Canada soccer match at Olympics had thousands of empty seats
Before their very first match at the Paris 2024 Olympics, the Canadian women’s team was already making international headlines.
Two days out of facing New Zealand to kick off their gold medal title defence, reports surfaced of a Canadian drone circulating above their opponent’s training ground.
A pair of Canadian staff members were sent home after one was detained by French authorities, making today’s game one of the hottest storylines in the early stages of the Olympic Games.
However, the scandal didn’t result in an attendance surge, as thousands of empty seats were spotted during the game.
With the game having a 5 pm local start time, and being located in the city of Saint-Étienne, entire fan sections were seen visible on the broadcast as having hardly any spectators — or none at all.
GOAL! For 🇨🇦! It’s 1-1!
Superb team goal right at the end of the half for #CanWNT/#CanXNT
Wall pass between Fleming & Lawrence before the latter sends it for Prince, who flicks it on for Lacasse to sweep home
That’s the play we’ve been waiting for
— Felipe Vallejo (@FelipeV_FC) July 25, 2024
The sections behind the goal Canada attacked during the first half were completely empty, while the stadium’s second deck also looked completely barren.
Lacasse scores the equalizer for Canada right before the half time whistle.
First time Olympian is getting straight to work in her Olympic debut. pic.twitter.com/OG9Upyi2aT
— SHE scores bangers (@SHEscoresbanger) July 25, 2024
Geoffroy-Guichard Stadium, the site of the match and home of top-flight Ligue 1 club AS Saint-Étienne, can fit 41,965 people.
But while you might think it was a result of Olympic price-gouging, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
The official Olympic ticketing website has tickets for the group stage starting at just 15 euros each, or about C$22.50. While tickets for events worldwide seem to have hit gargantuan prices over the last few years, it doesn’t seem like today’s attendance was an issue of being too rich for the average person.
However, the actual number of people reasonably able to attend isn’t all that high, either. The city of AS Saint-Étienne has a population of just 172,718, as per the 2021 French census. It’s about a four-hour train ride from central Paris or a five-hour drive as per Google Maps, so it’s hardly like the hundreds of thousands of spectators descending on Paris would have an easy time getting to the game.
And then, of course, there’s the massive travel distance between the host country and the two countries competing, with both Canada and New Zealand fans having to make the trek to France from opposite sides of the globe.
In any case, we can only hope that attendance increases throughout the Olympics, with Canada looking to defend their gold medal from three years ago.
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