Poor turn-out at Asian Cup in Qatar

DOHA - Organisers of the Asian Cup said Sunday they were not concerned about the poor turn-out and believed they had done all that could be done to attract fans to the stadium.

Not even Friday’s opening game between the hosts and Uzbekistan was played in front of a capacity crowd, while Saturday’s Group A game between Kuwait and China officially drew a crowd of 7,400 in a 22,000-seater stadium, though most estimates had the number of spectators at around 5,000.

The Operations Director of the local organising committee Jessim Al Romaihi told a media briefing Sunday they had worked very hard to attract people.

“We are talking with other nationalities within Qatar about coming to the games. But we are not worried.

“Sometimes you have full stadiums, sometimes they are not full. That happens in football.”

He dismissed speculation that an ATP Tennis tournament that ended Saturday and featured Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal might have had a negative effect on ticket sales.

“This is an annual event, I do not think that it made a difference.”

The Competition Director of the Asian Football Confederation Tokuoki Suzuki said that 11,000 tickets had been sold for the game between China and Kuwait.

Qatar was last month awarded the right to host the 2022 World Cup and Suzuki said people should be encouraged to come to watch football.

“The average attendance in the Qatar league in 2009 was 3,000 and last year it was 4,000. So we need to encourage people to come and watch football.

“I was not disappointed with the number of fans.”

He urged the media to encourage football fans to attend matches and said that the ticket price was not a factor in the number of people watching the games.

“We believe the price of tickets is very reasonable. Ticket prices are not the reason why people are not coming.”

Prices for matches at the Jan 7-29 tournament start at five rial ($1.4) for children and 25 rial for adults. The most expensive tickets - apart from those for the opening game - are 100 rial.