Qatar’s about-face on alcohol signaled that FIFA, soccer’s governing body, may no longer be in full control of its showcase championship.
DOHA, Qatar — The tiny but fabulously wealthy Gulf nation of Qatar has spent 12 years preparing to host soccer’s World Cup, a marathon of planning and patience during which it has redrawn an entire nation by building stadiums and hotels, roads and sidewalks, even a gleaming new subway system.
Yet it was not until Friday that it finally settled on what to do about the sale of beer during the tournament, and the decision — to the consternation of the roughly 1 million fans set to arrive in the coming days — was to ban the sale of it at the event’s eight stadiums.
The decision, announced by FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, was an abrupt about-face by Qatar, and the latest flash point in the ongoing culture clash inherent in staging the tournament in a small, conservative Middle Eastern monarchy.
Ever since Qatar was surprisingly awarded the hosting rights to the tournament more than a decade ago, local organizers and global soccer leaders had insisted that beer — a fixture at sporting events around the world, but one that is tightly controlled in Qatar — would be available for fans. Two days before the World Cup’s first game, though, that message changed.
Instead, Qatari officials have decided that the only drinks that will be on sale to fans at games during the monthlong World Cup will be nonalcoholic.
It is unclear what prompted the ban so close to the tournament, but the sudden change was in keeping with the tournament’s ever-shifting policy toward alcohol, and its availability to fans attending games. Plans have repeatedly been drawn up and then revised, and then remade again — a possible signal that domestic politics or even royal family influence were playing a role.
“Following discussions between host country authorities and FIFA, a decision has been made to focus the sale of alcoholic beverages on the FIFA Fan Festival, other fan destinations and licensed venues,” FIFA said. The decision, it said, would require “removing sales points of beer from Qatar’s FIFA World Cup 2022 stadium perimeters.”
The decision to ban beer comes a week after an earlier edict that dozens of red beer tents covered in the branding a Budweiser, a longstanding World Cup sponsor, would have be moved to more discreet locations at the World Cup’s eight stadiums, away from where most of the crowds attending the games would pass.
Staff members, according to three people with direct knowledge of that earlier change, were told the move followed security advice. But the belief that the change had originated with Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani — the brother of Qatar’s ruling emir and the royal most active in the day-to-day planning of the tournament — suggested it was nonnegotiable.
