Is the World Cup in Qatar worth the billions spent on it?

Our World Cup Qatar 2022 Championship has finally launched after a wait of about 12 years for the first time in the history of the Arabs an Arab country hosts the FIFA World Cup Championship .

The tournament has already started in Qatar and the whole world is looking not only at Doha but at the Arabs as a whole and this makes it the most precious tournament for us as Arabs and I Here I mean its moral value, of course, but what news of its material value?

Perhaps one of the most prominent topics that have preoccupied people’s minds in recent months is the cost of the current edition of the World Cup. Many media outlets refer to the Qatar 2022 tournament as the most expensive tournament, meaning the most expensive in history. Figures such as $220 billion and $300 billion are being circulated as the cost of hosting Qatar.

For the championship, and if these numbers are really true, then they are money that no one spent like this on the World Cup, and not only this, it also exceeds all that was spent on the World Cup in its last edition, but are these numbers really correct?

I mean, Qatar spent exactly what amount to host the World Cup? What did you spend the DVA money on? Does the championship deserve whatever I act on ? What will Qatar gain from hosting the most popular tournament in the world?

This is a sample of the questions that we will chat with each other in this post.

On December 2, 2010, the eyes of the whole world were heading towards the Swiss city of Zurich. On this day, the International Federation of Football Associations, FIFA, announced the result of the competition process between a different group of countries in The world has the right to host the FIFA World Cup, and the competition was for two editions, the 2018 edition and the 2022 edition, the 2018 edition.

Russia won it in order to remain the first country in Eastern Europe to host the 2022 World Cup. The competition in it was between the files of Qatar, the United States, Australia , Japan and South Korea, and in the end it won Qatar, after fierce competition with the United States in particular, to remain the first Arab country and the first Islamic country in history to organize the most important sporting event ever.

Qatar succeeded in winning the right to host it because it presented a strong file, but that was the easy part in the story and the difficult part is Qatar preparing itself In order to be ready to host a global event, millions will attend it themselves and billions will watch it on screens.
There is no room for failure because the reputation of the country and before that the reputation of the whole region is at stake. Influencing the file of any country trying to win the right to host the World Cup is the infrastructure, whether the infrastructure already exists or what it plans to implement.

FIFA has very strict standards that it imposes on the host countries in terms of stadiums, hotels, transportation, road networks, communications, electricity, etc. It wants to host an important event. Like the World Cup, you must commit to making your country ready according to FIFA standards in the right place . When Qatar submitted its file for the first time in May 2010 , it did not have the bulk of the infrastructure projects that it needed to prepare the country to host the World Cup, but it submitted plans in its file. It is very ambitious for the infrastructure projects that it intends to implement during the 12 years between winning the right to host and the date of the tournament in order to produce the best version of the World Cup in history. Now, in order to host the World Cup, we need two types of infrastructure.

The first type is infrastructure. Related to the sporting event itself, such as stadiums and training facilities. The second type is infrastructure that is also necessary for the sporting event, but it is not linked to it, meaning that it is like this. It will be used, whether in a World Cup or not, because it is an infrastructure that the country needs, and we are talking here about projects such as roads, communications, airports, and sanitation. For the first type, the Qataris said in their file that we will provide 12 stadiums for the tournament. We already have 3 of them. We will renew them and we will build 9 new stadiums, which means approximately Most of the stadiums did not exist, they were just plans on paper, and this is not a strange thing, by the way.

I mean, South Korea and Japan, when they won together the right to host the 2002 World Cup in 1996 , they almost did not have stadiums, but in their file they pledged that each of them would provide 10 stadiums for South Korea It built 10 new stadiums, and Japan built 7 new stadiums, and it had 3 in front, which it renewed.
The important thing is that the Qataris returned in 2014 and agreed with FIFA that instead of having 12 stadiums, they will remain 8, but 7 are new, and one of them is old, which will be renewed, and this is for the sake of saving costs. The championship is being played by them this day, and they are home, Ahmed bin Ali, South Khalifa International, Education City 974, Al Thumama, Lusail .

An executive of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 says that the cost of projects related to the World Cup and its expenses, which are mostly operating, insurance and maintenance expenses, are close to about $8 billion. Before we leave this point, there is a very important note regarding the 8 stadiums of the World Cup, which is that they are very close to each other I mean, there are two stadiums, the distance between them is only 5 km, and the maximum distance between the two stadiums is no more than 75 km.

This is the distance between Al Bayt Stadium and Al Janoub Stadium. Of course, this is a very nice feature for the fans who will be able to attend more than one match on the same day, but at the same time it is a very big challenge for the host country. Who will find himself facing a problem of density?

