Saturday's AET Int'l Challenge Cup featuring Juventus drew a "less than enthusiastic response from fans in what turned out to be a money-losing venture at Hong Kong Stadium," according to Chan Kin-wa of the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST. About 14,000 people "turned out to watch the match, which saw the Italian champions beat local side South China 2-1." Organizers had said that they "needed to fill at least half of the 40,000-capacity So Kun Po venue to break even" but the gate receipts produced just HK$2.7M ($350,000) in revenue. Organizers "looked on the positive side," saying that the crowd attendance "wasn’t too bad" considering the Turin club was missing big names like veteran Gianluigi Buffon, France star Paul Pogba and record signing Gonzalo Higuain. In a statement, organizers said, "Many of their big stars couldn’t come because they were resting on holiday after the European Championship. Of course we would like to have more people come and watch as the gate receipts weren’t enough to cover our expenses, but the figure is quite encouraging as we sold only 5,800 tickets by Friday" (SCMP, 7/31).