MOSCOW, March 7. /TASS/. The Volgograd Arena was ruled to be the best football arena of 2018 according to a poll among fans, the Stadium Database portal informs.
The Samara Arena took second place, with the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium coming in third.
The Russian stadiums on the list of the contenders were: the Kaliningrad Arena, the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium, the Rostov Arena, The Mordovia Arena (in Saransk), the Volgograd Arena and the Yekaterinburg Arena.
The list of contenders for the best football stadium in 2018 included a total of 27 arenas from 10 countries.
FIFA 2018 World Cup
All three Russian stadiums that won the poll were built for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Last summer, Russia hosted its first-ever FIFA World Cup, which kicked off in Moscow with a remarkable opening show at Luzhniki Stadium on the evening of June 14 and ended with a spectacular final match, played also at the Luzhniki Stadium, where France confidently defeated Croatia 4-2 to win the much-coveted World Cup Trophy.
Russia selected 11 host cities as the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they were Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said after the world championship that Russia staged "the best World Cup ever." According to the Russian Federal Agency for Tourism, some 2.9 million foreign visitors arrived in Russia last summer for the FIFA World Cup.
In late December, FIFA announced in its statement that the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia set a new record of audience in the history of world football championships as over half of the world’s population watched matches on TV at home or on digital platforms.