The Ivorian authorities and the Organizing Committee of the Africa Cup of Nations (COCAN) had promised "the biggest AFCON in history," with figures to make the head spin: $1.5 billion (around €1.4 billion) invested in renovating and upgrading infrastructure, stadiums capable of seating up to 60,000 fans, over 5,000 accreditation applications received (more than double the number for Cameroon in 2021) and one million visitors expected in the stadiums. The atmosphere promised to be electric in this football-mad country, which had not hosted the competition since 1984.
A promise kept in the streets, maquis (restaurants) and "fan zones," but not in the stadiums, where match after match has been played in front of desperately empty stands. The competition kicked off on Saturday, January 13 with a match between Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea-Bissau, which should have filled the famous Alassane-Ouattara stadium in Ebimpé, the new showcase for Ivorian football. Prior to the start of the lavish opening ceremony, the head of state took the opportunity to walk around the freshly-renovated pitch, to cheers from around the stadium.
However, the attendance figures published at the end of the match confirmed the general impression: The stadium was half-full. According to the announcer, 36,858 fans had attended out of the 60,000 seats available in the brand-new stadium. The emptiness marred the otherwise festive atmosphere, to the extent that in the stands the insults were not aimed at the Guinea-Bissau team, as usual, but at the ticket-holders who hadn't deigned to make the trip.
Why such a large number of no-shows, when the tournament's committee had announced, well in advance of the competition, that all tickets for the Côte d'Ivoire matches had been sold? What happened to those 23,000 or so phantom spectators?
Yacine Idriss Diallo, the president of the Ivorian Football Federation (FIF), himself admitted after the match that he couldn't explain the absences. "Were people afraid of the rain, the distance, the conditions?" he wondered, alluding to the uncertain weather and the location of the Ebimpé stadium, on the outskirts of Abidjan, which was so difficult to get to that official advice was to leave at midday to be sure of being seated before the start of the match at 6 pm. Legitimate considerations, of course, but they did not fully explain the missing 23,000 spectators.
On social media, frustrated Ivorian fans have been shouting "TicketGate" and putting forward several hypotheses: black market, corruption, or even an orchestrated boycott to damage the prestige of the country's president, who is banking on the tournament.
On Monday, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and COCAN provided some initial explanations. They began by pointing out that, of the 60,000 seats at Ebimpé stadium, over 9,000 are not available for purchase as they are reserved for stadium staff, security guards and medical teams. The stands can actually accommodate 50,786 people, which means that it wasn't 23,142 phantom spectators haunting Ebimpé, but 13,928.
According to their explanations, CAF and COCAN only put 47,000 tickets on sale for the opening match, leaving 3,786 unavailable for an unexplained reason. Of these 47,000 tickets, some were sold to the general public, others were reserved for companies and institutions, and the remainder were allocated to CAF for its partners, sponsors and foreign sports federations. Details of the allocation were not given, but COCAN claimed that a third of the tickets were reserved for CAF, in accordance with the host convention signed by Côte d'Ivoire.
The document does not, however, explain why fewer than 37,000 of the 47,000 seats sold were occupied. What's more, despite the fact that the tournament was expected to be sold out, a final ticket sale was held just hours before kick-off, leaving fans baffled.
The answer to this question lies in the so-called "grouped" ticket purchases, aimed at companies and local authorities. Several of them had booked dozens of tickets, explained a COCAN source, but canceled their reservations at the last minute. It was these tickets that went back on sale on the day of the opening match. But they all found takers, which still doesn't solve the mystery of the empty seats.
Another possible explanation is the malfunctioning of the black market. On social media sites on Saturday afternoon, dozens of tickets were still being offered at up to five or ten times their original price. Some of these were probably fakes, as crooks smelled an opportunity. The rest could have come from unscrupulous resellers who had made reservations in their own name on the official ticketing service, which limited individual purchases to six tickets per match and 30 for the entire competition, or who had bought in bulk on behalf of a company. Prohibitive prices and short lead times may have discouraged buyers, to the extent that greedy resellers may have found themselves with many unsold tickets on their hands at kick-off.
After the opening game, Sunday's matches failed to attract large crowds, and the group matches were played in virtually empty stadiums. The match between Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria was played in front of 8,500 spectators at the Ebimpé stadium. This is a recurring phenomenon at every AFCON. One of the main reasons for this is the cost of travelling to the host country to follow the national team. It is out of reach for the vast majority of fans – with the exception of the local diaspora – even those from neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mali.
But Monday's matches were better attended in Yamoussoukro and Bouaké (where the mayor even handed out thousands of free tickets), with the stands almost full, and the organizers are hoping to see more and more supporters as the competition progresses. On Monday, Prime Minister Robert Beugré Mambé declared that he was "taking the problem in hand" and promised "results within 48 hours." On the same day, CAF and COCAN announced physical ticket sales would be stepped up in the country's 51 sales outlets. The results are expected for the Ivorian Elephants' next match, against Nigeria on Thursday.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.