I mean, Qatar expects that it will receive 1.5 million visitors from all over the world during the tournament. These people, in addition to the population of Qatar, whose number is close to 3 million, will be present together in a small area of ​​land, and most of them will move to and from the stadiums and their surroundings. If the basic infrastructure in the country, such as roads, airports, ports, communications, electricity , sewage, and hotels, is not at its best or not sufficient, it will collapse under the pressure of sudden density. That is why Qatar is like that.
We must develop an infrastructure, not only good, but on a global level.

This infrastructure,** yes**, will not be used for the World Cup specifically, but at the same time, the World Cup is useless without it. I mean, the story is not the story of stadiums, and salvation, no one was defeated.

The important thingis that the Qataris were taking care of this point Planning for it started in 2008, before they even submitted their bid to host the World Cup. How did this happen?

I will tell you that if we look together at the report in which FIFA evaluated Qatar's bid to host the World Cup in 2010, we will find that there is a specific plan called Qatar National Vision 2030 mentioned twice in the report. Qatar National Vision 2030 is a huge development plan launched by the Qatari government through the General Secretariat for Development Planning in the year 2008, which is a comprehensive plan in the sense that it is concerned with environmental, social, human and economic development.
So, what does this plan have to do with the World Cup, or why was it mentioned in the file on Qatar? In short, the Qataris, in the context of their attempt to convince FIFA of their ability to host the 2022 World Cup, said that, by the way, we already have a comprehensive development plan, during which we decide that we will develop huge infrastructure projects that will completely change the face of Qatar by 2030, and this linkage was one of the main reasons for the victory of the Qatari file because it is as it is.

I told you a while ago that the most important thing for FIFA is the infrastructure, and from this moment the two projects were linked to some of the Qatar Vision 2030 file that started in 2008 and the 2022 World Cup file that stayed with Qatar starting in late 2010, but while the Qatar Vision 2030 had a long time horizon ahead of it It reaches 20 years, the World Cup was only 12 years ahead of it, and therefore a large part of the infrastructure projects that exist within the Qatar Vision 2030 and that will benefit the country during the World Cup must be implemented in a faster time so that it remains available and within service with the start of the World Cup, and this is what has already happened, of course.

Different estimates of project costs, but let us here rely on Bloomberg numbers. The most prominent infrastructure projects that Qatar has implemented in recent years and the most expensive is Lusail City, which is considered one of the most important projects of Qatar Vision 2030, Lusail, a new city.
The Qataris built it north of Doha on an area of ​​38 square kilometers, capable of accommodating 450,000 people, and it has an electric tram, and it has Lusail Stadium, which can accommodate 80,000 spectators, and in which the World Cup final will be played. This city alone cost $45 billion. Of the electric trains, which are mostly underground and connect the main areas in the city of Doha and its suburbs with some of this project, its value is about $ 36 billion.

Also, one of the most important infrastructure projects in Qatar is the expansion and development of Hamad International Airport, so that it can accommodate 58 million passengers annually, and this is considered one of the largest projects Development in the aviation sector in the Arab region, and here we are talking about a cost approaching $15.5 billion. You also have Hamad Port, which was opened in 2017, with a capacity of approximately 7.5 million TEUs per year.

This port cost $7.4 billion. 4.5 billion dollars, and this is in addition to the economic zones that cost 3.2 billion dollars. The roads in Qatar, in addition to about 207 bridges and 143 tunnels, of course, in addition to projects in the fields of tourism, education, health, entertainment, etc., and others.

The cost of the infrastructure projects that have passed, all of these take us to the well-known number about the cost of the World Cup in Qatar, which is 220 billion dollars. This number is related to The infrastructure projects that Qatar has implemented during the last 12 years, and which will be used during the World Cup, but they are not related to the tournament, such as the stadiums and stadiums that Qatar built specifically for the World Cup, and you will not need a number of them after the end of the tournament.

As a direct cost for the process of organizing the 2022 tournament and puts it in direct comparison with the costs of previous editions of the tournament, how did this happen? I will tell you that in normal, huge sports projects, such as hosting the World Cup or the Olympic Games, will have a Two Budget Approach, a double budget.

I mean, the idea is very simply that you have direct costs for the project, which largely represent the cost of the facilities associated with it, and you have indirect costs at the same time related to the infrastructure What is used for everything in the country, including the project in most cases, the costs that are declared as a cost for the project are the direct costs only. Let me give you a very recent example.

** Last February**, the Chinese capital, Beijing, hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics. How much did this tournament cost? Here there are two answers or two budgets. The Chinese government says that this tournament did not cost us more than 3.9 billion dollars, and this makes it the least expensive Olympic Games in the last 20 years at least, but the investigation of its work, the American Insider website, says that this tournament cost China at least 38.5 billion dollars. Very huge. We are talking about a number equivalent to 10 times the number that the government says.

