” chants, but generally uncoordinated. It’s possible the weather and heat simply was exhausting people already. We were dripping in sweat and pretty burnt.
In the first two matches, at half time they just played the same Robbie Williams music video as loud as they can, and it doesn’t hit. Go back to having kids play on the field, or someone do an activity to win a car or something. Far more entertaining and engaging. As for the shows before and during the final, having live performances were quite enjoyable. The pregame ceremony was solid. The fireworks, jet flyover, and Trump’s helicopter entrance. Robbie Williams was more interesting live, plus I had recently watched his monkey biopic (which was weird). I was amused that Laura Pausini introduced him at the end, and he just said thanks and didn’t return the favor, so I didn’t learn her name until later. The halftime show was weirdly good. I’m told those were impressive artists that I haven’t heard of (other than surprise Coldplay). The stage was pretty cool, and the cinematography was legit. But I still can’t help but think how much better it would have been at night. We went to The Lumineers at CitiField on Friday, and they waited until it was dark to come on, and with our light up bands, it adds a really fun and interactive atmosphere.
We left before the trophy ceremony. We wouldn’t have been able to see much from where we were, but the videos of Trump being Trump and not leaving Chelsea alone are hilarious. I also love the stories of him taking a medal and the trophy are better than fiction. He’s a jabroni, I hate him, and the damage he’s doing to the country and world, but you can’t deny he’s pretty amusing.
At the end of the day, I won’t really remember much of it. Brazilian fans and a couple of very impressive goals. None of it ranks too highly or very memorably. Not a thrilling endorsement, but that’s life. You win some and you lose some.
Criticisms & Suggestions
Let’s start with the bad.
Shift the schedule. FIFA should probably set up the opening game on a Thursday night (instead of being a solo game on a Saturday), then get a full two weekends in of matches on the weekend. Based on the Day of the Week data, this would be slightly helpful in attendances, as well as lengthen the tournament slightly giving more teams more rest time.
Please let Brazil host the next one. FIFA will be inclined to send it to the Middle East, though I’ve seen pitches for it going to the Spain/Portugal/Morocco bid. Australia would be a mistake at this stage. Attendance and atmosphere are the keys right now. And Brazil has proven they will show up.
Prioritize kick off times for the attendees and let the world watch if they can. I understand there needs to be a balance (certainly for the big matches), but people definitely don’t want to watch something if the stadium is half empty and the atmosphere is garbage.
That means more weekend matches, more evening matches, fewer matches during work hours.
Schedule the ones on the west coast to start at 8pm local meaning 11pm eastern, after their 8 pm matches end. Take advantage of the 4 time zones, it’s a boon, not a burden.
Pricing was all wrong. Set the baseline category 3 & 4 tickets cheaper and increase more dramatically for each level, and even a much larger step up for Hospitality if you really want to make money. You can reserve tickets to try and take advantage of the demand as it grows, but you really kill demand if it’s not priced reasonably, and from there, recapturing the energy (as you’ve just proven) is nigh impossible.
Ticketmaster is just awful and expensive. FIFA, it is limiting your ability to coordinate fans better and control your product. I assume due to the agreements with the stadium you’re being forced to partnering with them, but it’s amazing that the FIFA ticket platform has no fees and the Ticketmaster one has exorbitant fees. It makes reselling (not scalping) at face value impossible, because you cannot sell tickets back at remotely the same price without the additional fees required by both seller and buyer.
Force Ticketmaster to show which sides of the stadiums are for which clubs and work with them to congregate the supporters together. Supporters, mixed, and spread around are bound to happen in any neutral based tournament, but try harder to move everyone together. We can all agree those “walls” of supporters are one of the best parts of soccer. As an organizer you have to try extra hard to help assist and coordinate this to give it the best odds of coming to fruition. Maybe add in a blurb about what color to wear to help neutrals be on theme.
Expand the fan sections and make them cheaper. They’re so impressive and fun, they are actually part of your product, so stop gouging them and encourage them. Atmosphere struggled at the semifinal and final (partly due to the one sided affairs), but also just the lack of coordination from fan sections. Find those super-supporter coordinators and pay for them to be there.
Those loyalists should be rewarded for committing early. I appreciated the refund on the supporters tickets in the group stage, but I think it was a misstep to not do something similar for the Final tickets. I understand a refund could be difficult, but there were many unsold tickets until the week of the match. At the very least you could have upgraded and consolidated those who had tickets (and were not reselling them). This would encourage people to purchase early and drive demand and anticipation.
Prematch Festivities are sad and pathetic, they somehow make Qatar look more authentic. Now I only saw MetLife’s, so I’m really only commenting on it, but it was just barren and dead. I was surprised, I expected us to be able to provide something that was actually interesting. The food was literally the same as in the stadium, the seating limited, the activities were just cornhole, foosball, pictures, and table soccer.
