The Russian edition of the FIFA Fan Fest welcomed 7.7 million visitors, world football governing body FIFA said on Thursday.

In a statement by its Media Office, FIFA said this was about 50 per cent more than the 5.2 million fans who were at the 2014 edition in Brazil.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the FIFA Fan Fest took Russia by storm, with many fans at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia having many exciting times.

“Every match day tens of thousands of Russian and international football fans opted for the FIFA Fan Fest locations as their venues of choice.

“They watched a total of 917 hours of live football and enjoyed an exciting music and cultural entertainment programme featuring 646 bands playing 323 hours of live music, all free of charge.

“The close collaboration between FIFA, the Local Organising Committee (LOC), the Host Cities and our Commercial Affiliates made this project possible,” FIFA’s Chief Commercial Officer, Philippe Le Floc’h, disclosed in the statement.

“The FIFA Fan Fests offered a free, safe and highly entertaining space to the 7.7 million local and international fans that came to watch matches in those spectacular locations.”

“The work has already started to make the FIFA Fan Fest experience even more entertaining in the future and we are looking forward to welcoming fans at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar,” he added.

NAN reports that, according to statistics provided by FIFA, the highest day’s attendance was on June 25, when Uruguay faced host country Russia and 499,000 fans attended 11 venues.

The host city of Moscow achieved the best attendance with a staggering number of 1,887,200 visitors.

For the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, top venue Rio de Janeiro had 937,330 visitors in total.

The FIFA Fan Fest has been part of the Official Programme of the FIFA World Cup since the 2006 edition in Germany.

It featured again at the 2010 and 2014 editions in South Africa and Brazil respectively.(NAN)