The FIFA World Cup has officially begun and if you are not going to say it, then we will.
So far, it’s been fantastic.
The football on display has been top-notch and we can’t wait to see if there will be more
upsets like Saudi Arabia ending Argentina’s unbeaten run; or Japan stunning Germany.
There is however, a little concern that is slowly
growing behind the absolutely wonderful scenes of competition.
Fan turnouts have been rather poor in some of the games - a fact that is clearly seen
by the consecutive chains of empty seats at various venues.
This hasn’t stopped the stadium organisers from trying to inflate
the official figures for each match.
Screenshots of live updates on the giant screens are comical to say the least.
The opening game of the World Cup was announced as having 67,372 in attendance
whereas the official capacity of Al Bayt Stadium is 60,000.
And USA’s fixture against Wales was held in a
40,000-capacity Ahamd Bin Ali Stadium with an announced attendance of 43,418.
This has got us thinking.
We know why they are changing the figures,
but why are the fans not attending the matches as expected.
Here are a few reasons that we could find.
Football is not loved by many in Qatar As of November, 2022, Worldometer
reported that the Gulf state only has a population of 2.9 million.
That is significantly less than the number of football lovers in many other countries.
This is before we even consider what percentage of the people living in
Qatar actually love football and would want to go to the stadiums to watch it.
It does not help that a huge chunk of this population are
migrant workers whose sole aim of being in Qatar is to work.
In fact, Qatar's population has surged by 13.2 percent over the last year as the organisers had
to recruit thousands of overseas workers to serve and chaperone an unprecedented influx of fans.
These workers are undoubtedly coming from poor countries in Asia and Africa
Even if they wanted to watch the games, we wonder if their salaries
could cover the costs and leave them with enough to send back home.
2. Very expensive tickets.
While the nation of Qatar has splurged so much cash in delivering the best of facilities for home
and travelling fans, they certainly wouldn’t mind recouping some of that directly from ticket sales.
And indeed, they are. Ticket prices for the showpiece event
have reached an all-time high, costing an average of 286 pounds over the course of the group stage.
This is a marginal, and somewhat reasonable increase from the 214
pounds that fans paid 4 years ago in Russia.
But it is in the knockout stages that the cost disparity can be truly appreciated.
The average ticket prices for the final is a whooping 684 pounds,
59 percent more than what people paid to watch France vs Croatia in the 2018 final.
By the time a fan sits through all seven games,
thousands of pounds would have left his pocket but if that is the case,
how come the relatively cheaper group stage matches are not being patronised as much.
For that, my friends, we will have to look at the surrounding costs involved.
According to Conotoxia, a 10 day stay in Qatar for just the group stage
will cost two people around six thousand dollars if they are coming from New York.
Outside the world cup period, you could get accommodation in Doha for as cheap as 50
dollars, but today, those prices have skyrocketed to around 720 dollars per night.
Fans who thought that they could save a little extra by lodging
at the 300 dollar fan villages have been met with a rather rude awakening.
No air conditioning in the hot tents. The stores are closed, and there's no
drinking water. For security,
all you get is a padlock. A padlock !!
Other fans had not even gotten their rooms after waiting for 8 hours and
when they finally got in, many of them were equally disappointed.
One Frenchman just gave up on the whole situation and told a reporter that he is going back home.
We wonder how long it takes before other fans start leaving
the country and abandon matches that they have already paid for.
3. Qatar fans leaving at half-time
If there are any games that we expect to see full stadiums,
they are the ones involving the host nation. And for a time in the opening game,
it looked like the whole of Qatar had crammed into the Al Bayt Stadium.
The whole stadium was buzzing with excitement and expectation until Ecuador flipped the script.
A quick-fire double from Enner Valencia silenced the crowd before half-time and
reminded everyone why Qatar were the worst ranked team in the tournament.
An improved performance in the second half proved futile but it didn’t even matter to many of the
fans who had already left at half-time - visibly annoyed and greatly embarrassed.
Anytime, the camera panned onto the empty seats,
there was this eerie feeling that many more matches might suffer a similar fate.
So far, that feeling has been right.
4. The FIFA ticket app crashed Of course, FIFA had a role to
play in the way that the stands looked empty at the beginning of most matches.
Similar to what happened in the UCL final last season,
many fans could not enter the stadium before kick-off in the England -Iran game.
Unlike what happened in the UCL ,the delay was not due to violence but a simple
technological mishap with the ticketing app, FIFA has spent millions acquiring.
Hundreds of fans said that their tickets suddenly disappeared off
the app while others could not even get it to connect to the internet.
Eventually, officials started allowing them to enter if they had screenshots
of their tickets but for a few minutes, some of the English players would have
been wondering if their nation had abandoned them at the Khalifa International Stadium.
In all sincerity, it would be in nobody’s best interests to
see the world cup riddled with all these problems.
It wasn’t pleasant to see such a low turnout on television and we
are sure it would have even been less pleasant for those who were there.
Football thrives on community, togetherness and joyous pandemonium.
If you are in Qatar, head over to the grounds and
support your country. Your team needs you.
But before that, leave us a comment and tell us how things are going.
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