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1. Qatar’s ban on beer in stadiums complicated FIFA’s relationship
   with Budweiser, which pays $75 million to be associated with
   the World Cup every four years.
2. Qatar’s ban on beer in stadiums complicated FIFA’s relationship
   with Budweiser, which pays $75 million to be associated with
   the World Cup every four years.
3. DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Qatar, a tiny but fabulously wealthy Gulf
   country, has spent 12 years preparing to host the World Cup, a
   marathon of planning and patience during which it has redrawn
   an entire nation by building stadiums and hotels, roads and
   sidewalks, and even a gleaming new airport.
4. Yet it wasn’t until Friday that it finally decided what to do about
   beer sales during the tournament, and its decision — much to
   the chagrin of the roughly one million fans expected to arrive in
   the coming days — was to prohibit beer sales at the event’s
   eight stadiums.
5. The decision, announced by FIFA, soccer’s global governing
   body, was an abrupt U-turn by Qatar, and the latest flashpoint
   in the ongoing culture clash that comes with staging the
   tournament in a small, conservative Middle Eastern monarchy.

6. Since Qatar was surprisingly awarded the World Cup hosting
   rights more than a decade ago, local organisers and global
   soccer leaders have insisted that beer — a fixture at sporting
   events around the world but tightly controlled in Qatar —
   would be available for fans. That message, however, changed
   two days before the event’s first game.
7. Instead, Qatari officials have decided that only nonalcoholic
   beverages will be sold to fans at games.
8. Thousands of fans arriving in Doha for the World Cup learned
   of the news only after their planes touched down. A group of
   seven Mexican fans who had just arrived in Qatar were shocked
   to learn that they would be unable to drink inside stadiums.
9. “It’s a disaster; I wasn’t expecting that news,” Diego Anbric, 29,
   said. He’s going to his first World Cup. “This is terrible news.
   The beer is a part of the stadium’s environment.”
10. It’s unclear what prompted the ban so close to the
    tournament, but the abrupt change was consistent with the
    tournament’s ever-changing alcohol policy, as well as its
    availability to fans attending games. Plans have been drawn up,
    revised, and redrawn several times — a possible indication that
    domestic politics or even royal family influence was at work.
11. “Following discussions between host country authorities
    and FIFA, it was decided to restrict the sale of alcoholic
    beverages to the FIFA Fan Festival, other fan destinations, and
    licenced venues,” FIFA said.

A beer stand at a fan festival in Qatar’s capital, Doha. The revised
stadium plan will have no effect on sales in fan zones.

The decision to ban beer comes a week after an earlier decree that
dozens of red beer tents covered in the branding of Budweiser, a
long-time World Cup sponsor and the tournament’s official beer,
would be relocated to more discreet locations at Qatar’s World Cup
stadiums, away from where most of the crowds attending the games
would pass.

The World Cup is a quadrennial event in which the best national
soccer teams compete for the title of world champion. Here’s a
primer on the men’s tournament in 2022:

Where will it be held? Qatar will host the tournament this year after
defeating the United States and Japan in 2010. It’s debatable
whether that was a fair competition.

The tournament will begin on November 20 with Qatar taking on
Ecuador. Four games will be played on most days over the next two
weeks. The tournament concludes on December 18 with the final.

Thirty-two. Qatar qualified automatically as the host, and the other
31 teams earned the right to come and play after years of matches.
Meet the teams right here.

Work for a tournament – The 32 teams are divided into eight four-
person groups. During the first stage, each team plays each other
team in its group once. Each group’s top two finishers advance to the
round of 16. Following that, the World Cup is a single-elimination
tournament.

The tournament will be broadcast in English on Fox and FS1, and in
Spanish on Telemundo. You can watch it live on Peacock or other
streaming services that carry Fox and FS1.

Qatar is five hours ahead of London, eight hours ahead of New York,
and eleven hours ahead of Los Angeles. This means that some games
will begin before dawn on the East Coast of the United States, and
others will begin in the afternoon before 10 p.m. Qatari games
According to three people with direct knowledge of the earlier
change, staff members were told the move was due to security
advice. However, the belief that the change was initiated by Sheikh
Jasim bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani — Qatar’s ruling emir’s brother
and the royal most involved in the tournament’s day-to-day planning
— suggested that it was unassailable.

