Organisation : Thumbs Up Qatar!

he build up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup was inundated by media accusations of Qatar’s (in) ability to host the tournament, citing extra sporting reasons. However, in silence, Qatar worked through its Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy to stage what has been described by FIFA as the “best World Cup ever”. 32 teams, over 850 players, 64 matches, and eight world class stadiums were the main spotlight throughout the four-week tournament but the 2022 FIFA World Cup went much more beyond these.

Transportation
With close to two million visitors in Qatar during the World Cup, one of the challenges was always going to be transportation but the country lived up to it. Over 4,000 buses and 850 electrics were made available for the transportation of spectators at a ratio of one bus every five to 15 minutes, all free of charge. A network of 37 metro stations also functioned 21 hours a day with a train available every three minutes to transport fans to stadiums and other destinations around the country free of charge. Ninety buses were linked to metro stations while there were three tram lines running to some of the stadiums and fan zones. After the group stage of the tournament, there was an estimated 9,9 million passengers who had used metro and trams with the metro averaging 707,032 passengers per day.

Hospitality
This was one of the major question marks hanging over Qatar weeks to the start of the competition but the country ensured it made available 130,000 rooms spread across over 300 hotels, apartments as well as lodging camps in fan villages and floating rooms on boats. All of these were spread on a surface area of 200,000 square metres. On the other hand, 145,000 square metres were set aside for the FIFA Fan Festival with nine venues for celebrations, each of them hosting about 40,000 fans. By the end of the group stage of Decemb...