For the Qatar World Cup 2022, Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC) selected fans, titled fan leaders, to hand-select 50 fans per 60 countries, almost twice the amount of countries taking part in the World Cup. There were 400 fan leaders picked. The fan leaders selected up to 1,600 fans in total.
“As the tournament nears, we have invited our most active fan leaders to personally nominate a small selection of fans to join us as our guests, as a manner of thanking them for their collaboration,” a spokesperson for Qatar’s SC told Reuters.
The organizers of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar are paying these selected fans to travel to Qatar for the World Cup. The SC confirms it will provide chosen fans with flights and two weeks of hotel room stays. According to an article by ESPN, in exchange for accommodations, fans are asked to sign a Code of Conduct “urging them to post favorable comments about the tournament on social media and to report “any offensive, degrading or abusive comments” by others to the SC, preferably with screenshots.”
The chosen fans are being asked to positively promote the tournament and the nation hosting the event. Fans from all 32 teams competing are required to sing a 5-minute song or chant specific to each country and the fan’s experiences before the opening match on November 20th. The organizers are calling it the opening ceremony project and some fans will be selected to be influencers to positively promote Qatar on Instagram using hashtags like “IAMAFAN”. In addition, they are asked to repost and like third-party content and to get rid of any negative social media content towards Qatar. The purpose of the opening ceremony project is to get people excited about the world cup in Qatar.