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Will football one day become a TV-only sport?

19th June, 2016
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Fans play in an empty stadium. Is this what football will become in the future? (Photo: Daniel Pontello)
Expert
19th June, 2016
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The Copa America quarter-final between the USA and Ecuador was undoubtedly one of the games of the year. It was also played out against a backdrop of empty seats.

There’s an interesting article in this month’s World Soccer magazine about the Copa America Centenario, in which United States officials make bullish predictions about the big crowds the tournament will generate.

“We have the facilities, the infrastructure and the support to ensure a fantastic experience,” US Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati boldly proclaims.

It’s not certain who Gulati thought would enjoy the tournament the most, although it’s safe to assume paying spectators were somewhere towards the back of his mind.

Just over 47,000 fans turned out in Seattle for the knock-out clash between hosts USA and Ecuador, leaving more than 20,000 seats empty at CenturyLink Field.

And there is only one reason to blame for the poor attendances that blighted the early stages of this most curious of Copa Americas – ticket prices.

In an article for Vice published shortly after the tournament kicked off, New York-based journalist Aaron Gordon details the astronomical sums fans were expected to pay to attend Copa America matches.

In one example, he points out that a decent seat for the Group B clash between Haiti and Ecuador in East Rutherford would have cost $AU905, while the annual per capita income for Haiti is a mere $AU1,110.

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According to Gordon, even the cheapest get-in price at the least attractive matches would set the average punter back more than $AU135.

So why does any of this matter?

It matters because tin-eared and tone-deaf football officials are increasingly turning their backs on the one demographic they most take for granted – paying spectators.

To understand why organisers seemed so hell-bent on pricing out fans, it’s worth asking why the tournament is being played in the first place.

The first Copa America – which, it’s crucial to remember, is the continental championship of South America – took place in 1916.

That explains the Centenario aspect. But why on earth is this Copa America being staged in the United States?

The answer, as always in football, is money.

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With the South American Football Confederation forever looking to expand its TV market and the United States boasting both the stadia and migrant populations to fill them, the US organising committee took on the hosting rights in exchange for – crucially – revenue from ticket sales.

“This will be the biggest soccer event (in the US) since the 1994 FIFA World Cup,” said president of Soccer United Marketing, Kathy Carter.

She was half right. Whoever progresses to the final will no doubt try to win a tournament that was squeezed incongruously between two normal Copa Americas and played out of sync with the regular four-year South American cycle.

Organisers will invariably point to big crowds in East Rutherford and Santa Clara this weekend, where huge swathes of local Colombian and Mexican expatriates turned out to support their teams.

But even those attendances are problematic. If tournaments are geared towards only attracting crowds from the knock-out stages onward, then what is the point of the group stage?

And if the US Soccer Federation genuinely cared about the game in North America, why has Major League Soccer continued unabated throughout the duration of the Copa America?

There’s an absorbing US-based Twitter account called Empty Seats Galore which tweets nothing but photos of empty seats at sporting events.

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It’s more interesting than it sounds, and needless to say they’ve tweeted plenty from this sparsely-attended Copa America.

In a nation which boasts several secondary ticket re-selling markets and which has a habit of counting ‘tickets sold’ as a key metric regardless of whether anyone actually sits in those seats, US Soccer perhaps doesn’t care how many fans ultimately turned up.

But there’s a bigger issue at play here.

If officials are actively engaged in pricing fans out of attending, are we one day doomed to watch football only on TV?

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