I have read Qatar spent between 300 and 400 billion dollars to host the World Cup. I have seen it claimed this is more than all the modern Olympics put together. They built seven state of the art stadia. Attracted the attention of the world. Brought prestige, entertainment and some infrastructure to its people.
This is not a thread to document abuse of workers, which has been widely reported. Some of the stadia built will have no obvious future purpose and at least one will be taken down. I could not say if a lot of the money went to useful things like infrastructure and positive permanent changes. One hopes so.
Presumably Qatari wanted to say they have arrived, are proud of being global citizens, have made a miracle in the desert and are patting themselves in the back for having done so. Some would say this message was undermined by limiting alcohol in the stadium cheap seats, but it isn’t a big deal to me although the timing of the announcement two days before starting seemed sudden. It’s great that FIFA is trumpeting social messages like “use less water” and “education for all”. But refusing rainbow wigs and yellow carding inclusive armband wearers sends another message and this is hardly the only allegation made.
Maybe Qatar does not have to worry about these expenses, but maybe they do. It is hardly the first international event to go over budget and prove less useful in the long term. But the amount spent here is much larger. Did Qatar get a lot of positive goodwill from this? If not everywhere, did it help them in Africa or the Middle East? Are there other benefits or problems? Is corruption or puffery possibly a large portion of this, and actual amounts much more modest?
I don’t see how even the most spectacularly successful World Cup could ever be a good return on $200 billion. And Qatar’s World Cup has instead simply be rife with controversy.
Is this a case of “international prestige is worth the insane loss of dollars” in the same way folks fall for the Olympics scam? Or is there something else at play here? Presumably there’s plenty of grift to be made if you’re high enough up in the decision-making process?
Qatar’s soccer team played in an international tournament.
Presumably the leaders got to informally meet a huge number of celebrities, politicians, decision makers and the well connected from hundreds of countries. This might have been hard to achieve otherwise. Possibly future favours were secured. It night have improved relations with local countries.
Some of the money was recouped from ticket sales, advertising, increased tourism, hospitality. Maybe they spent less. Presumably connected local businesses were well paid for their work.
They probably accomplished a lot in a short time. I can’t say I learned enormous amounts about the country from the soccer coverage. But I know more about it than I did.
The ads say “Fly through Doha”. People think the thirty dollars Toronto charges as an “Airport Improvement Fee” (compared to the five dollars charged in many US airports) are ridiculous, but…
Speaking of the Olympics, I read that the only host to have truly benefited from increased awareness is Barcelona. Before the 1992 games, it was known mainly as that other city in Spain. Now it’s a major international tourist attraction.
The Gautrain is a moribund edifice that serves only rich people who want to avoid the parking fees at ORT International.
If - and this is a big “if” - they had expanded rail service into traditionally Black areas and kept the price affordable, I could be convinced. But neither of those two things happened.
From what I’ve read, the spending on the stadiums themselves are likely in the range of a few billion (eg. this site suggests $6.5 billion), so the majority of that $200+ billion is spent on other forms of infrastructure that likely will have longer-term value - eg. transit systems, roads, high rise apartments and hotels, event centres, etc. So I find it somewhat misleading when people say that hundreds of billions were spent on the world cup - sure, perhaps the world cup was a good excuse to get these projects approved, but there will be things of value left over after the event is done.
Will Qatar’s population and economy grow to make full use of this infrastructure? That’s what they are betting on (perhaps hoping to become the next Dubai), but who knows. They are certainly not the only country in the middle east doing it - eg. see Saudi Arabia
I’m skeptical of numbers like $200 billion or higher, for Qatar’s spending on the World Cup. The only info I found online was that a Qatari minister claimed at one point that they were spending $500 million a week, and I guess people have extrapolated from that. But considering that they have access to a labor force that works for almost nothing (or nothing at all, if accusations of stolen wages are to be believed) it’s hard to see how they could have spend that much.
As for what they got out of it, I’d wager that most people outside of the region had never heard of Qatar previously, and now most of the world knows at least a little about it. That’s something.
Everywhere that has tourists complain they have too many. The locals love the incoming money, but not the rest of the incoming bother. Perhaps because the money and the bother are distributed rather differently and rather unequally.
Living as I do in a tourist zone myself I see / hear / do the complaining rather regularly. Like the weather, everyone likes to gripe but nobody does anything about it.
Point of reference, the equivalent cost to build the US Interstate Highway System (when proclaimed complete in 1992, and adjusted for inflation) was $535 billion. Qatar is barely larger than Connecticut and has a total population roughly the equivalent of the metro areas of San Antonio, Orlando, or Charlotte. That’s an incredible amount of money for such a small area/population, some $150K per person.
Big question is how much of that money was spent internally, i.e stayed within the country. That’s an important factor above just expenses vs. revenue. Yes I know cronyism, corruption, etc., but it’s not like they just put that money in a pile and set it on fire. They got stuff for it and people were paid to make that stuff.
Oh sure, Londoners love to complain about tourists as well (particularly in the context of escalators on the Underground) but Barcelona seems to have the “millions all arriving at the same time” problem.
