Football fans face paying up to £80 a pint in Qatar during the World Cup

Football fans heading to Qatar for the World Cup are faced with paying up to £80 a pint as part of outrageous ‘drink deals’ on offer in the typically all-Muslim kingdom.

Champion’s Bar at the Marriott Hotel in Doha, which advertises itself as the city’s ‘best sports bar’, sells tickets to watch the final for £240, which includes food and three drinks, meaning each beer or glass of wine is up to £80 costs.

Meanwhile, other hotels in Qatar – one of the few places where you can drink due to strict Sharia law – are halting or raising the price of their usual promotions, with supporters facing prices of £11 a pint or more.

Even those who want to watch matches in the World Cup fan zones – where drinking is only allowed between certain times – will have to pay more than £7 for a beer.

Qatar will become the first Muslim country to host a World Cup when the matches begin in two weeks, but the tournament has been mired in controversy from the start.

Corruption allegations have been leveled at FIFA over the decision to award the tournament to Qatar, and claims of abuse of migrant workers have dogged the buildup.

At least 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded a decade ago, and experts say it’s likely many were associated with building sites and other infrastructure projects to support the event.

Doha has also faced accusations that it used effective slave labor to complete many of the projects.

Coupled with that, the repressive kingdom’s record of resistance to human rights — including comments this week by a Qatari official that gays are mentally ill — has also sparked controversy.

Even Sepp Blatter, ex-Fifa boss who stepped down amid a corruption scandal shortly after Qatar won the World Cup, has admitted it was a “mistake” to pick them.

“It’s too small a country,” he told a newspaper in his native Switzerland this week.

Ultimately, the Qatari Peninsula is about 113 miles long — about the same as the distance from London to Bristol — and not counting a regular population of just 300,000 expatriates and migrant workers.

That has led to fears that facilities on the peninsula will simply be overwhelmed by the number of sports fans arriving, which will likely exceed 1 million.

It is those fears that have led some hotels in Qatar – The Four Seasons, Kempinski and W Hotel – to raise the prices of their regular drink offerings.

Four Seasons is ending its two-hour all-you-can-drink promotion for £42 and raising the cost of its bottomless brunches from £130 to £306, The Sun says.

The Kempinski has stopped happy hours when it normally charged £8.40 for a beer, while fans are expected to cough up £11.

And W Hotel will be serving the last of its £108 bottomless brunches Friday ahead of the tournament’s first match next weekend.

A Four Seasons employee said, “We couldn’t handle it if thousands of fans tried to take advantage of our happy hours, so we had to stop them.”

The 2022 World Cup kicks off on November 20 when host Qatar takes on Ecuador, with England playing their first game against Iran on Monday.

If England lead their group as expected, their next match will be in the Round of 16 on December 4.

The quarter-finals will be played on December 9 and 10, the semi-finals on December 13 and 14 and the final on December 18.