Qatar 2022: sale of alcohol excluded from stadiums & their perimeters and restricted to fan zones

"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 (a fan zone open throughout the competition and located in the centre of Doha, between West Bay and Souq Waqif), other fan destinations and licensed venues, removing sales points of beer from Qatar's FIFA World Cup 2022 stadium perimeters," announced the international Federation on 18/11/2022, two days before the start of the 2022 World Cup.

This is a reversal of the original plan by organisers to allow the sale of beer three hours before and one hour after the matches in the vicinity of the competition venues.

The decision comes after "long-term negotiations between FIFA president Gianni Infantino, Budweiser, and executives from Qatar's Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC), which is organising the World Cup," according to Reuters.

"A larger number of fans are attending from across the Middle East and South Asia, where alcohol doesn’t play such a large role in the culture," argued the SC, according to Reuters.

"Some of…