Want more from Front Office Sports
in your search results?
Several members of Chelsea are promoting tickets for their Tuesday Club World Cup semifinal against Brazilian side Fluminense on their Instagram stories.
Players including captain Enzo Fernandez, Nicolas Jackson, Joao Pedro, Moises Caicedo, and Robert Sanchez all posted about the semifinal along with the link to purchase tickets, according to The Telegraph.
FIFA dropped ticket prices from about $475 dollars to just $13 in the days leading up to the match. On Tuesday morning, the get-in price sat at about $45, while the cheapest tickets for the other semifinal on Wednesday between Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain were about $165.
The tournament’s remaining three matches will all be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which will also host the World Cup final when the U.S. again plays host next summer. Players and managers have complained about the pitch at MetLife, which is a turf field for the Jets and Giants during the NFL season.
The upcoming semifinal matches kick off at 3 p.m. local time on Tuesday and Wednesday—a convenient time slot for European fans watching on DAZN, but less so for U.S. fans during the workday. MetLife struggled with filling the full-sized stadium during the five group stage matches it hosted, two of which were played on weekday afternoons.
The lowest-attended was actually a primetime match at 6 p.m. on Saturday, June 21 between semifinalist Fluminense and South Korean Ulsan HD FC, with a recorded crowd of 29,321 fans. The weekday noontime group stage matches drew about 35,000 apiece. A Monday evening match recorded close to 40,000 people, and the opening weekend crowd for a Sunday evening match exceeded 45,000 fans.
The biggest crowd at MetLife happened during the sixth match it hosted, the only one of the knockout stage on Saturday afternoon between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund, which clocked 76,611 fans.
Chelsea most recently played in front of more than 65,000 fans in its quarterfinal match against Brazilian club Palmeiras on Friday in Philadelphia. But the rest of their Club World Cup matches, which have all been held in full-sized NFL stadiums, have mostly seen poor attendance. When Chelsea played Benfica in the Round of 16, just above 25,000 fans packed the home of the NFL’s Panthers in Charlotte. Their three group stage matches brought in about 22,000 people in Atlanta, and about 55,000 and 33,000 fans in Philadelphia.
It’s not clear if the team or Club World Cup asked or otherwise required the Chelsea players to share the Ticketmaster links to their millions of followers. Making the final is a lucrative proposition, as the winner will receive $40 million in prize money and the loser $30 million.
Download the FOS App
The business of sports, in your pocket.
Scan the QR code to get the app now.
