AS KICK-OFF approached it was clear — the fans weren’t coming. The Club World Cup, football’s shiny new competition, has been billed as the event to breathe new life into the world’s most popular sport.

It began a week ago in the United States, where sports stadiums of monumental capacity and steep ticket prices awaited the rowdy crowds seen at grounds across the world.

But rows and rows of empty seats inside Orlando City Stadium, Florida, on Tuesday told another story.

“It’s like playing football during lockdown,” observed one fan on social media.

For days, world governing body Fifa didn’t register the attendance for the game between Mamelodi Sundowns and Ulsan on its official website. It took until Friday for a figure of 3,412 to be acknowledged on the site, but by rough count, there were less than 1,000 fans in the stands as the game got underway.

At the other end of the spectrum, more than 80,000 watched Champions League winner Paris Saint-Germain v Atletico Madrid at the massive Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

The opening week for the month-long tournament across the US has seen some wildly fluctuating attendances.

Orlando attendance is uncomfortably low

The Mamelodi Sundowns-Ulsan game stands out as the low point so far for Fifa and its president, Gianni Infantino, who is banking on the Club World Cup becoming one of the most popular and valuable competitions in sport.

So sparse was the crowd that the word “ORLANDO” — spelled out in yellow seats on one of the main stands — was almost completely unobstructed. Crowd control stewards stood by the sidelines and monitored vast areas of empty spaces in the 25,500-capacity venue.

The home of MLS team Orlando City — among the smallest stadiums chosen to host games for the tournament — was still massively oversized for the match, even with ticket prices falling to $23.

A group game between largely unheralded teams from South Africa and South Korea was never likely to be a big seller. And storms, which forced kick-off to be delayed by more than an hour, may have led to no-shows.

Still, it was an uncomfortably low turnout and one of three games in the opening week that drew less than 10,000 fans.

Not even Chelsea, Messi, MLS can pack Atlanta

There were also swathes of empty seats for Chelsea’s game against Los Angeles FC in Atlanta. It was an afternoon kick-off on a weekday, but one of the Premier League’s most popular teams v an opponent from MLS couldn’t manage to fill a third of the 71,000-capacity stadium, with 22,000 fans showing up.

“I think the environment was a bit strange. You know, the stadium was almost empty,” Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca said, and even with Lionel Messi in town for the second game in Atlanta — Inter Miami’s win against Porto — the crowd was far from capacity at 31,783.

Club World Cup ticket prices

Uncertainty over ticket sales had been a point of debate in the build-up to the tournament, with prices falling dramatically before the opening game between Miami and Al Ahly. An impressive crowd of nearly 61,000 watched that game at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, though it is not known how many paid anywhere near the $349 that tickets were being quoted at in December.

As of Tuesday, Fifa said 1.5 million tickets had been sold and more than 340,000 fans had attended the first eight games.

Infantino proudly proclaimed the Club World Cup was growing into “the undisputed pinnacle of global club football.”

Kane calls Dolphin Stadium a ‘hostile’ scene

Numbers in Miami have been good — nothing lower than 55,000 and topping out at a near-capacity 63,587 for Bayern Munich v Boca Juniors. Bayern forward Harry Kane described the atmosphere inside the stadium dominated by Boca fans as “hostile.”

Crowds have still come to Miami in a week when the Florida Panthers were playing in the Stanley Cup Final. Boca and Real Madrid fans queued up for hours in sweltering heat after arriving early for games.

Largest cup crowd was at the Rose Bowl

The biggest crowd of the opening week was 80,619 for PSG v Atletico Madrid in LA.

For context, that is just short of the 84,163 who watched the English FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium and well above the 64,327 attendance for the Champions League final — European club football’s biggest game.

World Cup, Champions League comparisons

While there was not a sellout game in the opening week, 10 of the first 24 matches have seen crowds in excess of 40,000, for an average of around 36,000.

The average for the Champions League last season was just under 46,000, but like-for-like comparisons are difficult, given this is a totally new format bringing club teams from around the world to the US.

Looking ahead to the World Cup

Focus on the Club World Cup has been intense for more than one reason.

There is still uncertainty over how much of an appetite there is among fans for another elite football tournament and it was unknown how many would be prepared to follow their team to the US. According to Fifa, the biggest take up of tickets from abroad was from Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

Perhaps more significant is what this tournament says about the men’s World Cup, which is largely being staged in the US next year. The Club World Cup could be seen as a gauge of how America’s interest in football has grown since last hosting the planet’s biggest sporting event in 1994.

In that sense, it’s not just about statistics, but optics as well. Which is why Fifa will hope to avoid a repeat of the scenes at Mamelodi Sundowns v Ulsan.