For a long time, Jeddawis had been dreaming of a new stadium where they could see their favorite teams, Al-Ahli and Al-Ittihad, lock horns. This long awaited dream became a reality with the inauguration of the King Abdullah Sports City last Thursday.
The beautifully designed structure made in the shape of a jewel marks a new beginning in the history of Saudi sports that has not seen a major addition to its infrastructure for quite some time.
Although the opening ceremony itself was successful, I am not sure it is possible to say the same about the overall organization of the event.
It all started before Thursday, when the free entrance to the event was announced with tickets available at post offices. Unfortunately, it was a recipe for disaster. The inexperienced organizing team of the event met the unprepared post office services!
This decision created a mess within the first few hours of the distribution day; chaotic offices, uncoordinated staff and long queues of people suffering the suffocating heat and humidity. Crowds have their fair share of the blame as well, let’s admit it, we are not used to queuing and dealing with situations that require patience and discipline, but truth be told, there was nothing in the tickets’ distribution that made any organization inevitable.
The irony is that despite the chaos and long hours under the sun, the tickets carried no value at all on the main day! Thousands upon thousands marched on foot toward the gates of the stadium and were able to pass without a second glance from anyone. The seats marked with numbers proved to be useless, it was first come, first ‘have a seat’ kind of way!
Equipped with my ticket, reaching my seat was not that easy. Maybe it is the new experience and familiarity with the place, but I was a bit lost till I could find the block where my seat was located. There were lots of information boards, but still, it felt like direction signs were missing. Needless to say, I found my seat taken. I tried to talk to the gentleman occupying it, but it was a hopeless case, he was truly confessing. “Everybody is sitting without a seat number, why should I be the only one to move,” he said, and honestly, he had a valid point, I just sat beside him.
There is another thing that caught my attention in the opening ceremony. As we all know, Aramco, the Saudi oil giant, was the company supervising this project from day one. If you are new to the country, you might wonder why an oil company is supervising such a project? There are different answers to this, but let’s choose the simplest … because they can! And to be fair, they have done a good job in leading the project to see the sunlight.
All in all, it is an addition to the lovely city of Jeddah that we are all proud of. And hopefully, all these glitches that accompanied the opening will be avoided in the next events. Organizers should keep a tight control on the ticketing process, online sales is unavoidable option and they should be very strict in allowing entrance to the stadium and enforcing the use of seats as shown on the tickets.
And for us, the spectators and lovers of the game, we should feel like we own the place; keeping it new, clean, and organized is a responsibility we share with the management of the stadium, a responsibility we owe to next generations who will enjoy this remarkable landmark.
@smaldosari
