Empty seats and empty heads

The Black Stars fans still feel aggrieved at the manner of their exit from the competition, quite literally at the hands of the Uruguayans, but the Dutch were not to be denied, despite making life difficult for themselves.

It was the first time I had done the 'Fan Mile' in Cape Town too, us pampered media are usually bussed in and dropped 'at the door', and I have to say it was one of the most exhilarating experiences of the World Cup for me.

Anyone for an orange?

Tens of thousands of fans marching from the city's station in the heart of the CBD, restaurants and bars lined with orange people, even businesses along the route hosting parties in their boardrooms to watch the passers-by.

The atmosphere was electric and everybody was having a great time. I saw acquaintances there who had no tickets to the game, but who had just come along to 'feel the vibe'.

And it brought it home to me once again. While the football in this tournament has been at times quite disappointing, the true success of the 2010 jamboree has been the atmosphere off the pitch, which surely has to be best ever?

I have some experience of major international tournaments and I certainly have never seen anything quite like what we have experienced all around the country over the last four weeks.

A really bum deal

However, I do have a gripe from the Netherlands-Uruguay game and this one is aimed at FIFA and MATCH, the company that runs the ticketing and hospitality for the tournament.

There were massive blocks of empty seats at the stadium last night, I should think somewhere in the region of 2500 empty seats.

Now there were many in Cape Town last night who would have given their left 'you-know-what' to be at the match, so to see the empty seats was disappointing to say the least, and not a good image for the billions of TV viewers worldwide.

It seems the empty seats were returns from hospitality companies who could not sell them, and FIFA, in their infinite wisdom, put 1600 of them back on the market on the morning of the game for over R4000 each!

Some of those were purchased I'm sure, but that is also a figure beyond the average fan, who by this stage of the tournament is probably well over his original budget. Why not put them on the market at R500 or even R1000 and get more bums on seats. Why is this concept so difficult for FIFA to understand?

Images sourced from www.fifa.com