The Qatar 2022 World Cup tournament will kick off at the beginning of the week at the Al-Bayt Stadium in Doha. But two days before the opening, Qatar changes direction. The state announced its intention to ban the sale of beer in or around the World Cup complex, according to a report by the CNBC network.
The decision, which is expected to be officially published today by the authorities in Qatar, raises questions about the sponsorship of the beer producer Badweezer, which is estimated at 75 billion dollars. And the publication of the expected decision provoked strong reactions from fans and doubters.
This is not the first problem that Qatar has encountered in the production of the World Cup. Along the way it became clear that there is a problem of issuing visas to fans, and that there is not enough hotel infrastructure for tourists. In light of this, it was decided that the celebration would be split, with a large part of the fans not spending the night in Qatar at all, but sometime in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
In the months before the World Cup, it was decided to dock one cruise ship in the port of Doha, which will be used as a maritime hotel due to the lack of hotel rooms in the country. After a few weeks, it was decided to increase the number of marine hotels to three and two more huge ships were brought in (one of them with a capacity of 6,700 fans at the same time). Thousands of fans will change every two or three days and make room for other soccer fans who will come to see their team.
In addition, the conservative-Muslim country does not prohibit the sale of alcohol to tourists, but there are a large number of laws and restrictions around the issue.
And if all this is not enough, the laws in the country also create problems. LGBT people in Qatar are subject to constant persecution, with homosexuality being defined as a criminal offense and carrying a three-year prison sentence. This has sparked protests around the world in the past year.
