It’s Almost Kickoff Time for Qatar’s Audacious World Cup
Qatar #Qatar
U.S. News & World Report 1 hr ago Tim Smart
When the first ball is kicked on Sunday, the world’s premier sporting event will mark a number of firsts.
It is the first World Cup being played in a Mideast country, Qatar, and the first to be hosted by a nation without an established footballing pedigree. It may well be the first, at least in modern times, in which fans will not be lubricated with beer.
It will also be the first time the tournament, with a projected global audience of 5 billion, is played in the winter – at least as far as the Northern Hemisphere is concerned. Qatar is oppressively hot, and the idea of playing it in the traditional summer was a concession to allow the cup to be held there in the first place. Even so, the temperature was near 90 this week.
The choice of Qatar presents numerous challenges to FIFA, the organization that rules world football, or soccer as it is known in the U.S. and other countries. Holding the tourney in the middle of the top European league seasons means several star players – notably France’s Paul Pogba, Senegal’s Sadio Mane and Germany’s Timo Werner – will be absent due to injuries.
Then there are the special characteristics of a petrostate where the official religion is Islam. After a back and forth, reports on Friday suggested beer will be banned at stadiums and surrounding areas. Qatar has earned a black eye for its treatment of migrant laborers used to build the facilities for the cup, as well as its opposition to male homosexuality. Even the choice of Qatar was marked by allegations of corruption within FIFA.
Controversy is hardly new to the cup. In 1930, when the first tournament was hosted by Uruguay, the rigors of travel led to only four European teams competing. The next two championships were held in Europe, despite South American nations believing it would be rotated between the two continents. The cup was not played in 1942 and 1946 due to the Second World War.
The original trophy, named after the FIFA president who first organized it, Jules Rimet, was held by the winning team. In 1970, Brazil won for the third time and kept the trophy but it was stolen in 1983 and has never been found, believed to have been melted down after the theft. A new trophy was made and is now held temporarily by the winning team.
In 2002, the World Cup was split between two nations, South Korea and Japan. It was the first held in Asia. In 2026, the cup will be held in three countries for the first time, with games played in America, Canada and Mexico. That will present unique challenges for teams having to travel thousands of miles between matches.
But no nation has faced a situation quite like Qatar. The country has spent an estimated $220 billion on building out the facilities and infrastructure to host the cup, including a new airport, subway system and multiple stadiums. The sum is equal to the petrostate’s annual gross domestic product.
“It really is astronomical,” says Brendan McKenna, international economist at Wells Fargo, who analyzed both the economics and the football outcomes of the upcoming cup. “It’s just a staggering amount of money that’s being spent.”
Whether the amount will yield any economic or other benefits remains to be seen. The 1994 World Cup in the U.S. served as a springboard for making soccer a mainstream sport in the country, although the success of the women’s professional team on the world stage has also spurred the sport domestically. But Russia’s hosting of the 2018 tournament came just a few years after it annexed Crimea, and it is difficult to see how Russia’s status as a world actor improved in the years after, given its invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
Cups in Europe, including the 1966 one held in England and won by the host country, and the 2006 championship in Germany won by Italy and the first for the reunified country, were both seen as beneficial to the hosts.
For Qatar, the privilege of holding such a global event comes at an important time. The country is seeking to establish itself more on the world stage. And with Russia’s status as an energy-exporting pariah, the Mideast nation is seeking to capitalize on its enormous holdings of natural gas. As of 2021, the nation became the second-largest net exporter of gas behind Russia.
“Successfully organizing the World Cup and demonstrating Qatar’s wealth can attract new investment flows toward the country and could support Qatar’s ambitions to diversify its economy and become more than just a petrostate,” McKenna says.
The sheer size of the undertaking boggles the mind, though.
George Smith, portfolio strategist at LPL Financial, writes that the 2022 World Cup “is costing Qatar over four and a half times the total cost of the prior eight world cups combined.”
The country has built “seven new stadiums, a new airport, a new metro system, 100 hotels, multiple new highways, and even a whole new city to host the final match.”
Controversy may well carry over to the pitch. The World Cup has seen its share of questionable acts, including the 1986 “hand of God” that saw Diego Maradona’s handball defeat England in the quarter final of the 1986 tournament in Mexico. In the 2006 final, French superstar Zinedine Zidane was sent off after head-butting Italian defender Marco Materazzi. And in 2014, Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez bit the ear of Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini. The referee did not penalize Suarez but after replays were shown later that day, FIFA gave him a nine-game ban.
As for this year’s cup, both McKenna and Smith applied economic analysis to predict some outcomes. McKenna picks Brazil to host the trophy, a popular choice and not too risky since the star-studded South American nation has won the most cups, five. Smith finds that Spain’s win in 2010 led to the highest global stock market return and he notes a win by a South American team is better for investors historically than a European one.
As for the U.S., few experts would pick the Americans to win it all. They are in a tough group, with England, Wales and geopolitical foe Iran. They have a young, athletic team that features players such as fan favorite and Chelsea midfielder Christian Pulisic who ply their trade in the top European leagues. They should get out of their group and then anything is possible.
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