There's no excuse for a World Cup finals game to be held in a stadium seating less than 60,000. With soccer getting bigger and the world getting smaller every day, ticket demand is at an all-time high. There's no excuse for a country as big and as soccer-crazy as Germany to be hosting World Cup games in 35,000-seater stadiums. This has to stop.
It's all to the cost. No point in having a world cup if those nations that want the event can't afford it.
how many countries on this Earth have 6-8 stadiums of 60,000+ capacity??? I can think of only one ......
Yeah, England are one of the most well-supported international teams, taking 40-50k to some games, yet we're playing in stadiums of 32k and 35k. Meanwhile no doubt a couple of nobodies will be playing in a 70k stadium. It's a joke. There should be no running tracks either. People are there to watch football, there's no point having the stands half a mile from the pitch because of some track which is probably never used anyway. It should be a minimum of 50k. Bring back terracing if necessary.
And what to do with all these 60.000+ stadiums after a World Cup? Most clubs won't attract that much people for their league matches, so the stadiums will be largely empty then.
The limited capacity is because of the FIFA. In normal international games the German WC-stadiums have minimum K45000 (only seaters). But in WC you have more press-seats (I think 5000 absolut) and no-selling-tickets because of security-toughts (2000-4000). In Bundesliga there are also standing-terraces allowed which allows a higher capacity (+50000K). For example: Schalke Bundesliga: 62000 International: 53000 WC: 48000 or Dortmund Bundesliga: 82000 International: 66000 WC: 60000 I don't like the FIFA for this...
Like already mentioned, Dortmund has a stadium with a capacity of 80.000 people but it's the FIFA with its bloody rules that make this stadium smaller than it is - I think there are 60.000 allowed now during the World Cup! Munich has also more than 60.000 seats, as well as Schalke and Berlin has 75.000, Hamburg has usually 55.000 and so does Frankfurt. There could be much more people but the FIFA forbids it!
Of course the actual number of fans attending games would be much greater if FIFA and Sponsers didn't take between 5,000-10,000 tickets depending on the match.
FIFA demand 40k net capacity. "Net" means 40k plus media seats and VIP packages. So in reality about 44k-45k will be the minimum. In Dortmund it is about 63.000 for group matches and about 60.000 for the semi final IIRC. The amount of tickets that go to "free sale" (*rotfl*) is of course much lower.
There are 79 60,000+ seat football stadiums in the U.S.(and U.S. stadiums don't have standing room only sections, but seats only). The rest of the world combined likely doesn't have 79 60K seaters. Texas could probably host the World Cup by itself. But, somehow I don't think 60,000 seats will be needed for South Korea-Togo.
I'm guessing that very few of those could hold a decent-sized soccer field as they are designed to for American football fields, which are narrower.
did you miss the part where FIFA had to hold a ballot because there were 12 million ticket applications? There were a further million applications made on the first day of the latest sales phase.
Just about every NFL stadium in the country has a field wide enough to accomodate an international sized soccer field.
as has been pointed out, there are no grounds with 32,000 capacities. Smallest is Nuremburg with 42,000 (more usually as it has terracing) but FIFA give 10,000 seats per match to sponsors etc. The stadium size point is valid though, and is a result of FIFA's polict, started in 1994, of moving all the games around. Prior to that each group was typically allocated two stadiums, with the big games in the main stadium, and the lesser games in the other. The seeds would play in their group games in the same stadium. I saw a match in Nuremburg in the summer, and surpringly it isn't anywhere near as bad as you'd expect.
Can you choose what tickets to buy? I'm not convinced anybody's really jumping out of their chairs to go to Mexico v. Angola.
Of course everyone's forgetting the fact that EVERY SINGLE GAME, including Tunisia vs. Saudi Arabia, sold out in the '94 WC, all held in 65,000+ stadiums. The World Cup is the world's largest sporting event. No WC game should be held in a stadium that seats less than 60,000 (MAYBE 55,000) people. And there's especially no excuse for Germany--which is one of the most soccer-crazy countries in the world, one of the most populous countries in the world, and one of the richest countries in the world--to not be able to hold this ********ing thing in adequate stadia.
