Going to a professional soccer game in Thailand

It can be a decent experience I guess. I suppose it would help if you enjoy watching soccer. Unfortunately for me, I don't really but the occasion for this particular game was about more than just the team.

While this crowd of 10,000 wouldn't really impress anyone in the UK or USA where they get crowds of 5 to even 10 times that amount for home games, this is kind of a big deal in Thailand. The officials in charge of getting everyone inside the place were woefully unprepared for this many people descending on the area and we spent an hour in traffic to get to the damn place despite living just a few miles away. The gates into the stadium were in a similar state of chaos and seats are not assigned. This created a logjam situation at the entrances / exits. The game took place at night as well, so the fact that many of the hallways had non functioning lights created a not-so-pleasant situation.

This is actually the reason why the game was so packed though. This is Chiang Mai FC's final home game because they have to upgrade their stadium in order to bring it up to FIFA code before FIFA will allow Thailand to participate in the ASEAN Gold Cup or something... i don't follow soccer, i don't know the details. I just know that this stadium was a joke as far as being an attendee is concerned... at least by western standards.

source

I suppose I'll talk about the game a bit: It was for the most part boring. Thai Premiere League isn't exactly world-class. There is one team named Burriram United that has all the money and they win the league pretty much every year and actually make a decent showing in international tournaments.... everyone else pretty much sucks, especially Chiang Mai FC who was recently promoted, has no money, and since they are owned by another Premiere League team the players that are good get moved to that club.

Our seats were bad too. Sitting on the ends in a soccer game is horrible (most other sports too) because it is difficult to tell what the hell is going on in time and space so any chances on goal on the other end I can't even determine if they are close to the goal. Whatever, it's soccer and it was dead cheap to go to this thing.

120 Baht is around $3.50 so I can't complain about the price. However the fact that the wrong day is on these tickets as well as not having the correct teams that were playing just kind of solidifies what I am saying about these events being woefully mismanaged. They also oversold the section that we actually paid for which is why we ended up sitting in the even cheaper section.