A GLOBAL attraction
THE WORLD CUP NOW SELLS OVER 3M TICKETS EVERY TOURNAMENT AND WILL WELCOME ITS 40 MILLIONTH MATCH-GOER THIS SUMMER
THE WORLD CUP will welcome its 40 millionth attendee at this summer’s tournament in Russia. A total of 3.4m attended the World Cup in Brazil in 2014.
That took the cumulative attendance for the tournament up to 37,457,229.
If the attendance at this year’s competition - which kicks off on June 14 matches that of four years ago, then the total number of attendees to World Cup finals will be 40,843,981. The competition has come a long way since its formation in 1930, becoming not only a global televisual sensation but a magnet for millions of travelling fans from across the world. Back in 1930, just 590,544 people walked through the turnstiles in Uruguay almost six times fewer than in Brazil 84 years later. The most recent World Cup wasn’t the most well attended though. That honour belongs to USA 94. “Soccer” wasn’t a popular sport in America at the time but that didn’t stop a record 3.6m people packing into sundrenched American football stadiums across the country.
Each game was attended by an average of 68,991 fans, which is also a record for any tournament.
The worst attended tournament in terms of average attendance was France in 1938.
The games in that tournament were attended by an average of just 20,872 people - 12,000 fewer than in Uruguay in 1930 and roughly the same as for an average Burnley Premier League game this season.
In 1934 a total of just 362,984 attended games in Italy, the lowest total on record.
In fact, more than half that number of people would go on to attend the final game of the 1950 tournament in Brazil between the hosts and Uruguay.
That game is often wrongly called the final, but in 1950 the winners of the tournament were decided in a four team roundrobin group. It just so happened that the last game of that group would decide the overall winner Uruguay needed a win, Brazil simply needed a draw. Uruguay won the game - which would later go on to be known as the Maracanazo - and lifted their second World Cup. Official figures have the attendance for the game down as 173,850 but contemporary estimates at the time had it down as nearer 200,000. Either way it’s a record for a single World Cup game.