June 17 – Even to the casual television viewer watching DAZN’s broadcast of Paris Saint-Germain versus Atlético Madrid at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, during FIFA’s Club World Cup, it looked brutally hot. Now we’re hearing from the fans and media who were actually there – and it’s an absolute horror story that should have the brass at FIFA headquarters asking questions.
Conditions on Sunday have been described as “dangerous” and “horrific” – hardly words you’d associate with a world-class event at an historic venue that serves as home to UCLA’s American football team and hosted the 1994 World Cup Final. This is the Rose Bowl, not some third-tier stadium learning how to host major events.
Game-time temperatures of 88 degrees turned the Rose Bowl into the ‘boiling hot bowl’ when mixed with the inexplicable policy of forcing supporters to dispose of full water bottles just to enter the stadium. Once inside, fans faced 45-minute queues to buy overpriced water – if they could find it at all.
“There was no way to simply buy water,” John Celmins, a resident of Santa Barbara, said of the match which kicked off at midday in California. “You could go to a beer-only stand, but there were no water stands and no extra water stations. There were long lines at every vendor and even at the drinking fountains.”
Here’s where it gets confusing. The Rose Bowl website clearly states that unopened or empty disposable water bottles are allowed, as are reusable water bottles provided they’re empty. However, FIFA’s Club World Cup code of conduct says “empty, transparent, reusable plastic bottles” up to one litre may be brought in but explicitly bans all other types of bottles – aside from those needed for medicinal purposes or baby bottles.
So which rule applies? Apparently, nobody thought to sort this out before 81,000 people showed up in blazing California heat. This is an administrative embarrassment that shouldn’t happen at an event of this magnitude.
“The stadium knows how to handle nearly 90,000 fans, but today it struggled with 81,000, which I do not understand at all,” Celmins said. “I am much less likely to try and attend the World Cup after this poorly run experience.”
Instagram user Val Wright painted an even more damning picture: “Dangerous experience. It should have come as no surprise the weather was 90 [degrees] and there was going to be 90,000. 45min queue at every vendor for water. Lines so long there was gridlock between sections 13-20 before and during half-time. Even Pasadena fire department taking away sun stroke victims struggled to get through. I’ve been to football matches all around the world and we [never] felt this unsafe. We left at half-time.”
This sounds like a serious case of crossed wires between the venue and FIFA. When you’re staging matches in California in summer heat, ensuring adequate hydration isn’t rocket science. It’s basic event management that should have sorted months in advance.
Luckily for both FIFA and the Rose Bowl, there were no reports of fans requiring urgent medical assistance beyond dehydration. But that’s not down to good planning – that’s pure fortune.
The Rose Bowl is scheduled to host five more matches including another noon kick-off.
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