This is not a country that stints on awards and rewards. And now, merely for attending an Al Jazira soccer match, and showing some basic ability at kicking a ball, someone will win a Ferrari Italia 458 … and someone else will win a million dirhams — or $272,000. In cash.

Jazira is one of the biggest teams in the UAE’s Pro League, and the club plays in by far the biggest (and nicest) stadium in the league — Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium, in Abu Dhabi, which seats around 42,000.

The place is grand, and still fairly new, and a typical Pro League crowd — perhaps 3,000 — gets lost in it.

Wanting to make sure the big place doesn’t look empty perhaps explains why the club has come up with a variety of inducements to attend matches, which I wrote about for The National.

Two years ago, when Jazira set league records for best attendance in a year (175,000, for 11 home matches), and single biggest crowd (36,000), the club gave away a Ferrari — which a Jazira spokesman said costs 1.2 million dirhams, or about $325,000.

The Ferrari is back, but now the club has added the chance to “become a millionaire with Jazira.”

This is how it works.

As a fan enters the gate at a Jazira home match, they receive a ticket. That’s right, fans get a ticket, they don’t present one; fans are not charged admission in the league. They take their ticket and sit wherever they like on the lower deck (the upper desk is closed, at present) … and as the first half proceeds a batch of ticket numbers are posted on the scoreboard.

If one of the numbers matches your ticket, you go down to the field, and at halftime too competitions take place.

The first is a penalty shot involving fans 18 or younger. One shot from the spot, against a keeper who might be from one of Jazira’s youth teams. This is the competition for the Ferrari.

The second is a shot on an open goal from the halfway line, and intended for those over 18.  This is the contest for the cash.

Those who score (three from the PK competition, the night I was there, none from the halfway line, all of whom were wide left) advance to the final competitions — at the last home game this season, May 26.

The club hasn’t yet figured out how it will conduct the final round of competitions, but when giving away the Ferrari two years ago, the two finalists took turns taking penalty shots and playing goaltender. A science teacher from Cameroon, Jean-Paul Manjan, won.

These are just the big-ticket items in Jazira’s plan to get fans in the stands. Kids registering with the club get a red Jazira T-shirt. Men from the labour camp outside the capital are given transport to the match, and food, and a ride back to their lodging. The club also has set up a sort of fun zone in the parking lot, where kids can ride an enormous slide of jump around on a “bounce-house” sort of device. And also can eat, at no charge.

Most clubs do little or nothing to encourage fans, aside from announcing when matches will be played, and at the other clubs the same group of young Emirati males shows up, week after week, rarely more than 5,000, often fewer than 3,000.

Jazira wants bigger numbers. And is willing to pay to make it happen. For a recent match, expatriates vastly outnumbered Emiratis, and the club said 14,000 people were in the house.

It’s hard to imagine Jazira will give away Ferraris every second year, and the long-term idea is that enough interest in the club (which also has played well for most of the past decade) can be created that someday Jazira can actually charge a nominal fee for tickets, and get crowds of 10,000 or more, and have something resembling a traditional sports franchise business plan. Without the inducement of a Ferrari or one million dirhams.

For now, someone — two someones — is going to get a grand prize in a few months.