For months there have been reports circulating that FIFA is struggling to sell tickets for the upcoming World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, but many of those reports have been dismissed. However, with England set to play a rare exhibition game in the United States, a report on low ticket sales could bode poorly for the tournament.
The Three Lions are set to take on the New Zealand All Whites at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium on June 6. But according to the Sports Business Journal, only 13,000 seats have been sold to the game. Even though Raymond James ranks in the bottom half of NFL stadiums by capacity, that still leaves a whopping 52,000 empty seats with just nine days until the game.
England will then take on Costa Rica in Orlando on June 10. That game has sold only 12,000 of the 25,000 seats available at the soccer-specific stadium.
Problem or Non-Issue?
Obviously an exhibition game is far from the genuine article. But it definitely doesn't bode well when an average of 80,000 fans went to Wembley Stadium in London to see the team take on Uruguay and Japan in a pair of friendlies this past March.
That said, there is some evidence that England simply struggles to fill stadiums where neither they nor their opponent have a strong home connection.
© Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images.
Back in 2014 - the last time the team was outside of Europe for friendlies - England visited Sun Life Stadium in Miami for a pair of friendlies against Ecuador and Honduras. The Honduras game drew just over 45,000 fans at the 64,000-capacity venue, while the Ecuador game only drew 21,500 fans at the same venue.
So it may be less to do with genuine lack of interest in England or soccer and more to do with fans not wanting to travel all the way to Florida for an exhibition game against teams they're not rivals with.
Even so, there's a lot more that FIFA can probably be doing to avoid the stadium looking like a ghost town.
