A number of unsold quota tickets for Qatar residents have been donated to Iran.
Those gifted unsold tickets have created quite a bit of argument and debate among the Iranians. The Deputy Minister of Sports emphasizes that 90% of these tickets have been given to sports historians and non-football athletes. According to ISNA, filling the World Cup stadiums in the small country of Qatar is one of the challenges of the organizing committee in is period of the World Cup, and that is, in some matches, the residents of the host country may not be interested in buying tickets for that game. In this regard, Qatar recently donated a number of tickets from the quota of its residents in the group stage of the World Cup to Iran.
The tickets, according to some comments, have raised suspicions that it might end up sending Iranian Islamic clerics to Qatar to do cultural (missionary) work, a matter that the cultural deputy minister of sports denies. In an interview with ISNA, Sina Kalhor, the vice-president of culture and public sports of the Ministry of Sports and Youth, said: “Regarding the tickets donation package from the Qatari side, several points should be taken into consideration. First of all, these tickets are for the residents of Qatar and they were given to Iran because those tickets were unsold locally. The exact number of these tickets is 1800.”
He continued: “Unlike the tickets that the football federation has, these tickets cannot be sold in the market and are mainly for the third row of sports stadiums. However, there is a possibility that the Qatari side will declare all these 1,800 tickets invalid at the last moment. Emphasizing that there is only one cleric among the names announced for these tickets to the Qatari side,” Kalhor added: “There is a cleric on the list sent to the Qatari side, and that is the Director General of Culture of the Ministry of Sports and Youth. Almost 90% of these tickets have been distributed among football historians, journalists, and non-football athletes. Another 10 percent has been provided to the Ministry of Cultural & Heritage and the Ministry of Guidance for cultural activities. The Deputy Minister of Sports and Youth continued: “The management of seminaries have also announced in an official letter that they will not send any clerics to Qatar and have no plans for the World Cup in Qatar.”