The return of the ICC Champions Trophy is something cricket fans are visibly excited about. The competition featuring the top eight ODI sides in cricket commences on 19th February as hosts Pakistan take on New Zealand at National Stadium, Karachi.
The hosts are also defending champions, having won the competition the last time it was played in 2017. Pakistan will also be hosting an ICC tournament for the first time since sharing hosting duties with India and Sri Lanka for the 1996 Cricket World Cup. Three stadiums in Pakistan and one in Dubai will be the venues for matches as India will be playing their games in UAE.
Our team looked at the venues to determine the best and the worst aspects of all stadiums. We did that by sourcing reviews for the stadiums from different sites, running a sentiment analysis and determining the keywords behind both positive and negative reviews.
The worst reviewed stadium
National Stadium Karachi has the undesired title of being the worst reviewed stadium of the lot. 10.67% of reviews left by visitors have been negative in nature, pointing to many of them being unsatisfied by their experience. The organisers have their work cut out as the stadium will be hosting three matches, including the opening game. Most of the negative reviews are around the seats and viewing experience, with a few of them suggesting that the foldable seats were not comfortable and a few reviews complaining about the view from their respective seats.
Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium is the second worst rated, with approximately 8% of reviews being negative in nature. Again, the negative reviews focused on seats not being comfortable, as well as lack of cleanliness.
In comparison to these two, both Gaddafi Stadium and Dubai International Stadium have under 4% of total reviews being negative in nature. Considering either stadium will end up hosting the final, it is a good sign for the organisers that these stadiums don’t require wholesale improvements.
The dirtiest stadiums hosting 2025 Champions Trophy
We also looked at reviews pertaining to cleanliness, and the analysis suggests that Dubai International Stadium has work to do in that regard. Around 3% of the negative reviews focus on the state of toilets.
Gaddafi Stadium and National Stadium fare better in this regard, with around 1% of the negative reviews complaining about the toilet facilities. In the case of Rawalpindi, none of the negative reviews mention toilets, but with a larger audience set to visit this year, that could change.
Methodology
- We collected reviews for the venues from two platforms - Google Maps and Foursquare
- Only the above two were used as reviews on Facebook or TripAdvisor were not available for all venues
- The ratings on both platforms were collected and the average calculated
- We ran all reviews through natural language processing to determine the sentiments which were then categorized as positive, negative or neutral
- Finally, we looked for most occurring keywords in the negative reviews to determine the primary causes of complaints