Nigeria-Bulgaria in 1994 had an attendence of 44,132 in the 68,000 seat Cotton Bowl in Dallas. I don't think that was a sellout. I do think the suggestion of having the lesser teams play in smaller stadiums makes sense. Isn't that what they used to do, basically? Espana 82 or Italia 90 for example. The top seed in the group played all their games in one city (with usually a larger stadium) and other games in the group were played in another city that usually had a smaller stadium.
Germany has 82 million people. That's a lot less than 300. Germans don't have a lot of terrible, ugly college football stadiums sitting around to use for the World Cup, which is why they'll have a lower capacity. I mean, let's stand back and look at your claim of adequate stadia here. Most of the stadiums used for World Cup 94 were crap. The Cotton Bowl, Stanford Stadium, RFK Stadium, Foxboro Stadium. Two are gone, one's going to go, and one has lost all their marquee events because the place is a dump. The Silverdome is no longer used for sports. There's complaints arising about the Citrus Bowl and its suitability. Soldier Field was a dump, and got completely rebuilt. Giants Stadium is on its way out. The Rose Bowl is literally the only place from World Cup 1994 that's not due to be discontinued as a venue for sports within five years, and that's only because it gets used for one sporting event a season. Meanwhile the Germans have built several new stadiums, refurbished several more to a staggering degree, and renovated the rest. Their grounds - most of them used only for soccer, not college or pro football - are a fecking mile ahead of what the US put together in 1993. So what if America got a bunch of bigger stadia before? The World Cup's the only time they've ever been filled for soccer. Germany's newer and better stadia are built for the joys of club football, and subsequently get filled regularly.
Thats probably the smartest thing to do but i guess FIFA doesnt want to "offend" any teams orginization by PUTTING them in a smaller stadium saying that they CANT fill up the bigger ones. Eventhough its true but you know how people are they would get all butt-hurt and bitch and complain.
In the first sales phase you couldn't pick by team as the draw hadn't been made then, but you would have known a particular match would have been between B3 v B4 etc. That's the exact method used in the US in 94. People in Dallas weren't in a frenzy of excitement at the thought of watching Nigeria play. The second phase was team tickets, and the third allows you to pick individual games knowing the teams. Tickets were limited in the first phase to ensure there would be enough for the second and third phases. If the games aren't full, it'll be because sponsors don't bother showing up. While there are a large chunk of fans who wouldn't care about a 'lesser' match in the world cup, there are more than enough who'd love to go for the experience. After all, there were reasonable crowds for most of the confederation cup games in the summer, which is far less attractive than the world cup, and it's not as if the teams bought thousands of fans with them.
What you also (besides all the arguments that have been posted before) don't seem to understand is that Germany HAD to pick stadiums like Nürnberg (which is the smallest stadium) because it shall be a world cup in GERMANY. There are other stadiums, in Düsseldorf (53.000) and Mönchengladbach (53.000) for example (very modern stadiums) that could have been used - BUT then almost all stadiums would have been located in North-rhine westfalia, the west of Germany, which just doesn't represen't everything of Germany - that's why Nürnberg (in the south) had been picked. Or Leipzig instead of all other stadiums in NRW. I give you a list (since there is NO stadium that has less than 45.000) Signal Iduna Park - 81.264 Olympiastadion - 76.000 Allianz Arena - 66.000 Veltins Arena - 61.506 AOL Arena - 55.000 Borussia-Park 53.466 (not a World Cup stadium) LTU Arena - 52.500 (not a World Cup stadium) Commerzbank-Arena - 52.300 RheinEnergieStadion - 51.000 AWD-Arena - 49.000 Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion - 48.000 Franken-Stadion - 47.500 Zentralstadion - 45.193 these stadiums are located in the east and south - that's why they have been chosen too. Otherwise most stadiums would have been in the west or north of Germany.
The stadiums in Germany are going to be the best ever. Just look at Munich, Dortmund, Hamburg, Gelsenkirchen, Frankfurt etc. It's going to be awesome!