Thousands of seats empty during World Cup opener between Qatar and Ecuador

Thousands of empty seats could be seen inside the Al Bayt Stadium during the second half of Qatar’s World Cup opener against Ecuador on Sunday.

‘Then at half time you said straight away, ‘a lot of empty seats’, we thought it was perhaps one of those things where they’d come back from the corporate things [for the second half].’BBC’s Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer said the absence of fans in the second half was notable

Former England striker Alan Shearer added: ‘This is an hour into the game, there were so many leaving, at half time as well. ‘They just never came back into the stadium, certainly not in the numbers that were there ahead of the game.’A pocket of Qatar’s livelier fans even thinned out as the game went on FIFA announced last month that nearly three million tickets have been sold for the tournament, with Qatar topping the list of nations with the highest number of tickets at 37% of sales.

During the 2018 World Cup, FIFA launched an investigation after thousands of empty seats were seen during Uruguay’s 1-0 win against Egypt on the first day of the tournament.

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