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Hotels in the Welsh host
city have been completely sold out for the entire season, with rooms now
re-selling for north of £1,000 per night, which is forcing travelling fans to
stay in towns almost an hour away like Swansea and Bristol, while there has
even been encouragement to travel from London.
Sources within the Uefa
hierarchy say the incredibly limited availability has caused “some concern”
within the governing body - particularly since part of the bidding process had
been assurances that a certain number of hotel rooms would be available for
prices of around €150-200 - and that there will be a “review” of the situation
once the final has taken place.
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With a population of just
341,000, the Welsh capital is the second smallest city to stage a final of the
modern Champions League, after Gelsenkirchen in 2004. The German city was part
of a much bigger conurbation, however, and the event has only multiplied in
size in the 13 years since. With so much already booked up, Uefa and the LOC
have effectively had to figure out how to seamlessly accommodate and transport
36,000 supporters - with 18,000 tickets allocated for each club - on the night
itself.
Among the measures taken
are: securing additional train and bus services to take 15,000 fans for the
two-hour journey back to London on the night; developing a mobile app that
gives supporters real-time hotel availability in areas that will be served by
post-match transport services and allows them to book travel; providing
capacity for 25,000 supporters to fly in and out of airports like Cardiff,
Bristol and Birmingham on charter aircraft.
Given the strong
likelihood that the vast majority of the two clubs’ fans will face total
travelling time of at least two hours on the day of the fixture and have to
stay in different towns, the situation somewhat goes against the recent idea of
a city hosting a football “festival” for the two to three days around the
final, greatly diffusing the Champions League showpiece experience.
Some sources believe it
could mean Uefa in future only hosting it in cities above a certain size,
although the issue is that could cut against the governing body’s
understandably positive plan of looking to spread the match around Europe, so
it is not just about the biggest and wealthiest countries.
The problem is that the
Champions League final has effectively become a ‘global mega-event’, and the
level of interest - both from fans and media - means it takes a certain size of
urban area to accommodate comfortably. As has been said within Uefa circles,
the perfect venues are essentially Wembley and the Stade de France.
Both obviously fulfil the
first criteria of stadiums with a capacity of above 60,000, while London and
Paris are huge enough to absorb and accommodate such an influx of people
without any disruption to their regular running, but then it would obviously go
against Uefa’s fair principles to have it in the same few cities. The governing
body also want to understandably avoid the issue of the fixture just rotating
between the same eight to 10 venues, but Cardiff may be too far the other side.
In a previous email to The
Independent outlining the LOC provisions, Uefa said: “We are confident, that
the stadium’s city centre location, coupled with Cardiff’s famous match day
sporting atmosphere will deliver a unique and memorable supporter experience
for all those planning to attend the UEFA Champions League final 2017.”
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