From the first edition in 1930 in Uruguay to that of 2018 in Russia, the World Cup finals have welcomed a variable number of spectators, ranging from single to quadruple.
How many spectators will attend the 2022 World Cup final on Sunday between France and Argentina at the Lusail stadium? There are several possible answers to this question. The first is to say that it will be enough to wait for the organizers to communicate this figure during the match, as is now customary at major sporting events. Problem: this figure will not necessarily reflect reality.
Since the start of the competition, many media have pointed out the gap between the announced crowds and the reality of the spans. Sometimes the numbers even exceeded the stadiums’ official capacity. For example, 41,721 people are supposed to have seen the group match between the Netherlands and Senegal at the Al-Thumama stadium, which has 40,000 seats, according to information from Fifa. The body has since revised the official capacity of the stadiums and this is how the final stadium, which had 80,000 seats before the start of the tournament, can now accommodate 88,966 spectators.
The other way to answer the question is that we can only be satisfied with estimates. Between the spectators with tickets who do not show up but who are still counted, the crowds artificially inflated by the organizers, the variable geometry capacities of the stadiums, we never have an exact photograph, just an idea. A fortiori when we go back in time and try to find out in front of how many men in hats and women in fascinators competed in the first World Cup finals. With fragmented resources, trying to find the capacities of each stadium at the time and the commonly accepted crowds, we still engaged in the exercise.
The Maracanã and the Azteca stadium, kings of the arenas
We will never really know how many people attended the Maracanaço, the “shock of the Maracanã”, the final lost at home by Brazil in 1950 against Uruguay. But it is certain that it was the World Cup final that brought together the most spectators: nearly 200,000, in a stadium in Rio far removed from current standards. Moreover, when the Maracanã hosted a new World Cup final, sixty-four years later, it was configured to accommodate just under 80,000 spectators. This gauge is more or less the standard of the 21st century. Previously, we did not hesitate to fill the enclosures more. For example the Azteca stadium in Mexico City, which recorded for the 1970 and 1986 editions the second and third largest attendances in the history of the World Cup finals.
As for smaller attendances, you have to go back further in time, to a time when football was not yet the dominant sport it is today, a time when stadiums were also generally less big. The first two Italian titles, in 1934 and 1938, were won in front of the smallest number of spectators. For the first because the Stadio del Partito Nazionale Fascista only had a capacity of 47,300 (it was demolished in the 1950s), for the second because the Yves-du-Manoir stadium in Colombes not fill up. Only 45,124 spectators attended the final between Italy and Hungary, against 58,455 for the quarter-final between France and Italy.
Rounding out the podium with the poorest attendances, the 1958 final between Sweden and Brazil was played in front of only 49,737 people at the Råsunda stadium in Stockholm. Less than 50,000 people to see the genius Garrincha distributing two assists and the legend Pelé winning his first title.