São Paulo – Renata Pereira of Brazil will rely on her two YouTube channels to show the world what Qatar is about: the cuisine, the natural beauty, the changes underway, and the culture. A journalist by trade, Pereira has been invited by the organizing committee of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which Qatar will host, to show what the Gulf country can offer its visitors elsewhere than in the football field. Her English language channel has 178,000 subscribers. The Portuguese version has 35,200.
“I never imagined that the organizers would approach me,” says Pereira, who has a lengthy track record working with video and sports. A native of Três Rios, Rio de Janeiro, the 40-year-old went to journalism school looking to fulfil two dreams: living abroad, which she did by moving to Los Angeles in the 2000s, and working a World Cup. Pictured above is Pereira during a trip to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.
In one of her many reports on Brazilian TV, she had her first stint in the world’s biggest football tournament back in Germany, 2006. She was hired by FIFA to organize football-related press events. Pereira also did FIFA Cup work in South Africa, 2010. She and her husband Gordon lived in Rio de Janeiro from 2010 to 2014 to help organize the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which took place in Brazil.
After the championship, they moved back to the United States, which Renata had promised Gordon they would. They settled in Austin, the capital of Texas: “It’s a fast-changing, fast-growing city that’s home to many of the biggest tech companies in the world. We realized that it would be an important place for us to do content production work in. I had accomplished my life’s dream and now I wanted a new goal,” she recalls. Pereira created her YouTube channel 2015, but she didn’t envision it as a way of making money.
“I ended up making travel videos and I got hired for that,” she says, mentioning projects that saw her get invited by companies and tourism authorities to promote destinations. In 2018, Renata and Gordon decided to travel the world making YouTube videos. That also yielded results. They traveled to several countries in Southeast Asia. Their content from a football match in England caught the eye of the FIFA World Cup organizers. “An agency that works for the Supreme Committee found our channel. They said they got in touch because we also provide information about the reality of the place we were in. There aren’t that many people who create travel content while focusing on sports.”
Towards the end of this year, she and Gordon will start taking trips to Qatar. The actual travel dates will depend on safety protocols in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic. They are expected to keep traveling throughout 2021 and beyond, up until the World Cup begins in November 2022. During their time in Qatar, Renata and her husband will take on the challenge of experiencing everything the country has to offer and then discuss their experiences on YouTube.
“When they reached out to me, last August, I could hardly believe it! I started doing research and I realized that there’s huge potential in making videos about tourism and what to do in-between games. I did something similar on my own during the Russia Cup in 2018. “Many people have thanked me for helping them to see Russia beyond Moscow.”
Pereira has never been to Qatar or an other Arab country. She has been to Turkey, a non-Arab country in the Middle East. She’s aware of Islamic culture and customs from her travels to Southeast Asia, where she visited Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. “I am super excited, because it will be a new thing for me too. What I’m curious about the most is to see how they combine the modern and the historical, new things and tradition.”
Quick facts
Renata Pereira TV
Portuguese channel – https://www.youtube.com/user/renatapereira
English channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHRxG4X0k8nH5tv4Vy2Jf1Q
*Special report by Marcos Carrieri for ANBA
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
