If we were to judge a nation’s readiness for hosting the biggest individual sporting tournament in the world by the strength of their PR assault, Qatar’s preparation is in no doubt. In Fifa-land, the best World Cup is always the next one. Records will be broken; hearts will be melted; we’ll all return home to tell of a wonderful holiday destination for years to come. Just not in summer – even Fifa realised that.
Gianni Infantino is not a man to miss the memo. “We have always said that Qatar will deliver the best-ever edition of the Fifa World Cup,” he told a Doha news conference via video link last week. Infantino insisted that “everyone is welcome in Qatar”, shortly before Human Rights Watch detailed recent examples of members of the LGBT+ community being arbitrarily arrested by Qatar’s Preventive Security Department and subjected to ill-treatment. “Best-ever”, it appears, is in the selective eye of the beholder.
Fifa’s president also talked up the “most successful hospitality program ever” – truly the judge of any self-respecting sporting contest. Packages are still available for the semi-final and final at a rough cost of £30,000 per person. This is the people’s game (just so long as that person has a vast disposable income or works for a multinational corporation that sees football as a networking event).
But what of supporters? For all that international football tournaments have become an orgy of commercialism, the crowning glory of the sporting sponsorship calendar, its pure beauty lies in the fan experience. To an extent, you can stomach the logistical headaches – the travel, the cost, the accommodation, the transport – because the unique joy of the occasion allows it. You meet fellow supporters, from your home and abroad, in Munich and Manaus and Moscow and you delight in what brought you here.
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In Qatar, that is under serious threat. Even if you set aside the selection process, the suffering of migrant workers and the human rights issues surrounding the LGBT+ community (and we absolutely shouldn’t), treating the 2022 World Cup as any other major tournament is impossible. It might not be the greatest regret of this tournament, but to those attending it matters.
Ticket sales have been high – Fifa is understandably keen to point out that three million tickets have been shifted. But to who? Qatar is listed as the country with the highest number of tickets bought, where discounts are available to host nation supporters. Saudi Arabia and UAE also make the top 10. Qatar’s stadiums are also smaller than almost any other World Cup in modern history, with only two having a capacity higher than 45,000. There are still tickets available for six group-stage matches and that is before the resale market hits the portal.
Some of those not attending have made a moral choice. Ned is an England fan who has followed the national team to every World Cup and European Championship since 2008. He tells i the human rights issues surrounding the tournament means that he will be missing this one. Any fear of missing out has dissipated with reports of the potential fan experience. He will make amends at Euro 2024, assuming England qualify.
Another England travelling supporter tells i that he couldn’t bring himself to support Qatar in any way. His brother is gay and a huge football fan who didn’t feel comfortable in going to this World Cup. If his brother couldn’t go, he didn’t want to support a country that made someone close to him feel that way.
Even those who are travelling have several financial barriers to cross. With Qatar’s eight World Cup stadiums covering an area roughly the same size as Nottinghamshire, most of the 31,000 hotel rooms in Qatar are full with squads, support staff, officials, organisers and media. For those who have managed to find room at the inn, prices were sky high. Those who haven’t have been left with faintly ludicrous options.
“The organisers have shafted a lot of ‘proper’ fans by not really making hotels available in the first instance,” says Andy, an England fan who is going to the tournament. “Of my four friends who are going, three are having to stay in the purpose-built blocks 10 kilometres out of town which are basically shipping containers with camper beds for £150 a night. Someone else is staying on a cruise ship.”
Last week, Yasir Al Jamal, the director general of Qatar’s World Cup organising committee, announced that an additional 30,000 rooms were being offered to “ensure that all ticket-holders have the best chance of securing accommodation”. Which is fine if you didn’t want to plan ahead. The suspicion from supporters is that accommodation was held back for too long for corporate bookings.
Andy is spending five nights in Qatar, three nights in Abu Dhabi and Oman and then back to Qatar for two nights. That plan is made more difficult by Qatar’s requirement for negative official Covid-19 tests upon entry. Creating a base in a different country and flying in for matches became an economical option given the accommodation costs in Doha, but if you require a negative test within 24 hours of every flight, you are running the Covid-19 gauntlet and risk missing matches.
One of Andy’s biggest gripes, and you see his point, is that higher demand than supply has created a bottleneck for beds that allows consumers to be exploited. That’s not just through the cost itself, but the stipulations. Unlike in previous tournaments, there was an inability to put down deposits; everything had to be paid for up front and was non-refundable. A fan is left with a choice: do I pay over the odds for accommodation for the knockout stages and hope my team makes it, or play it safe then risk paying a far higher cost nearer the time?
And what are you paying for here, other than a chance to exist in Qatar’s WorldCupland for some precious days at an exorbitant cost? It’s certainly not the typical major tournament experience. There is no travel, no new cities at the end of the line to discover, fall in love with and depart within three days vowing to come back one day and explore it properly; this is the first World Cup based around one city. You can hardly gather together in a square or piazza to bask in victory or lament defeat when you require official transport to your accommodation or need to dash for a flight to Oman.
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Alcohol will be unavailable for purchase, other than in specialist fan parks or for a king’s ransom in hotel bars. The Arcadia Festival, which will feature the giant fire-breathing spider last seen at Glastonbury, will serve beer for 19 hours a day. I hope you like Budweiser and I hope you don’t mind spending all your pocket money on it.
The Qatari broadcasting rights are held by BeIN Sports, meaning the tournament will not be on free-to-air TV and many hotels are refusing to pay the cost for a licence. Some supporters that i spoke to had been unaware that by going to Qatar, they may actually miss the chance to watch much of the tournament. That alone is enough to dampen any buzz.
The pre-tournament fretting has long been part of the tradition and they are often quashed when the tournament begins and actual football takes over. Before London 2012, swathes of the country mithered about transport issues, organisational problems, the weather – always the weather. You can pour scorn on the notion that the Olympics created a lasting legacy in the UK, but you cannot reasonably argue that, in isolation, the Games were not a success.
Qatar does not get that luxury, because of the severity of the concerns and because evidence suggests that they really are not ready. In September, a pre-World Cup test event was held in the Lusail Stadium, the largest of the venues and the host of the final. Stands ran out of water by half-time in 34-degree heat. Fans waited in a one-and-a-half-mile queue across a concrete lot as they filed out of the stadium to avoid a stampede. Suppliers spoke of being unable to access the stadium and being given misguided directions. Some shuttle bus services were not working, meaning fans were forced to walk for 45 minutes in the heat.
The more you learn, the more you wince. So much of this World Cup appears to be catered for sponsors and those who can afford hospitality seats (where alcohol will be served) rather than the travelling supporters. The England fans i spoke to had little of the usual pre-tournament enthusiasm, none of the buzz about voyages of discovery. They will travel out of loyalty to their team and hardwired commitment – they are going because they always go. All of them mention how much they are looking forward to Euro 2024 in Germany.
This is the mood that cannot be painted in a thick layer of PR. You cannot feign joy, or fake excitement. It is another of the great shames of this World Cup. It’s not just that being a supporter in Qatar will not be easy, financially or logistically. It is that nobody appears to have sufficiently considered what might have helped them, or whether the host nation ever had the capability to manage it in the first place.
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