Sex dolls as fans? Soccer club apologizes after mannequin mishap used to fill stands

A South Korean soccer club wanted to recreate the magic of a live stadium audience, but perhaps went too far in accepting the help of a sex doll manufacturer to fill the seats, outlets report.

Seoul FC is apologizing to fans for the apparent sex dolls, equipped with masks and observing social distancing, sitting in the stands, ESPN reported.

At the same time, the organization assured fans that though these “mannequins” look like sex dolls, and were provided by a company that makes sex dolls, they most definitely are not sex dolls.

“These mannequins may have been made to look and feel like real humans but they are not for sexual use — as confirmed by the manufacturer from the beginning,” FC Seoul said, according to ESPN.

“Our intention was to do something lighthearted in these difficult times. We will think hard about what we need to do to ensure that something like this never happens again.”

The club didn’t speak to why it worked with the specific manufacturer, Dalkom, or why almost all of the mannequins were female in design, the Associated Press reported.

FC Seoul did say that Dalkom provided the club with mannequins that it had previously given to a different company, according to the outlet.

Fans were the first to notice the 30 mannequins weren’t quite the kind one might see at the mall, and that some of them were advertising adult websites, BBC reported.

“They were supposed to take all the logos down before the game started,” Dalkom director Cho Young-june told BBC. “But there were several hairbands and logos left to be caught by public eye.”

Lee Ji-hoon, an FC Seoul official, told BBC that the club didn’t look into Dalkom before accepting the offered mannequins, and while Lee noticed they were “very human” looking, it hadn’t occurred to him that they might not be ordinary mannequins.