Empty seats at Estadio Akron deepen FIFA ticket policy crisis on World Cup's opening day

South Korea came from behind to beat the Czech Republic 2-1 at Estadio Akron in Zapopan on Thursday, but the result was quickly eclipsed by an uncomfortable image: row upon row of empty seats inside the World Cup 2026’s second-smallest venue, on the very first day of the tournament.

FIFA announced an official attendance of 44,985 — a figure only a few hundred short of the stadium’s tournament capacity of 45,664 — yet the visual evidence told a starkly different story. The most conspicuous gaps appeared in the VIP sections closest to the pitch, where a general admission ticket was priced at around $400 (£298).

The scenes reignited criticism that had been building against FIFA’s ticketing operation long before a ball was kicked. Fan groups had already raised concerns over a lack of pricing transparency, the use of dynamic pricing, and the sheer cost of attending matches across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Tens of thousands of tickets had appeared on resale platforms in the lead-up to the tournament, prompting suspicions that FIFA itself may have been listing unsold inventory there.

The optics are particularly damaging given that Estadio Akron is the second-smallest of the 16 venues in use, with only Toronto’s BMO Field — capacity 43,036 — holding fewer fans. Several other stadiums are nearly twice the size: Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca and East Rutherford’s MetLife Stadium both exceed 80,000 seats, and all but four venues hold at least 64,000.

If the tournament’s smallest arenas cannot be filled convincingly in the opening days, the prospect of similar empty patches appearing in far larger stadiums later in the competition will concern organisers considerably.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino has repeatedly insisted that ticket demand has been “unprecedented… by a factor of 10 or more,” a claim that the images from Zapopan did little to support. Whether Thursday’s attendance figures are an isolated anomaly or an early indicator of a wider problem is a question FIFA will be eager to answer — and quickly.