Fans in Qatar will have to pay £240 (and £80 a beer) to watch the World Cup in hotel bars

Qatar’s sports bars will charge fans up to £240 each to watch games during the 2022 World Cup.

It is a further blow to supporters, many of whom have been put off attending the World Cup due to the costs involved.

Some of those who are going to travel to the Middle East will be hosted in desert camps for hundreds of pounds a night or even in a neighbouring country, such is the lack of affordable accommodation available in Doha.

i has learned that many of the city’s main sports bars, where fans would normally find themselves in between matches they attend, are going to install cover charges just to get in.

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Champions Sports Bar in the Marriott Hotel, which Time Out magazine describes as Doha’s leading sports bar, is charging fans 200 Qatari riyals (about £48) to get in to watch group games. That gets you three drinks – Budweiser, Corona or house wine – an equivalent of £16 a drink.

And you can’t nurse your bottles of gassy Budweiser either, as that is per game for three hours. It costs another 200 riyals if you want to stay for the next match – that is the minimum charge per game.

Champions are then upping the charge to 750 riyals (£180) for the knockout stages and 1,000 riyals (£240) for the semis and final, with three-drink vouchers still offered – so £240 would be the equivalent of £80 for a bottle of Corona.

Alcohol prices in Qatar are already among the highest in the world due to a “sin tax” the authorities have implemented.

i spoke to six other major sports bars in the city, and all of them were charging entrance fees that come with drinks vouchers, with no option to just walk in and purchase one beverage. Prices for entry ranged from £35 to £100.

Without much to keep fans otherwise occupied in the smallest country ever to host the World Cup, one of the many things that has dampened enthusiasm for those heading to Qatar has been the potential lack of options to watch games on TV.

Such fears were allayed somewhat in recent weeks with host broadcaster beIN striking deals across the city to show games. However, the opportunity to mingle with fans from all over the world while watching a match in a bar – often the source of the best atmosphere at a major tournament – will cost you.

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“There isn’t a variety of museums, theatres, restaurants, bars, cafes, it is fairly limited what you can do in Doha,” Ashley Brown, head of supporter Engagement and governance at the Football Supporters’ Association, told i.

“You kind of feel, particularly in the early rounds when all those teams, all those fans are there, Qatar is going to be sort of bulging at the seams, and people may have trouble finding places to get in and watch the game and have a beer, that’s if they can afford to have a beer of course.

“You’re probably not going to go in there for like six or seven hours and drink six or seven pints at that price, certainly not every day, which some people might normally do in a tournament. So I think the combination of capacity, costs, it’s going to be a bit of a strange one.”

There are other ways to watch games. Huge fan parks across the city, Al Bidda being the largest, with a capacity of 40,000, look like the best bet for supporters. Entry is free, with dry sections and areas where fans can drink Budweiser available.

But as Brown points out, capacity is a problem at these sites, given how many will see fan parks as their only option to watch matches on TV, unwilling to pay the entrance fee for sports bars.

BeIN are offering packages to watch matches on their On Demand service, with deals ranging from a few days to coverage of the full month, enabling fans to tune in on laptops, iPads or phones – not quite the same as heading to a local bar to chat football with supporters from Brazil to Belgium.

Come the tournament, things may change, as fans often find a way to make the most of their experience, even if the Qataris are doing all they can to price them out.

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