Fans who secured the more affordable accommodations at the Fan Village Cabins Free Zone for this year's World Cup held in Qatar were in for a rude awakening reminiscent of the 2017 Fyre Festival debacle.
The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 event in Qatar, a country located in Western Asia, was already riddled with controversy before it kicked off on November 20 due to the country's horrendous reputation for human rights violations and corruption.
Thousands of migrant workers who worked 12 years to prepare for the tournament since its announcement in 2010 have died unexplainable deaths.
According to the Washington Post, human rights groups cited "lax oversight by soccer’s international governing body, FIFA, and abusive labor conditions in the host country,"
In protest, artists like Dua Lipa made it clear they would not be performing at the event.
An estimated 1.5 million fans who planned to attend the month-long tournament found it nearly impossible to find sufficient accommodation given the lack of hotels and affordable Airbnb options on the peninsula that is smaller than the size of Connecticut.
To accommodate wayward visitors, the Fan Village Cabins Free Zone was a solution.
However, the conditions in the village were very suspect.
The village–which was still under construction in some areas–was made up of a series of plastic portacabins in the desert that is roughly a 20-minute metro ride away from the sporting venue in the city of Doha.
Arriving visitors paying roughly $200 a night for a 29-day stay at the Village found the makeshift plastic chambers too hot–with only electric fans provided instead of air conditioning units.
Comparisons were drawn to the lodging conditions found at the Fyre music festival in the Bahamas, where those who paid top dollar to attend found scattered disaster relief tents; soaked mattresses from the previous day's rain; and cheese sandwiches in styrofoam containers as their "gourmet" meal option.
The Fyre Festival fiasco ended with its co-founder, con artist Billy McFarland, being sentenced to six years in prison for defrauding investors and ticket holders.
Social media users referred to the World Cup 2022 Fan Village as Fyre Festival 2.0.
Some chose to accentuate the positive.
Visitors hoping to take the edge off were also disappointed to learn about the country's tight alcohol restrictions.
Because booze is only served in licensed restaurants and bars, and the government tried to remove the already-constructed beer stands from the World Cup stadiums, officials scrambled to have "beer vans" available on the Village grounds authorized by the government
However, contractors told the UK Times:
"We have heard that the site still hasn't been granted an alcohol license for the World Cup. They said it was tied up in Doha."
"If there is no license, there will be no beer. There will be a lot of angry fans."
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