Re:BBC ignores World Cup opening ceremony in favour of Qatar...
by bobthepanda on Sunday November 20, 2022 @02:34PM
(#33684411)
Neither coverage of either was particularly rosy. Host countries get criticized all the time, like Rio 2016. There’s just legitimately a lot more to criticize.
In particular:
* the schedule. Because of Qatar's extremely hot summers, the whole schedule has to be moved for the World Cup outside of summer. This now cuts into normal European football league times, cuts recovery times, etc. Neither Russian or Chinese games really resulted in a significant chunk of sports having to unexpectedly shift schedules
* the alcohol row. Qatar explicitly had to agree to be okay with alcohol at games, and is now reneging severely, which is pretty bad considering that alcohol consumption is pretty regular at football. Neither Russia or China imposed such severe restrictions on spectators.
The worst bit though, is that the process was blatantly rigged, most of the people directly involved have been indicted on corruptions charges, and it's pretty much the only way the bid went through because these problems are inherently self evident if you spend maybe five minutes thinking about Qatar.
In particular:
* the schedule. Because of Qatar's extremely hot summers, the whole schedule has to be moved for the World Cup outside of summer. This now cuts into normal European football league times, cuts recovery times, etc. Neither Russian or Chinese games really resulted in a significant chunk of sports having to unexpectedly shift schedules
* the alcohol row. Qatar explicitly had to agree to be okay with alcohol at games, and is now reneging severely, which is pretty bad considering that alcohol consumption is pretty regular at football. Neither Russia or China imposed such severe restrictions on spectators.
The worst bit though, is that the process was blatantly rigged, most of the people directly involved have been indicted on corruptions charges, and it's pretty much the only way the bid went through because these problems are inherently self evident if you spend maybe five minutes thinking about Qatar.