Empty seats were clearly on show at England vs Italy, Switzerland vs Ecuador was a little over half full and Holland vs Spain was not the 100 percent attendance you might expect.

The difficulty in getting to the Amazon accounts for the England game, but that doesn't explain what's going on elsewhere, especially as it was widely reported that the majority of tickets for the finals had been sold.

A number of possible reasons could explain the phantom fans but it's hard to say which contributes the most.

The FIFA family of corporate sponsors and individual national soccer associations take up a large portion of tickets but that's not to say this results in bums on seats.

The Italian FA returned all but 200 of their 2,500 tickets for their Group D opener in Manaus.

These returned tickets go back into the pot and are available on open sale on fifa.com.

There are two ticketing streams, one for locals and one for foreigners, and The Independent newspaper reports that tickets for Sunday's first game at the Maracana in Rio were still on sale on the Brazilian-resident purchasing stream hours before kick off.

I didn't see an empty seat at the game but it's conceivable that there were some.

It's also understandable that locals in the less soccer-mad cities of Cuiaba, Curitiba, Manaus and the country's northeast have less of an appetite for mouthwatering matches like Russia vs South Korea. That and the price of tickets, $90 and up, in a developing economy blighted by poverty.

I am told by locals that they have struggled to get hold of tickets, with one, Felipe, annoyed even more because he grew up 50 meters from the Maracana. The ticket he did manage to get, for a game outside Rio, was arranged by a foreign colleague.

There are a huge number of foreign fans in Brazil without match tickets who are on the lookout. They are more likely to get tickets for the games they want from ticket touts than constantly refreshing fifa.com for returned tickets.

Like every sporting event, there are touts from all over the world, and they are in full effect.

One Canadian-English tout offered me a cut if I could help him sell on England vs Costa Rica tickets, while a walk through the Rio Fan Fest on Saturday night led to offers of tickets for many matches. Most shockingly, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported buying an FA-allocated ticket for England vs Italy from a tout.

There is clearly a demand from foreigners for tickets unwanted by Brazilians, but until FIFA can remedy that dilemma there are going to be empty seats and touts with bulging pockets.