The Baku Olympic stadium, which hosted the 2015 European Games, is likely to have scores of empty seats for the Europa Legue final

Uefa is facing the embarrassment of next week’s Europa League final between Arsenal and Chelsea taking place with thousands of empty seats in Baku’s Olympic Stadium.

Several sponsors are set to follow the lead of both clubs in returning a large proportion of the 2,000 tickets that they have been given by European football’s governing body. The difficulty and cost of travelling to the capital of Azerbaijan mean that some companies are struggling to give the tickets away.

Arsenal and Chelsea are planning to return a total of over 6,000 tickets — more than half their initial allocations — as they have only sold 3,500 and 2,000 respectively. This is despite complaints after reaching the final that they had each been given less than 10