Sultan Ibrahim Stadium beats 19 other venues to be voted 'Stadium of The Year 2020'

JOHOR BAHRU: The Johor Darul Ta'zim Football Club (JDT) continue to make waves locally and regionally.

Now, their home venue - the RM200 million Sultan Ibrahim Stadium - in Iskandar Puteri has gained worldwide recognition after beating 20 other stadiums worldwide to be voted as the 'Stadium Of The Year 2020' in a poll run by the Polish-based StadiumDB.com website.

The achievement was posted on the Johor Southern Tigers Facebook page yesterday.

Each person is entitled to cast one vote, selecting their top five venues (giving them 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 point respectively) and according to the post, the state-of-the-art Sultan Ibrahim Stadium received 64,260 points to finish way ahead of the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas (23,390 points) and the Ahmad bin Ali Stadium in Qatar (22,341 points).

According to the StadiumDB.com website, of the 21,821 votes cast for the Sultan Ibrahim Stadium, over half came from Southeast Asia, particularly from Malaysia, but also from neighbouring states.

"That's where the Sultan Ibrahim Stadium made the biggest waves last year, becoming the top football stadium, (the) first one built without a running track in Malaysia and for a club that's rising to international prominence," said the website.

On Feb 22 last year, JDT officially moved into their new 'home' at the Sultan Ibrahim Stadium.

Located on an 11.3-hectare site, which also houses the JDT headquarters, the Sultan Ibrahim Stadium is the only national football stadium to use the original 'Zeon Zoysia' grass and also has a drainage system that can keep water from stagnating on the field.

Capable of accommodating over 35,000 spectators, the stadium also comes with modern LED spotlights and multi-coloured and multi-rhythm building lights.

According to the StadiumDB.com website, the other stadiums in the competition (ranked fourth to 20th) were Education City Stadium (Doha, Qatar); Corum Sehir Stadyumu (Turkey); Batumi Stadium (Georgia); SoFi Stadium (Inglewood, US); Gursel Aksel Stadyumu (Turkey); Bloomfield Stadium (Israel); Xi'an OSC Stadium (China); Stade National de la Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast);

Stade de la Tuiliere (Lausanne, Switzerland); Stadionul Francisc von Neuman (Romania); Lynn Family Stadium (Louisville, US); Sanga Stadium by KYOCERA (Japan); Brentford Community Stadium (London, England); Kanseki Stadium Tochigi (Japan); Queensland Country Bank Stadium (Australia); Inter Miami CF Stadium (Fort Lauderdale, US); and Estadio Tierra de Campeones (Chile).

-- BERNAMA