Two of the most high-profile performers to ever come to Qatar will sing at post-match concerts this week at the 24th Men’s Handball World Championship, organizers have confirmed.
American pop stars Pharrell Williams and Gwen Stefani will perform separately at the Lusail Multipurpose Hall, which has the capacity to seat 15,300 people.
Williams, best known for his global hit Happy, will perform on Thursday, Jan. 22 following a match between Russia and Denmark.
Stefani – who rose to stardom as the lead singer of No Doubt before embarking on a successful solo career – will perform two days later on Saturday, Jan. 24 at the conclusion of the match between Denmark and Poland.
Both performers are coaches for reality TV show “The Voice,” where amateur vocalists are invited to compete in a talent competition similar to American Idol.
Tickets
The handball championship kicked off last week, and runs through Feb. 1. Attendance at matches has varied, but the last-minute addition of these performers is likely to inject a new feeling of excitement about the tournament amongst residents.
Meanwhile, another favorite performer, UB40, is expected to sing at the end of play on Jan. 23 at the annual Commercial Bank Qatar Masters golf tournament, which begins tomorrow.
While a spokesperson for Qatar’s Handball Championship organizing committee confirmed the Williams and Stefani concerts to Doha News this morning, additional information was not immediately available.
As of this morning, there appeared to still be several hundred tickets available for both dates.
Tickets range from QR25 to QR125 for the preliminary rounds, which take place before Jan. 25. However, most of the less-expensive seats are already sold out for the dates in question.
The assumption is that buying a ticket to the game ensures a seat for the post-match concert.
View the full match schedule here, and buy tickets online here, or at the dedicated booths in City Center, Villaggio, Landmark and Al Khor malls as well as at the main entrance to the venues.
Do you plan to attend? Thoughts?
I went to Lusail Sports Hall to watch two matches. The facilities are amazing! The crowds were non-existent. Other than the one section where a nation’s fans would support their team, it was like a poorly attended funeral.
Maybe two pop stars will encourage people to drive 20+ minutes out of the city to a remote location with nothing else around and create the appearance of people supporting a sporting event?
Hey, some of us live out in this remote location, it’s not the end of the earth lol.
I do agree though that the matches appear to be poorly attended and that hopefully these performances will bring in the crowds.
People buy ticket for one session. But they really want to see one match during this day. That’s why you saw a lot of free places. 20+ minutes to drive is no problem for people in Doha.
It’s pretty classic Doha (invitations to disagree) though, they’ll put on an amazing, world class event (tennis, golf, motogp) and everyone will talk about it, but only a handful will go, or no one will know about it and claim no advertising (meanwhile palm tree island will have been temporarily transformed into a giant tennis ball with Nadal and fedderer robots playing coninuously on top of it), or it’ll conflict with some routine like brunch or a weekly dinner and people won’t go, but then some lesser event will get put on and everyone will rush to it; like the city center will hire two eastern european circus performers to walk around on stilts and suddenly the mall is about to explode
I blame the marketing/advertising teams for this! They get paid handsomely to do their job, but they don’t. All they do is post about an event on their facebook page which has like 2 fans and will conclude that they have done some extensive social networking for the event. Impressive online engagement, bravo, kudos.
Marketing in Qatar is horrible in general, They can’t keep up to date and spread awareness
unless its useless and flashy with a high cost.
Now that is nice!!
wowwwww
They held a big opening ceremony and then the home crowd ditched the match. I agree that promising a show after the match is an alternative way to try to get butts in seats during the match. But will they have the opposite effect this time? -> An empty, yet sold out match with a traffic jam during the last few minutes of the match as everyone tries to get in to see the show?
This begs the question: who will they need to coerce into performing after WC matches?
Handball is not a very popular sport among locals. But I wouldn’t worry about WC 2022 because football is very popular and also people from all over the GCC will be coming to Doha to attend the games.
I agree with you that there will be more fans in the WC than this tournament. Handball is not at the same level of international popularity. But I travel extensively throughout the GCC and see GCC football matches on TV and most of the time the stands are empty. So I’m not convinced that the GCC loves the game as much as showing off their sparklies….
I also don’t think Qatar has the type of lodging required to host the kind of travelers that will be needed if they want to fill the WC stadiums. None of the hotel plans I’ve seen cater to that kind of traveler either. (But I suppose I’m getting off the topic of Gwen and Pharrell…. My fault.)
Bring in international teams and clubs and those stadiums will be full, people here in Qatar and GCC mostly root for foreign teams from Europe rather than their local teams.
Very true!!
We also root for local teams to the same extent as foreign teams from what I’ve gathered,
But it’s just a tv viewing culture really..
Lol another favorite UB 40! Peter the 1990s called they want they’re CDs back
I added the UB40 part 😮
More like cassettes from the 90s 🙂
Don’t care for handball much as I have said before but Gwen Stefani can come and play handball with me. I like fast!
Get that crap outta here, nobody wants to watch that $hit, I’d rather watch actual $hit than those fools. What we need is a few hundred mill spent to buy the King of Pop bones, and we hire Steven Spielberg to make a puppet with those bones that can moonwalk, put that show on in Katara and I guarantee you Qatar will be the hottest tourist spot in Asia.
Deleting because this is macabre and nonsensical.
I swear if he sings ‘Happy’…
I wanted to go and see a game – i figured that as its here, why not go and see what it’s about – but this has gotten me to actually click the button and order the tickets – thanks DN, as mentioned already advertising is pretty poor generally and i’m not sure i would have realised until after the event (pity you didn’t mention Bayern Munich in your ‘5 things to do this weekend’ – was gutted to miss that one).
I like that it is an “assumption” that a ticket to the match will get you into the show……..
I heard on the radio that Pharrell Williams isn’t coming, is this true?
Ahhhhh I find out today Pharell will be performing, last night aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I love handball .