What Happens When A Temporary Structure Becomes Permanent?

Organising and hosting a major sports event can be difficult because significant infrastructure needs to be invested in and developed for an event that often lasts a matter of months, weeks or even days.

Investing in permanent infrastructure without a long-term plan for the venue leads to problems such as those found by the Arena da Amazonia in the city of Manaus based in the Amazon rainforest.

Costing nearly £200m to build and with a capacity of 42,000 people, the Arena da Amazonia was used for four group matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and a handful of 2016 Olympic football and 2018 World Cup qualification matches.

Because Manaus has no need for a stadium that big with none of the city’s three football clubs playing in the Campeonato Brasileiro, the stadium has not been close to capacity and the limited number of events which use the stadium has failed to justify the expense.

This has, in effect, turned a permanent stadium into a temporary one. But what happens when the opposite happens and a temporary sports building ends up being used permanently?

The Curious Case Of Stadium 974

A contrasting case to Arena da Amazonia is the strange afterlife of Stadium 974, a stadium designed specifically to be temporary and easily taken down that has, as of 2025, become a de facto permanent stadium in the country of Qatar.

After the failed legacy of not only the Amazonia but several Brazilian stadiums following the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, many of which were abandoned following the closing ceremony of the latter, there was a concerted effort to create more sustainable venues for major sporting events.

With the 2022 World Cup being hosted in Qatar, a country with around 3m residents, the vast majority of which being expatriates, there were immediate concerns that permanent stadiums constructed for the venue would not be too large for use in the country’s domestic sporting competitions.

The solution was to create a temporary venue consisting of parts stored within 974 shipping containers, which would also make up the structure of the venue as well.

It was expected to host a total of 13 games, six in the FIFA Arab Cup in 2021, as well as six group games and one Round of 16 knockout match in the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

What happened next was a surprise.

Why Was It Not Temporary?

After the final whistle of Brazil's victory over South Korea, the next step was to dismantle the temporary structure and keep it in place as a World Cup-ready venue for any country that wanted to host but needed more capacity.

However, this did not end up happening, and after Stadium 974 hosted two Intercontinental Cup matches in December 2024, it appears that the stadium has become an effectively permanent structure near the docks of Ras Abu Aboud in Doha.

Part of the reason for this was that the original destination for the stadium was Uruguay as part of a bid to host the 2030 World Cup. However, with the tournament only hosting one match in Uruguay, the temporary stadium ultimately proved unnecessary.

Time will tell if the FIFA Category Four stadium with a capacity of 44,089 will be moved or will remain on the Doha docks for the foreseeable future.