Die-hard followers create carnival atmospheres at all mega events, but it is often the colourful and flamboyant football fans who make it a party. This has been the case in Europe and Latin America for decades, and it is slowly catching up in other parts of the world too.

The success of an event is measured against the level of fan-experience and no wonder all mega-event organisers are focused on offering them the best and making them feel at home.

The passion and enthusiasm for football in the Arabian Gulf countries is no less than that of their counterparts elsewhere, but when it comes to ‘energising’ the stands they are far behind. One cannot blame them as there are obvious reasons for the lack of ‘energy’ and ‘colour’ in the stands.

Unlike fans in other parts of the world who wear colourful attires, often their team shirts, the Gulf Arabs wear only the traditional ‘thobe’ (also called Kandoora or Dishdasha) which is almost always pure white. Of course the Gulf Arabian fans do occasionally flash colourful team scarfs, but by and large the stadium background in any visuals is white.

Studies have proved that colours influence people’s emotions or perceptions and consequently their behaviour. Relationship between colour and emotion: A study of college students by Naz Kaya, Assistant Professor and Helen H Epps, Professor, University of Georgia, throws some interesting observations on the relationship between colours and the emotions of people.

The main focus of their study was on whether a particular colour gave people a positive or negative feeling. They asked people to fill in a survey about what colours gave them which emotions. The impacts of green, red, yellow, blue, white and black colours were assessed based on their inputs.

White was often related to purity and simplicity. It provoked emotions like innocence, peace, hope, emptiness, loneliness and boredom — hardly the desired emotions inside a football stadium!

However, by the look of things at the Saud University Stadium in Riyadh, where local team Al Hilal played Qatar’s Al Sadd in the AFC Champions League on Tuesday, it seems a wind of change has started to blow across the region.

Thousands of Al Hilal fans were seen in their team’s blue shirts and not in their traditional white ‘thobe’. They painted two huge sections of the stands blue and soon after the match, hundreds of jubilant fans, draped in the club’s blue flags and wearing blue scarfs, poured on to the streets in celebration.

It remains to be ascertained whether the hardcore Hilal fans deliberately discarded their customary white thobes in order not to align with Al Sadd’s white shirts or it marked the beginning of a new trend.

Whatever it may be, the colourful sections of the stands stood out, in contrast to the rest and it also looked more lively, vibrant and energetic — providing an ideal atmosphere inside a football stadium.