Empty stands show fans need support as much as the players

Another poorly attended club match in the UAE. (AFP)

DUBAI: The AFC Champions League final between Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal and Japan’s Urawa Red Diamonds marks the fourth consecutive year a team from Saudi Arabia or the UAE made the final of Asia’s top club competition.
The UAE’s Arabian Gulf League tops the latest AFC domestic leagues ranking while the Saudi Pro League ranks fourth behind China’s nouveau-riche Super League and South Korea’s K-League, and in both cases the rankings are well deserved.
From bringing top referees like Howard Webb and Mark Clattenburg to train and develop local referees, to an ambitious campaign to send players to European clubs, Saudi Arabia has taken measures to lift the level of players, competitions and the national team to a new heights.
In turn, the UAE is hosting the AFC Asian Cup in 2019, the second time in its history and its players Ahmed Khalil and Omar Abdulrahman have won the past two Asian Player of The Year awards respectively.
But for all their success on the pitch, the Gulf’s two major economic and sporting powers continue to struggle with one niggling issue off it: Creating and sustaining a unique and strong nationwide football culture.
Al-Hilal and Al-Ittihad both have strong claims for the title of most popular club in Asia. The Blues boast an impressive record of over 8 million Twitter followers, the highest for any football club outside England and Spain. Al-Ittihad, meanwhile, constantly attract record attendances to their home games in Jeddah. In 2014/15, their average crowd was 42,000.
A glance beyond the big clubs, however, reveals a grim picture. Over the past four seasons, average crowds dropped a whopping 44 precent from an already low base of over 9,000 fans per match to an even scantier 5,100.
Overconcentration of clubs is one of the major reasons. Take the case of the twin towns of Al Majma’ah and Harma in central Saudi Arabia. Just 15 kilometers apart and with a combined population of just over 100,000 they are represented by two clubs in the top division, Al-Faisaly and Al-Faiha. It comes as no surprise that both clubs are struggling to attract more than 1,000 fans per game this season.
The UAE suffers an even bigger problem with poor attendances, given its relatively small population of 10 million and even smaller Emirati population. The country looked to address the abundance of clubs by pursuing mergers. Dubai, with a population of 2.7 million was represented by five top division clubs until its ruler Sheikh Mohammed ordered Al-Shabab, Al-Ahli and Dubai SC clubs to merge. Neighboring Sharjah followed suit combining its biggest two clubs Al-Shaab and Sharjah.
But so far even that has failed to produce a significant increase in support. Shabab Al-Ahli Dubai, the merged club, is averaging 2,900 fans a match compared to 1,800 for each of its individual components last season.
Across the region football remains one of the few channels of sub-national affiliation and community building. But, as popular as the sport is, overregulation of the terraces continues to stifle efforts to build a true indigenous fan culture.
Instead, the mainstream fan culture seems to revolve around supporting one of the nation’s big and rich clubs rather than rallying behind the local team.
The governing bodies and local league committees are not helping either. A few days ago, the UAE FA fined and suspended two Brazilian players from Al-Wasl, for a video in which they appeared to be engaging in innocent banter with young fans ahead of the big Dubai derby against Al-Nasr.
The incident is not the first. Fans in both UAE and Saudi Arabia have repeatedly been denied displaying banners expressing their views toward a certain issue related to their club or even taking a harmless dig at their rivals.
Contrast that with the famous “Wenger Out” banner, calling for dismissal of the Arsenal manager. The banner has made frequent appearances in stadiums and venues across the globe, from disgruntled Gunners fans, ironically including a volleyball match in Saudi Arabia.
Granted, England is the spiritual homeland of football and its flagship competition, the Premier League, is watched by billions across the planet. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are not on that level, but as they continue to work hard to raise the level of the game on the pitch, they need to do the same off it by building a fan culture.
Saudi Arabia’s decision to allow women to attend games in stadiums and the UAE’s involvement of UAE-born expats in local competitions are all steps in the right direction, but fan culture needs to be allowed breathing space to grow organically.