Salt Lake Stadium, Kolkata | Photo: Malayala ManoramaKochi: If ticket sales are any indication, the FIFA U-17 World Cup, scheduled to be held between October 6-28 in six cities across India, is set to break the tournament's all-time attendance records.
Football's world governing body, FIFA, and local organizers are confident that football lovers would march to the six venues in massive numbers to watch the matches of the first-ever FIFA tournament in India.
As far U-17 world cups are concerned, China holds the record with an overall attendance of 12,31,000 when it hosted the inaugural edition in 1985. The average stadium attendance for each match was 38,469.
The worst crowd figures were recorded at the Italy 1991 where the total attendance was just about 37,000 with a poor average attendance of 1,000 per game.
As per FIFA estimates, the stadium attendance in India would be around 21,86,000 if all the six venue manage to draw a sell-out crowd to all the 52 matches. The estimated average attendance per match is 42,038. Even if only half of the estimated number of people watched each game, the total attendance would be a decent 10,71,140.
The parent body is optimistic that all the matches scheduled to be held in Kolkata and Kochi would draw huge crowds.
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