Beer will no longer be hidden from view; it will no longer be available
to fans at all.

The ban is FIFA’s latest and most dramatic point of contention with
Qatar, which sought and won the right to host the World Cup as part
of an ambitious effort to establish itself on the global stage. Qatari
government leaders, including the emir, have mounted an
increasingly strident defence of their country in recent weeks.

However, their latest reversal will enrage fans, leave organisers
scrambling to adjust, and complicate FIFA’s $75 million sponsorship
deal with Budweiser.

The World Cup Briefing –  The world’s greatest sporting event returns
in November. Get our daily analysis of every match, as well as stories
from Qatar that you won’t see on TV. It will be delivered to your
inbox.

Budweiser has been a ubiquitous presence at the World Cup since
first signing on as a FIFA sponsor a year before the 1986 Cup in
Mexico, and it had planned to be a major presence in Qatar as well.

By Friday, it had already taken over the luxury W Hotel in one of
Doha’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, where it planned to host
guests and offer them live screenings of matches — and beer.
But it was powerless to stop Qatar’s ban on its products, raising the
possibility that FIFA, which has faced years of scathing criticism for
bringing its showpiece championship to the country, may no longer
have complete control over major event decisions.

A decade ago, for example, the soccer body lobbied Brazil, which was
hosting the 2014 World Cup, to change a law to allow beer to be sold
in stadiums, a practise that had been prohibited in Brazil since 2003.

Instead, FIFA has bowed to the host country’s demands in Qatar. This
raised the possibility that other promises contradicting local laws and
customs, such as press freedom, street protests, and the rights of
LGBTQ+ visitors, were not as firm as Qatar and FIFA claimed.
The Football Supporters’ Association, a British fan advocacy group,
slammed the decision.

“Some fans enjoy a beer at a game, while others do not,” the group
said in a statement. “The real issue is the last-minute U-turn, which
speaks to a larger issue — the total lack of communication and clarity
from the organising committee toward supporters.”

“If they can change their minds on this at the drop of a hat, with no
explanation, supporters will understandably be concerned about
whether they will keep other promises relating to accommodation,
transportation, or cultural issues.”

The prohibition on alcohol consumption appeared to apply only to
gamegoers. Beer and other beverages, such as an official FIFA
Champagne and a selection of sommelier-selected wines, will remain
available in stadium luxury suites reserved for FIFA officials and other
wealthy guests.

Since the tiny Gulf nation was awarded World Cup hosting rights in
2010, Qatar has struggled with the issue of alcohol. Although alcohol
is available in the country, sales are strictly regulated. Even before
the World Cup, most visitors were allowed to purchase beer and
other beverages.

World Cup organisers seemed eager to appease Budweiser and its
corporate parent, the Belgian multinational Anheuser-Busch InBev,
saying, “tournament organisers appreciate AB InBev’s understanding
and continuous support to our joint commitment to cater for
everyone.”

Initially, the company’s only public statement was a wry tweet from
its Twitter account that said, “Well, this is awkward….” The tweet
was removed about 90 minutes later, just before FIFA issued its
statement.
Later, a company representative stated that it would have to cancel
some of its World Cup marketing plans “due to circumstances
beyond our control.”

Last week, Qatari organisers attempted to downplay rising tensions
over beer sales, a fixture of World Cups for generations, by claiming
that operational plans were still being finalised and that changes to
“the location of certain fan areas” were still being made. It also
stated that “pouring times and the number of pouring destinations”
remained consistent across all eight stadiums.

Budweiser, which pays FIFA $75 million for each four-year World Cup
cycle, had previously stated that it was working with organisers “to
relocate the concession outlets to the locations as directed.”

According to the latest plan, the brewer’s red tents may no longer be
visible around stadiums; unbranded white replacements are being
considered. Refrigerators in the company’s famous red colours will
most likely be replaced by blue refrigerators, which are associated
with Budweiser’s non-alcoholic brand, Budweiser Zero.