2019 video of people rushing into an American stadium for an NFL game is falsely shared as scenes from Kabul Airport - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 25, 2021
A video accompanied by a post is being widely shared on social media claiming that the visuals in the video are from Kabul Airport. The post even claims that the people rushing through the gates were Afghans fleeing to save their lives after the Taliban had taken over Kabul. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of Afghans rushing into Kabul Airport after Taliban takeover.
Fact: This is a 2019 video from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, USA and not from Kabul Airport. The people in the video were rushing to get into the AT&T stadium hours before an NFL playoff game between Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks. It is true that many people are scrambling to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban seized back control of the country almost two decades after they were ousted by a US-led coalition. Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport has been filled with Afghans desperate to leave the country due to fear of persecution by the Taliban, but the visuals in the post are not from the airport. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video, an article with a similar image was found. The article was published by ‘THE SPUN by Sports Illustrated’ on 05 January 2019 about an NFL (National Football League) game between Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks in AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, USA. Describing the video, the article says, ‘Hours ahead of the game, when the doors opened, AT&T Stadium looked like a Best Buy on Black Friday around eight years ago.’ Articles about the same video can be seen here and here.
The entire video (a higher resolution video of the post) was tweeted by Sports Illustrated on 06 January 2019. The tweet said the AT&T Stadium had looked like a Black Friday before the internet existed. The video was originally posted by Journalist named Jon Machota on his Twitter handle.
Such scenes of people rushing into the AT&T Stadium are quite frequent in Texas. The videos of people rushing into the stadium at earlier instances can be seen here, here, and here. One reason the people were rushing could be because the Dallas Cowboys team offers standing-room-only tickets to fans who assemble on a first-come, first-serve on six decks at the stadium.
AT&T Stadium doors have opened for Cowboys vs. Seahawks pic.twitter.com/UTl68lVNwr
In the original video (which is of higher resolution compared to the viral video), one can spot sports merchandise being sold and ‘cowboys’ with the team’s logo seen at the bottom left corner of the video.
When screengrabs from the viral video are compared with stills from Google Street View of the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, they are similar. One can spot the huge glass doors and a signboard which are similar to the visuals in the viral video.
Many people are scrambling to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban seized back control of the country almost two decades after they were ousted by a US-led coalition. Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport has been filled with Afghans desperate to leave the country due to fear of persecution by the Taliban.
To sum it up, a 2019 video of people rushing into an American stadium for an NFL game is falsely shared as scenes from Kabul Airport.