It’s over now, and would be different for the World Cup, but maybe for the next Club World Cup, get the Clubs to participate in the Match Festival area. why are the clubs themselves not trying to convert fans and sell jerseys and gear? There are FIFA stores with branded gear for the tournament and teams, but why aren’t the teams selling anything? If I were any of these clubs, I would set up a big tent and show the many neutrals attending a flavor of my city and country? Even in Qatar they gave away flags for each country to help “color” the stadium and create some manufactured partisan atmosphere in a venue majority occupied by neutrals. Was it fake? Yes. Did it help? Yes.
Certainly for MetLife… why don’t some of the tenants from American Dream come over and set up stalls and create a market? An HMart stand would crush it. C’mon! Do something interesting. If you’re going to try and convince to show up hours early, at least provide some entertainment or something. Let’s make each stadium an actual festival. I joked around that at 1pm (the requested time FIFA suggested you to arrive for the match) it was more crowded at Astoria’s new monthly farmer’s market. And it looked like more fun and I would have spent more money. Think about that…
FIFA and stadiums, stop Crowding Out. This is a term from Economics that generally talks about government involvement that substantially affects the remainder of the market. Will and I were discussing how this is an apt term for the atmosphere in the stadium (at least MetLife, I can’t speak for the others, but I assume it’s similar). It seems that the organizers, concerned that the atmosphere may be struggling to entertain, decide to blast music, hype videos, and have emcees to try and manufacture that engagement. They believe that casual fans want this “entertainment package”, so they do it as loud as possible and often way too early (to empty stands). Nothing makes me, personally, more unenthusiastic than hollow attempts to coerce me to be enthusiastic. It makes me (and I’m sure many more) colder and more annoyed at the situation. An emcee yelling into the microphone as loud as he can, to the point where he is losing his voice, doesn’t get me excited. It has the reverse reaction, “If you’re trying this hard to get me engaged, then clearly it isn’t worth my attention”.
Stadiums, you should want to assist and foster a grassroots atmosphere. That means bringing in diehard loud community organizing supporters for free or subsidized tickets. It means amplifying their voices and not your own. It’s turning on a club’s anthem, showing lyrics on the screens, and then lowering the volume to let the crowd sing it together. It’s giving people flags or towels that match a club so they can engage with each other and represent a collective group.
If you are going to play music, make it something engaging, not just loud. I’m sure lots of people like singing the popular songs, but when no one can hear each other, it just feels more isolating. If it’s always loud, then nothing is loud. A good atmosphere at a sporting match gets loud and quiet, as the crowd chooses.
Let it be a cultural exchange for the clubs or countries to bring something unique to the table. Why is it the same playlist of generic songs at every game. We’re a captive audience, engage us with some interesting. Every game is not the biggest deal ever, it isn’t the greatest show on Earth. Stop pretending it is. Just be a show, be a good show, heck be a great show. Americans are generally good at this, which is why it was strange how foreign all the technology felt.
FIFA needs to come up with more convincing and equitable, qualifying criteria.
Look, international football is biased towards Europe, and the world is anglo-centric. We needed more Premier League clubs. It’s biased and unfair, but that’s what will sell and bring attention to it. It felt weird talking about all of this and not having Barcelona, Liverpool, or Arsenal involved. I mean when those clubs show up they sell out 80,000 person stadiums for random friendly’s and the tickets cost even more money.
The 4 year qualification cycle is odd. Only two players remaining from Chelsea’s Champions League win remained on the team for the Club World Cup win… and technically the most recent Champions League winner doesn’t qualify. I get that it’s too short of a turnaround for planning purposes, but it feels strange that if Arsenal or Barcelona had won, they wouldn’t have attended.
It’s nice that Portugal and Austria got to send teams, but the cap on teams by country was a bit frustrating for
FIFA doesn’t know how to market this, do better. I’m part of multiple WhatsApp group chats of soccer fans and players. Anecdotally, only 7 people of the 51 members attended a match. These are people who play or watch soccer weekly and most, if not all, have disposable income and reside within a reasonable drive time and/or have public transit connections to the stadium. While their interest levels vary, they should be obvious candidates to target and convince to go to at least one. To not have better pricing or teams that would attract interest is appalling. I get that FIFA probably pushed lesser known teams to New York for the group stages because they wanted the bigger teams in smaller markets, but still. Incredibly poor conversion rate. I felt like I was doing more to market it to people than FIFA. They wasted spent $50M on marketing? Heck, me texting the group chats notifying them of price deals and organizing groups to attend was far more successful. Get people like me on the books and you’ll spend that money better. I mean, today they announced that the World Cup Application process will start September 10th, and I texted some group chats, effectively reaching almost 100 people who will actually read that announcement.
I’m not a fan of the individual walkouts, certainly not the way it’s done. Perhaps they can announce all the players during warm ups and show them on the screen while they prepare, and place them into the formation digitally. The pregame process can be improved to be more engaging.
Alright, onto the good!
Public Transportation was good. Trains left Penn Station every 10-15 minutes and the buses back to the station from the stadium was pretty good. Kudos to New Jersey Transit for handling this. I used it four times without a hitch. More efficient than to an NFL game, though that is immediately offset by the longer crowd control barriers and security lines.
