The Loop

FC Seoul accidentally fills empty stands with sex dolls, might actually get you interested in soccer

This past weekend, sports made it’s semi-triumphant return to the Western Hemisphere. We watched DJ and Rory do what they do best: Dominate. We watched fast cars turn left 400 straight times. We saw 'The Last Dance' reach Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals and enjoyed the return of breakfast sports thanks to the restart of the Bundesliga on Saturday morning. Overall, not a bad slate of action for a random weekend in mid-May with much of the world still in some form of lockdown or another.

Despite all of that, however, chances are you still missed the best highlight of the sports weekend. That instead belonged to professional South Korean soccer club FC Seoul, who in an effort to spice up their first home game of the season, placed approximately 20 mannequins in the empty stands holding banners and wearing masks. Unfortunately for the FC Seoul PR department, Soccer Twitter (a real thing) quickly noticed one detail the club had overlooked:

Some of these “plastics”—as fake supporters across the soccer-loving world are called—weren’t mannequins at all, but actual sex dolls.

The club have since apologized, blaming the manufacturer Dalkom for any inadvertent arousal suffered during athe viewing of a perfectly wholesome soccer match. “These mannequins may have been made to look and feel like real humans,” said the club in a statement that was supposed to refute their intentional use of sex dolls, but sounded precisely the opposite. “But they are not for sexual use -- as confirmed by the manufacturer from the beginning."

Making matters even worse (and by worse we obviously mean funnier), is the fact that some mannequins even appeared to be holding signs promoting adult sites, which you would think the poor intern who set these up would have recognized but alas not. Here’s a link to that internet sleuthing, which may or may not be NSFW, depending on your tolerance level for highly pixelated imagery.

For the transgression, whether intentional or just negligent, FC Seoul face a potential fine and possible charge of damaging the prestige of Korean football (also a real thing). There’s been no word yet on what happened to the “mannequins,” but let's just say the janitor who stumbles across them in the recyclables is in for quite a surprise.