Bizarre logistical and marketing decisions ruining atmosphere in Sochi

Basking in the relentless sunshine on the Black Sea coast, the magnificent Fisht Olympic Stadium in Sochi should have represented the perfect World Cup host venue. Instead the general atmosphere has been non-existent, dwarfed by other smaller, less visited cities across Russia – but why?

While the costs of hosting football’s greatest showpiece tournament are sky high, planning must be carried out with precision, all amidst the tightest of security, to be judged a success, but if the aforementioned are not carried out properly, there is not a great deal to it.

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You need a venue for fans to congregate and FIFA do half the work for you, insisting on each host city having a Fan Zone, as close to the stadium as possible, so the atmosphere – during the build-up and the actual match itself – can become one.

Moscow is obviously a difficult one, with two stadiums used, so, sensibly, it has been erected in Red Square – as central as it gets.

In the venues we have visited so far – Sochi, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Volgograd and Saransk – you can pretty much either walk from Fan Zone to the stadium, or at least jump on a short shuttle bus – all except one – Sochi.

Unlike other cities, the facilities were already in place in Sochi, after the southern Russian city hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics, with vast swathes of wasteland all around the Fisht Olympic Stadium prime space for a Fan Zone.

Except the Olympic Village is not in Sochi, it is in Adler, a 45=minute drive down the coast.

“Previously Sochi was a city and Adler was too,” local business leader Omar Bayramov told Yahoo Sports. “Now, for the Olympics and the World Cup it has become one, huge region. Adler now part of ‘Big Sochi’.”

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There are legitimate funding reasons for this rebrand, though, as taxes increase in the city, so with Sochi now so big, now the second longest city in the world, it can generate more revenue.

In terms of the World Cup, though, people do not know where to stay – Sochi or Adler.

The Fan Zone is, of course, in Sochi itself. Not on the empty space next to the stadium and the beach in Adler. While it is not lacking in size, or a picturesque location with a bustling promenade leading into it, it is lacking in one major component of the best football tournament in the world – atmosphere.

“I booked a hotel in Sochi, looked how far there stadium was away, and changed my booking to one in Adler,” one Panama fan tell Yahoo Sports. “Our match finished at 11pm, I didn’t want to get a 45-minute taxi back to the hotel at that time.

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“We are still having fun, but not many others seem to be.”

The Sochi authorities’ quest to market Adler as Sochi has not been particularly well received by the locals, adding to the somewhat negative atmosphere around the place.

“Sochi locals aren’t happy that Sochi is becoming somewhat of a mini Moscow in the sense that it’s growing excessively beyond the logical borders of the city,” Bayramov continues. “Sochi has gone from a small city to a large international centre which has annexed small local towns including Adler and increased massively in size.

“It has become necessary to be highly qualified for most new jobs that have come about as a result of the Olympics and World Cup. Often companies will invite workers to move to Sochi from around the country but mainly Moscow, leaving little room for locals to find work.”

A walk down the beach in Adler, just a few miles from the stadium that will have hosted six World Cup matches by the end of the tournament, and you would not even know the World Cup was on.

Sochi gets all the glitz, glamour and publicity. Signs are on every street corner, even the bollards designed to keep cars from parking on the pavement are painted to look like footballs. Minutes from the stadium in Adler, however, aside from a few fancy hotels, you struggle to even find a bar.

“It was decided to make the fan park in the centre of Sochi as there are more things to do,” Bayramov adds. “Also they were struggling to build anything near the Olympic park because of the landscape there. Hard ground, impossible to plant.”

That, though, does not account for fact that land already built on, i.e. a huge car park for the incredible Ice Hockey Dome, is just sat there empty. When we asked the security guard as to why he was sat there when it wasn’t being used simply shrugged.

A Fan Zone next to the stadium in the middle of the Olympic Village, would have been perfect. Fans could then disperse to the stadium and an incredible atmosphere, right next to the beach, could have been generated.

Instead, this desire for Sochi to be seen, from afar, as this sports super city has taken prescient. It is not just local people – the usual victims in a globalised world – that are suffering, fans from all over the world, expecting one big party, have found anything but on the Black Sea coast.