Michael Buffer did the intros to the semi final and the final, and he was so American, and so great. It was just the right blend of energy and professionalism. He doesn’t need to yell, because he is iconic. He also knows how to play the crowd. His pauses are just as important as his words. Take note FIFA, Michael Buffer knows how to not Crowd Out. From the first sentence, you just think to yourself, I know this voice. Great selection, his audition for next year’s tournament was a success for me.
Counting down is still weird to me. Just let the referee start the game.
The halftime show was pretty good. Look, I’ve never seen a stage set up in the third tier like that, but it was pretty cool. The show was well done and I enjoyed it. I mean, we rushed back to our seats just to make sure we didn’t miss a moment. That says a lot.
The fans from across the globe were great. Particularly the South Americans carried a lot of the burden of atmosphere, but even in smaller groups, the Asian, African, and North American clubs had some great passionate fans. These people need to be lauded by their clubs and FIFA. They should be given stipends to try and engage and convert neutrals. They should be supported with tifos and print outs of song lyrics. They’re your brand ambassadors.
Something I also really liked in Qatar was the access for fans. So many people saw a soccer game they would have never otherwise seen. I may never have a chance again to see some of those clubs, I imagine some of these matchups may never happen again. That unique blend of product and location is something that should be emphasized. Stop selling us that it’s the greatest sporting event ever, it’s cool in its own right, without the hype machine.
FIFA World Cup 2026
I’m still looking forward to next year. I will probably be traveling between cities. I plan on picking up an American Airlines or Delta credit card for some extra points and benefits. I’m going to take this data and apply it to some of my World Cup planning. Focus on Group Stage Rounds 2 & 3, the Round of 16, and Quarter Finals. Focus on following African, South American, and Asian teams in the first rounds and then pivot to Europeans in the Knockout stages.
My current group stage strategy is to bunch cities together and travel between. I have three groupings I’m eyeing:
Seattle & Vancouver
Could try and get a USA game in Seattle, and the weather should be great out there. I’ve also always wanted to go to Vancouver. More to do outside the games in the PNW.
Dallas & Atlanta
Could be a nice option since they’re going to close the roofs. I can also sneak over to Houston if need be.
Philadelphia & New York
Cheapest to travel and stay in (I have friends in Philly I can crash with).
I’m going to try to be in or near fan sections. It’s worth it.
I will also be trying to purchase tickets through FIFA, directly if possible (not through Ticketmaster). I want them to be able to move my seats around as they see fit, and apparently they will refund me some money if something is terribly priced. I do expect this tournament to be the highest attended World Cup of all time. I expect the ticket prices they tried to set the Club World Cup at to be about the baseline they’ll set next year.
That leads to two competing perspectives on pricing here:
Prices will start too high and drop in the secondary market like the Club World Cup
They’ve expanded the tournament 63% or 40 more games. An entire extra round of 16 matches in the Round of 32… and 24 more group stage matches to accommodate the 16 more teams being added to the tournament. That additional supply surely will have an adverse affect on prices.
To maintain the same average attendance as 1994, FIFA needs to sell 3,597,048 more tickets, to get to a total of 7,194,096 (it was a 52 game tournament then, so this is literally double the size it was then).
There have been noticeable dips when the global economy suffers through instability / recession. With a good chance of a major market recession occurring over the next 12 months, that could have an impact on demand.
Face value tickets in 1994 were $25-$175, double that for inflation / FIFA, and I see tickets starting at $75 at best. The increase in all of these costs relative to incomes will likely deter the more casual fans.
Prices will start high, but demand will maintain through the secondary market
The average capacity for each game in the tournament will be 67,405 and the World Cup 1994 in the USA averaged more than that at 69,174.
Over the past two decades has soccer gotten more popular stateside?
MLS has grown from 10 to 29 clubs between 1996 and 2024, and average attendance has grown from 17,406 to 22,111. That’s a 190% increase in league size and 27% increase in average attendance (their total attendance must be up significantly).
Premier League stateside broadcasting deal went from $90M to $450M annually.
Soccer is the second most popular sport amongst kids after basketball.
Kids in the 1990s are now adults who have their own money to spend.
Has international travel increased over the past two decades. It has gotten cheaper and easier to fly around the world. Weirdly though hotels have gotten more expensive.
My prediction is that the average attendance record set in 1994 will not be beaten, despite increased popularity both domestically and internationally, it will be offset by high prices and the increased number of matches. I expect late stage matches to be extraordinarily expensive, so if you ever have an opportunity to purchase it for face value, just go for it. FIFA will break attendance and revenue records. Do not overcommit to the group stage tickets, there will likely be plenty to go around. Remember the summer weather and daytime / workday time will be a factor. The key will be to act quickly for knockout stage tickets and then in the group stage, to wait, identify, and snag low public interest games that have good teams and atmosphere in the secondary market decisively, knowing that they’re undervalued.