The Hamden Sports Complex in Dubai, UAE, when it was built for the 2010 Short Course World Championships, was designed to be a jewel of the aquatics sports world.
With its 15,000 seat capacity, its one of the biggest  permanent-capacity pools in the world (it can also host dry sports, but aquatics are its primary function). It’s hard to fill up that many seats short of an Olympic Games, and so the tickets for this year’s Junior World Championships are being sold at rock-bottom prices.
Specifically, a one-day ticket for prelims and finals can be purchased for 20 AED, a full meet (six days) pack can be bought for 80 AED, and VIP Tickets are only a bit more than that (40 AED total for a day, or 120 AED total for all days).
With the conversion rate to US Dollars being about 4:1, that means that you can see all sessions of the World Junior Championships, at the VIP level, for around $32. Total. Aside from geographical barriers, that’s a deal that’s hard to pass up with a slate of some of the world’s best 18 & under swimmers.
It’s unlikely that even at those prices that FINA will be able to fill up the huge complex, but those sorts of ticket prices should definitely attract at least some interested spectators.
Tickets are not being pre-sold online, and can be purchased only at the gate.
The meet runs from August 26th-31st.
I believe no one, other than the family members of participating swimmers, travels to Dubai for the sole purpose of catching a junior meet. Marketing should be directed at those already in Dubai and the meet should be free, if not for everybody, at least for all the youngsters.
As for the just-ended World Championships, which nickname Pac12Packer commented above, I was positively surprised by the attendance. For many evening sessions the arena seemed to be almost full.
I believe, because of the on goings in the Middle East airline tickets really went down the last 3 weeks. Down to $1300 on Emirates round trip. Hotels as cheap as $80 a night at a Holiday Inn/Mariott downtown, $150 on the beach! Make a family vacation out of it!
Now if you could link to cheap (and I mean cheap cheap cheap) airline tickets and motel rooms… Dubai here we come!
Ah! Awesome Braden. You see I am master of the obvious……..
No worries. I wouldn’t stress about it – I’m pretty sure there will be lots of great seats available at the door.
Can you provide the link for purchasing tickets for Junior Worlds? We are having trouble locating it on the Fina website.
Swim Team – note the second-to-last sentence of the article. You cannot purchase tickets online.
“Aside from geographical barriers”…
Just 2 days of travel and about 2000 dollars for a flight and hotel? You mean those geographical barriers?
It was $35 for the 3 day zone meet in Topeka, KS for all sessions. It’s over $50 at some (most?) of our GP and Nat level meets for the same thing. Interesting.
We should have had more notice & sponsored Bobo.
$40 for the whole Meet VIP.
Bwahhahhaa. Gotta love them sheiks.
Why do you talk about me?
Anyway, I can’t go to Dubai! Except in a boat! I will never take a plane! Too scared to fly! It’s a total phobia, a total fear! 🙂
And cheap or not, I believe most of the seats will be empty. Probably just the family of swimmers will be there.
“Probably just the family of swimmers will be there”. There’s the rub. The only fans of swimming at non-Olympic events are swimmers & family members. Even the World Championsips were relatively lightly attended The sport has shrunk again. The question has been asked since I was a boy: What is swimming to do?
In fairness the U-19 World Cup football matches were extremely sparsely attended in comparison to the gargantuan draw of the regular World Cup.
And whats so crazy is that FINA fat cats are not really interested in making swimming a more popular sport.
When some australian tv network made an offer for broadcast right of Worlds which was under the price set by FINA for that country, FINA chose to decline the rights to Australia.
It’s like denying Brazilians from watching the World Cup on their national network. I know..that swimming is nowhere as popular as football even in Australia, but still it’s very apt analogy.
Yep,
that is a piece of information which makes me feel uncertain about the competence and aims of FINA.