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Chelsea kicked off their Fifa Club World Cup campaign against Los Angeles FC to tens of thousands of empty seats in Atlanta.<\/b><\/p>\n
The game started at 3pm local time on a working Monday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.<\/p>\n
The ground can hold 75,000 spectators, but the entire top tier was closed for this match.<\/p>\n
Sources told the BBC that Fifa was expecting a crowd of about 26,000, but it did not appear that busy at kick-off.<\/p>\n
A small middle tier seemed to be mostly full, but a larger bottom tier was more than half empty.<\/p>\n
The cheapest ticket was about \u00a337 before kick-off. During the game tickets were still on sale online for \u00a326 – with many available in nearly every section.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles is more than 2,000 miles away from Atlanta, across the southern United States.<\/p>\n
Their 1,500 ultras dominated the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
The newly expanded Club World Cup is being treated as a dress rehearsal for the international World Cup next summer, which will be held in the USA, Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n
The CWC is just being played in the US.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n