Hosts Morocco thrashed Kenya and Algeria beat Senegal as WAFCON 2026 got under way in Rabat — but sparse crowds have reopened a familiar debate about how African football markets its women's game.

Morocco and Algeria made perfect starts to WAFCON 2026 on Sunday. Getting fans into the stadiums to watch proved a far tougher assignment.

Hosts Morocco brushed aside Kenya 4-0 at the Moulay El Hassan Stadium in Rabat, Ibtissam Jraidi scoring twice either side of goals from Sakina Ouzraoui and Maryame Atiq to send the Atlas Lionesses top of Group A. Algeria had earlier begun their own campaign with a 2-0 win over Senegal at the Rabat Olympic Stadium, captain Marine Dafeur converting a 42nd-minute penalty before 20-year-old Melissa Bethi wrapped up the points late on.

On the pitch, the tournament's newly expanded, 16-team era got off to a rousing start. In the stands, it was a different story. Wide sections of both venues sat empty through the early kick-off, and even Morocco's prime-time opener — the game organisers were counting on to set the tone — drew only pockets of noise rather than the sell-out roar the hosts had hoped for.

It was not for lack of trying. Caf and the Moroccan organising committee priced opening tickets in three tiers — MAD 20, 30 and 50, or roughly $2 to $5.35 (about 25 to 62 Ghanaian cedis) — specifically to make the tournament as accessible as possible. Bargain prices alone did not fill the seats.

The promotional push looked just as thin. Touring Casablanca and Rabat in the weeks before kick-off, an [ESPN reporter] counted a single WAFCON billboard across both cities — a marked drop-off from the previous two editions, when Morocco's players were a constant presence on advertising around the host cities. Broadcast deals for the UK (Channel 4) and Sub-Saharan Africa (Canal+) were only locked in the day before the tournament opened.

Empty stadiums have dogged Caf's flagship women's tournament before. Reviewing the last WAFCON, also staged in Morocco, the website Africa Is a Country wrote in a July 2025 analysis that the "paltry attendance" for neutral fixtures was "unsurprising," tying the trend to years of institutional neglect of the women's game.

Nigerian sports journalist 'Yomi Kazeem went further in a December 2025 report, dubbing the pattern across Caf tournaments the "Empty Seat Syndrome." He described the knock-on effect as a "double-whammy of poor stadium revenues and a less captivating television product."

Pundits who cover African football have long argued that Caf leans on the quality of the football alone to sell tickets, rather than building the buzz that turns a fixture into an occasion.

Premium Times journalist Tunde Eludini made that case to the Daily Post during last year's WAFCON semi-finals. "Caf needs to start treating WAFCON like a premium product, not just a tournament," he said. "They need to build excitement months in advance, engage schools, markets, and local football fans to create real buzz... Match-day should be an experience, not just a game."

Speaking in the same July 2025 report, media consultant and football development expert Ibrahim Lawal pinned the blame on promotion — or the absence of it. "The key factors in the poor turn out of spectators is the lack of worldwide, continental and host nation promotions by the organizers," he said.

Venue selection has drawn scrutiny too. Echonews journalist Hakeem Adegbenro argued Caf should be staging women's fixtures in smaller grounds better suited to television. "[Caf] should ensure that female competitions are played in less capacity stadium for better TV coverage, not in a 60,000 capacity stadium that will look like an empty stadium," he said.

Caf and the local organisers have already reached for one solution this year. During the men's tournament in Morocco in December, they responded to similarly bare stands by opening the gates mid-match and letting fans in for free rather than risk the optics of a half-empty stadium on international television.

Whether that becomes the fallback again now is the question hanging over the rest of the group stage. The players have held up their end of the bargain with two entertaining, one-sided wins to open the tournament. Whether the crowds follow — on their own, or because Caf opens the gates for them — will go a long way toward defining how WAFCON 2026 is remembered.