Fans from over 130 countries have purchased nearly 1.5 million tickets for the Club World Cup that kicked off last weekend in its newly expanded format across the United States, FIFA said on Tuesday.
A crowd of more than 60,000 turned up for the opener at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on Saturday, which featured Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi, while some 80,000 were in the Rose Bowl stands as Paris Saint-Germain beat Atlético Madrid 4-0 on Sunday.
Yet some matches have also been sparsely attended, as a 0-0 draw between Borussia Dortmund and Fluminense that kicked off midday on Tuesday played out to a less-than-full MetLife Stadium in New Jersey with a reported attendance of
While Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca described the atmosphere at his team’s game against LAFC as “a bit strange,” as a little over 22,000 spectators came to watch at the 71,000 capacity Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Monday for a game that kicked off at 3 p.m. local time.
“This is exactly what the FIFA Club World Cup was created for: a world-class stage where new stories are told, new heroes emerge, and club football fans feel part of something bigger,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said in a statement.
Designed as a glittering curtain-raiser for the 2026 World Cup, FIFA hopes to build enthusiasm for the quadrennial spectacle among often soccer-ambivalent fans in the U.S., which will co-host the tournament next year with Canada and Mexico.
Concerns for how the Club World Cup would be received had been rampant, however, after a lacklustre Copa America in 2024 that played out on sub-par pitches to occasionally half-empty stadiums and ended with a fan security fiasco at the final in Miami.
There have also been concerns about the players’ workload, with this summer’s tournament adding at least three and up to seven games for teams that have just finished their European seasons and start the 2025-26 campaign in August.
LaLiga president Javier Tebas has called the Club World Cup “absurd” and added on Tuesday that it needs to be “eliminated” from FIFA’s competition schedule.
The team that wins the final on July 13 will earn $40 million of the $1 billion purse.
Information from Reuters was used in this story.