Fifa moves to limit World Cup ‘no-shows’
This year’s London Olympics and European Championships in Poland and Ukraine were both dogged by no-shows in arenas that were meant to be sold out.
Fifa admitted it was impossible to eradicate the problem completely but were confident they would have systems in place at Brazil 2014 to avoid similar embarrassment.
Speaking at the Leaders in Football conference at Stamford Bridge yesterday, marketing director Thierry Weil said: “Empty seats is always a huge topic.
“We are implementing new initiatives, we are implementing new resale platforms.
“There will always be no-shows — as we call it — in the ticketing world, people who, last minute, will not come to the stadium for certain reasons.
“But we will do our maximum to reduce that to a strict minimum.”
He added: “We are concerned by no shows, that is clear.
“Because it does not look good and it especially does not look good if you announce to the world that you have no tickets, then you see on TV that you have a lot of empty seats.”
Weil confirmed Fifa were revamping the official resale website they used at the last World Cup, something which would allow tickets to be reallocated as late as the day of a game.
He also vowed FIFA would do everything possible to make ticket prices “extremely fair”.
