The group stage and last-16 of the Club World Cup brought no shortage of storylines, ranging from the oppressive heat that impacted multiple games during the tournament to low attendances, to on-field matters, with different confederations clashing in official club competition. Here are some takeaways from data surrounding these issues, as gathered by the Guardian.
Attendance
The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, guaranteed a sold-out opener. He also posited that, given the strong attendance figures seen at friendly games played by European teams in the United States, a competitive tournament with a big-money prize and “World Cup” branding would be an easy way to draw huge crowds to stadiums across the country. The reality turned out to be a little bit more nuanced. The official attendance figures themselves were solid enough, with an average of about 35,000 per game during the group stage. That’s about 12,000 more than the average draw for the 2024 Major League Soccer season, in the same range as the most recent Premier League season average (just over 40,000), and significantly less than recent World Cups (Qatar 2022 had an average attendance of just over 53,000).
If you were watching these games, chances are you noticed the empty seats. There were a lot of them – about 1.5m, assuming every stadium was making all their seats available through the end of the last-16. Those seats were set against a total official attendance of just over 2 million (2,010,425, to be exact). Most of the venues in question are extremely large by any standard, usually with capacities of over 60,000. In the end, the Club World Cup group stage and last-16 featured attendances that were, on average, using only 51% of a given stadium’s capacity.
This is not to downplay the fantastic environments that were created in these venues from passionate and knowledgable fans, nor is it meant to ignore the tournament’s more jam-packed moments. In all, 11 of the 56 games in the group stage and last-16 used more than 90% of a stadium’s capacity, with more than half of the fixtures (six) taking place at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium. But by the same token, eight games featured attendances under 30% of a stadium’s capacity, including the Fluminense-Inter last-16 game in Charlotte, with 14 games drawing fewer than 20,000 spectators.
Kick-off times are thought to have something to do with the games that struggled at the gate, and the data backs up that theory, albeit with differing sample sizes. In total, 41 of the 56 group and last-16 games took place either during the workday (noon through to 5pm kick-off local time, Monday through to Friday) or on a school night (6pm kick-off or later on Sunday through to Thursday). Those games had average attendances of around 33,000. The numbers for weekend games are significantly higher.
Heat
This tournament, like every sporting event held in the United States during the summer lately, has had a lot of high temperatures to deal with. When a heat dome descended on the eastern United States in the middle of the group stage, those already-unappetising noon kick-offs became hazardous.
However, thanks to cool temperatures elsewhere, namely in Seattle and Pasadena, the average temperature during the tournament’s group stage and last-16 wasn’t too bad: 81F/27C, with an average dew point (the simplest/easiest way to measure what humidity feels like) of 65F/18C, which the US National Weather Service defines as “noticeable, but OK for most”. That said, 18 of the 48 group stage games and half of the last-16 games featured dew points over 70F/21C – “very uncomfortable” – with six of those registering as “oppressive” on the NWS scale.
The average heat index for the tournament was 85F/30C. The median heat index, which discounts the impact of the tournament’s coolest and hottest games, is 90F/32C. In short: It’s been really hot.
The worst place to play in terms of heat was Washington DC, which experienced an average game-time heat index of 98F/36C, with an average dew point in the “very uncomfortable” range. Nashville and Cincinnati trailed just behind DC with similar numbers.
Of the teams affected, poor Auckland City had a rough go. In addition to being the only semi-pro team in a tournament of world elites, the New Zealand outfit also experienced the worst heat over their three group-stage games, averaging a game-time temperature of 85F/30C, a heat index of 96F/36C and a dew point of 74F/24C, on the edge of “oppressive” territory. Al-Hilal trails just behind despite having one more game under their belt that could have brought down their average.
Confederation v confederation
The bloating of the Club World Cup has received a fair share of criticism, but one of the small joys of the format has been seeing how teams from different confederations match up against one another. In effect, it has made the Club World Cup a bit like the NCAA basketball tournament, where teams’ performances can be taken, fairly or unfairly, as a referendum on the strength of the conference from which they qualified.
There’s no doubting that the power centres of club football are in Europe and South America. But one of the storylines of this tournament has been the strength of the South American teams, especially the Brazilian ones. That feeling is supported by the data. In the group stage and last-16, teams from Conmebol earned a win or a draw in 77% of their games, the best such mark at that stage of the tournament (Uefa was second with 75%, though that figure is likely harmed by the numerous Uefa v Uefa matchups that populated the tournament).
The number of Uefa teams in the competition allowed every other confederation to have multiple shots to beat them in the group stage. Most didn’t. In total, Uefa enjoyed a winning record against every confederation. Conmebol came the closest to breaking that, going 3-3-4 against European opposition. Concacaf, for its part, went 1-1-7 against Uefa teams. The Asian Football Confederation has gone 1-2-4, with the one win being Al-Hilal’s upset of Manchester City. Caf went 0-1-4. Oceania, represented by Auckland City, lost both attempts to beat Uefa competition handily.