Almost empty stadiums at the 2019 Copa America championship are causing serious concern for the tournament organizers, although they still hope to improve ticket sales, writes "Reuters".
Already in the very first tournament match, where host Brazil faced Bolivia, there was serious concern about the success of the tournament. At the "Maracana" stadium, which holds over 65 thousand spectators, 47.2 thousand fans gathered on Friday evening.
"Copa America" organizers announced before the start of the tournament that tickets for these matches were sold out, but there were more than 18 thousand empty seats at the stadium.
Fans who rushed to buy tickets in advance for Brazil's national team matches had to buy tickets again due to technical issues, which were later simply not sold due to system errors.
"We will improve our system so that the ticket refund process becomes faster," said the organization's committee (COL).
The ticket sales issue became even more apparent on the second and third days of the championship, when the number of spectators at three out of four matches did not exceed 20 thousand.
Just 11,107 fans appeared at the match between Peru and Venezuela. Only 13,611 spectators watched Uruguay's victory against Ecuador in Belo Horizonte, and slightly more than 19 thousand fans watched the draw between Qatar and Paraguay at the "Maracana" stadium, which has 78 thousand seats.
"Of course, these numbers are somewhat alarming because we want the best players on the planet, and they are all athletes from South America, to be watched by as many people as possible," said CONMEBOL president Alejandro Dominguez.
"Brazil is a country that lives for football and we would like more people to come to the stadiums. Some matches attracted a lot of spectators, but others were less interesting.
However, the overall view is positive and we hope the situation will only improve," added the controversial South American football leader.
COL promised on the official tournament website on Monday to provide full information on ticket sales, but the announcement did not appear, and journalists did not receive a response when asked to comment on the details.
Some South American football fans blame the organizers themselves for illegal ticket scalping due to poor attendance, while others argue that this tournament simply became uninteresting because it is being organized for the third time in five years.
The relatively high ticket prices also have an impact - they ranged from 49 to 152 US dollars for the matches between Brazil and Bolivia.
