Well, This is Awkward — Beer as Power at the World Cup
“Well, this is awkward…” read a tongue-in-cheek (and now-deleted) tweet from the official account of Budweiser, an American subsidiary of the multi-billion-dollar beer conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev. Posted two days before the first game in this year’s FIFA World Cup, the subtweet was a reaction to a joint decision made by FIFA and Qatar to remove alcoholic beer from stadiums in a country where drinking alcohol isn’t possible in most public locations.
As the Wall Street Journal reported the day after the deleted tweet, and one day before the World Cup’s start, “[T]he Qataris were intentionally ambiguous about what they would allow in regards to alcohol,” and “FIFA’s evaluation report, a 38-page document assessing Qatar’s bid and the country’s promises ahead of the 2010 vote, didn’t make a single mention of alcohol or beer.” Even still, the Western response to Qatar’s change of heart ranged from perplexity to outright fury.
However, there were clear warnings from the beginning of Qatar’s bid to host the World Cup. The country stayed non-committal throughout the planning process until it was past the point of no return, and ultimately did what it wanted—not only in regards to alcohol, but many controversial policies.On almost every major controversy related to Qatar being selected as the host country—its lack of footballing history and football-related infrastructure, its exploitation of immigrant workers, a climate that would make a summer World Cup dangerous, the treatment of LGBTQ+ fans—the same pattern played out.
We have other plans up our sleeves as well.” Ultimately, however, those stadiums were not built and the tournament was moved to the winter, disrupting European club seasons and upsetting the Football Association, the European Leagues, and the European Club Association in the process.This was all seen as the price for choosing Qatar to be the World Cup host—a price that many federations were willing to pay in exchange for hefty bribes.
But as reported by the New York Times, even with new rules in place, the bidding process for Qatar (and Russia before it) saw federation officials receive large sums of money in exchange for brushing aside any concerns they had about Qatar hosting the multinational tournament.If these forms of corruption were an open secret from the time Qatar won the bid, why the surprise about its change of heart around beer?
Qatar’s banishment of alcoholic beer from most of its stadiums can be seen as an implementation of this middle path: keeping beer, and other alcoholic beverages, cordoned off from Qatari society, and punishing those who cross that boundary.
These recent bans are not departures, but are rather the assertion of a policy that is upheld in the country when it is not hosting the World Cup.Additionally, having the power to assert this ruling on one of the biggest world stages is a significant legitimation factor for Qatar’s ruling family, the Al-Thanis.
One need only look at what the U.S. embassy says about alcohol to see that: “Alcohol is legal in Qatar, but highly regulated and only available in limited locations, to non-Muslim non-Qatari adults aged 21+.
However, most hotels and restaurants catering to international patrons will serve alcohol to guests who are 21+, including via room service.”We can thus assume that all the pieces written about the shock at the removal of beer from stadiums were not due to bafflement at the caprice of Qatar, but rather shock that Qatar was publicly asserting itself beyond the bounds of what appeared to be a historically agreed-upon relationship.
Excuse me if I sound a bit arrogant but that’s something we won’t negotiate.”The battle over alcoholic beer at the World Cup in Qatar was not simply a squabble over money and beer, but rather the collision of two histories: the history of Western colonialism and the history of Qatar as a modern nation-state.