World Cup 2022: Qatar U-turns on determination to promote Budweiser alcoholic beer at stadiums

The choice will possible end in shifting concession stands serving alcohol additional away from the stadiums, the individual stated. The event, sometimes the world’s largest sporting occasion and a decade within the planning, kicks off Sunday with the hosts taking up Ecuador. 

The choice to ban alcohol gross sales inside stadiums is an about-turn from Qatar’s earlier place. The Supreme Committee on Supply and Legacy had promised alcohol shall be accessible in designated “fan zones” exterior stadiums and different hospitality venues. 

The event has already been beset with controversies, starting from scheduling issues attributable to Qatar’s summer season warmth to the remedy of migrant employees. Difficulties might mount as soon as followers arrive and face native norms, equivalent to costume codes requiring women and men cowl their our bodies from shoulders to knees in lots of public areas. 

Alcohol availability has been a selected flash-point for criticism round FIFA’s determination to carry the quadrennial soccer spectacle in a conservative Muslim nation the place public shows of affection, boisterousness and drunkenness are taboo.

Qatar prohibits alcohol gross sales at nearly all eating places not related to a high-end lodge or resort. With employer permission, overseas residents may also purchase bottles of liquor, beer and wine for house consumption from a single Qatar Airways-run depot on the outskirts of Doha. 

FIFA and Budweiser maker AB Inbev, which have been in partnership since 1986, are pushing for extra concessions. They’ve had success prior to now — Brazil handed the so-called Budweiser Invoice to overturn native legal guidelines that prohibited beer in stadiums for the 2014 World Cup.