Fans Call For FA Cup Change After Seeing Thousands Of Empty Seats At Wembley Semi-Final Between Man City And Sheffield United
Fans want the Football Association to stop holding FA Cup semi-finals at Wembley Stadium after Manchester City and Sheffield United played in front of thousands of empty seats.
The official attendance at the 90,000-seater stadium on Saturday was 69,602.
But the real figure was likely even lower than that as venues often report how many tickets were issued, as opposed to how many were activated on a game day.
There were at least 20,000 seats left empty at Wembley Stadium on Saturday
IMAGO/PA Images/Nick Potts
All FA Cup semi-finals have been played at Wembley since 2008.
Before that, they took place at a variety of neutral venues depending on the teams involved.
The decision to move all FA Cup semis to Wembley was motivated chiefly by financial reasons.
Wembley, which is England's national stadium, cost almost $1 billion to rebuild between 2003 and 2007. So moving all FA Cup semi-finals there was motivated in part by a desire to recoup as much of that money as possible.
It is the biggest stadium in the United Kingdom and therefore able to host more paying ticket-holders than any other venue.
But after seeing Wembley far from full on Saturday, fans took to Twitter to call for a change.
One wrote: "Look at all the empty seats at Wembley! The venue is not sacred anymore. FA Cup Semi-Finals should not be played there."
Another said: "I don't think I've ever seen so many empty seats at a semi final before. I fear for the FA Cup."
There appears to be two factors behind low attendances at Wembley for recent FA Cup semi-finals.
Firstly, many fans appear to have become desensitized to the wonder of Wembley. For example, Man City have now played at Wembley 19 times in the past 10 seasons, including EFL Cup finals, FA Cup finals, Community Shield games and FA Cup semi-finals.
The other factor is geography. Many feel that an FA Cup semi-final between a team from Manchester and a side from Sheffield would be much better attended if it was held in the north of England, rather than in London.
One disgruntled supporter tweeted: "Blocks of empty seats for a semi-final with a stupid kick off time, at a dreadful stadium at least 150 miles away from either side. As with most of modern football, the mystique and magic of the FA Cup has been stripped away by money-grabbing administrators."
