FIFA World Cup Video Falsely Shared As Huge Crowd For Pathaan In UAE
BOOM found that the video was uploaded by a TikTok user on December 12, 2022, and shows a huge crowd during the FIFA World Cup in one of Qatar’s metro stations.
An old video of a crowd at Lusail metro station in Doha, Qatar, during one of the matches of the FIFA World Cup 2022 is circulating with false claims that it shows a sea of spectators pouring in to watch Pathaan in United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the day of its release.
BOOM found that the viral video is available on TikTok since December 12, 2022 and shows visuals of spectators of the FIFA World Cup and not Pathaan.
The video shows a gathering of football fans at Lusail metro station who came to view matches of the FIFA World Cup 2022 held in the Lusail stadium in Qatar.
Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone starrer Pathaan is one of the fastest Bollywood films to enter the Rs 300 crore film club. According to reports, Pathaan earned Rs 219.6 crore in two consecutive days since its release on January 25, 2023. The film has earned positive response from movie buffs despite backlash by right wingers who called for the boycott of the film .
The video has been shared with a caption in English, “Power show of #pathan in UAE. The craze of @iamsrk among his fans is just mind-blowing #Pathan”
Watch the video here. Two tweets are archived here and here.
The viral video has been viewed more than 2 lakh times at the time of writing this article.
The video has also been shared on YouTube claiming that it shows a huge crowd of moviegoers in Dubai during the first day of the release of Pathaan.
Fact Check
Video From Qatar Not UAE
Some users quote tweeted the video and pointed out that it is likely from Qatar and was recorded during the FIFA World Cup 2022; BOOM also found people wearing Argentina jerseys in the video.
Below is a screenshot of fans wearing Argentina jerseys.
We then saw a TikTok handle's watermark on the video and ran a reverse image search on one of the keyframes from the video on Google enabling VPN; We found that the same video was posted on TikTok on December 18, 2022 by a user named, “@queenapril94”.
The video was captioned as, "metro not this way.. you are not welcoming #lusailmetrostation #fifaworldcup2022” (sic.) Taking cue from the caption, BOOM looked up Lusail metro station and found that the video is from the area and was shot during the FIFA World Cup, 2022.
The FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and France was held on December 18, 2022, at the Lusail stadium. BOOM has reached out to the user to confirm the date of the video.
BOOM also found similar images of Lusail Metro station on Google Maps. Here is a comparison below from the video and the image on Google Maps.
We also found the text, "live the journey" written outside the Lusail Metro Station in visuals available on Street View and in the viral video.
By doing keywords search on Facebook we found several such videos of crowd inside the metro station posted by Qatari news outlets.
Gulf Times on December 13 and The Peninsula Newspaper on December 18 posted similar videos of huge crowd of Argentinian fans inside the metro station.