FIFA is investigating why around 8,000 ticket-holders failed to turn up for Saturday’s match between South Korea and Greece in Port Elizabeth.
There were conspicuous swathes of empty seats, and commentators commented upon the a well-built stadium was not filled to capacity.
A FIFA spokesman said that only 31,513 people were in the 42,486 capacity Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, even though almost 40,000 tickets had been pre-sold.
“It looked like a lot of people did not show up” he said. “We are investigating. We have no clue what happened – tickets had been issued.”
It is understood most of the no-shows were tickets sold to companies.
“We are investigating who those companies are, why those tickets were not distributed to their owners or why those owners didn’t make it to the stadiums,” the spokesman added.