The same story happened in 2008 when Beijing also hosted the Summer Olympics. The government said the tournament cost 6.8 billion dollars, while the American media said that China spent 42 billion dollars, and here it is necessary to ask yourself. Whether we are talking about the 2008 session or the 2022 session , who among them is the truthful one and who is the liar?

In fact, the two numbers are correct, but the idea is that for you, the cost of hosting the tournament is what, or how do you calculate it? The second is that the media includes the cost of infrastructure projects that the country has built to serve the Olympic Games within the calculation and considers it to be part of the costs of the Games.
For example, China spent more than $9.2 billion on a high-speed railway linking Beijing to the city of Shangjiakou, which was hosting the Games with it. The last Winter Olympics According to Insider or the international media in general, the $9.2 billion in this country is considered part of the cost of hosting the tournament.

The Chinese government, on the other hand, does not see this. Andrew Zimbalist, a professor at Smith College University, tells the New York Times, commenting on this point, that the Chinese do not count the cost. Any of these infrastructure projects, such as the high-speed train project, are included in the cost of the course, because they say that Like this, they were going to do these projects even if there was no Olympics to host. Do you think that the difference in estimates is happening where? In this context, the $220 billion that Qatar has spent in the last 12 years within the framework of Qatar’s Vision 2030 in conjunction with its preparations for the World Cup is not accurate when we compare it to the cost of the World Cup in Russia or the World Cup in South Africa . It is more logical that we compare it with the costs of the huge infrastructure plans that exist in the region.

For example, the Saudi government announced in January 2021 that it would spend 220 billion dollars on Riyadh, just to turn it into a global city by 2030, and in 2016 the UAE announced the allocation of 300 billion dollars to develop the country's infrastructure until 2030. This comparison remains more logical than the 3 huge infrastructure plans. And their elements are very similar, so now enough talk about the cost, and let's look at the second side of the equation, which is the expected gains. Nasser Al-Khater, Executive Director of the 2022 World Cup, expects that Qatar will earn $ 17 billion from hosting the tournament, and if it really happened, this would be the highest revenue in the history of the World Cup. There is no country that hosted the tournament. It earned these sums before that, the 17 billion dollars.

These are a large percentage, direct gains such as ticket sales and the spending of the World Cup fans that comes from every country.

Of course, the championship was still running, and this number is just an expected number, and it has not yet been achieved. But even if it happened and the championship achieved this big number, is it worth all the hardship and the money that was spent in the past years, whatever it was, was it a lot or a little bit? If the only benefit from the World Cup was direct material gains, countries would not have competed for it, because with paper and pen there are other things that earn more money at cheaper costs and with less effort. Specifically, to the extent that we see the leaders of countries fighting to host it with them, regardless of its expected cost, the current version of the World Cup held in Qatar, according to FIFA estimates, is expected to be watched by 5 billion human beings, meaning almost two-thirds of the planet’s population, most of whom may hear about Qatar for the first time or hear about it But what does he know where she is? And don't you have a rich or poor idea, developed or backward? How do people live there? And it is useful to visit her or not?

Over the course of about a month, all of these people will hear the name of Qatar daily, and the country will become familiar to them. These are the people who are watching behind the screens. There are 1.5 million people from all countries of the world. It is expected that they will come to Qatar themselves and see the country and its people away from the direct and immediate material gains from the presence of people. How can Qatar host such a large number of visitors benefit it after the World Cup ends and everyone goes home? Let us take an example. In 2005, a group of 4 researchers published a study titled The Impact of a Sport Mega-Event on Destination Image. In this study, respected researchers tried to know if South Korea hosted the World Cup. Football in 2002 affected the perceptions of tourists who visited the country during the tournament about South Korea and its people, or not, according to the study. In their country by visiting South Korea at the same time, the successful organization of South Korea for the World Cup contributed to improving the image of South Korean tourists when they travel to any country.

This type of intangible gain falls under the so-called Soft Power or soft power in international politics. Power is defined as the ability to Influencing the behavior of others in order to achieve desired results . Political power in the international arena is usually divided into 3 categories: military power and economic power. Power and the power of imposing opinion, and often the 3 categories are linked to a large extent.

The important thing is the 3 types of power that we have mentioned. We can classify them into two different types of power. The first type is hard power and the second type is soft power. Hard power is understood and its most important manifestation is armies. So, what does soft power mean? Joseph Nye, professor of political science and former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, defines soft power as the state's ability to get what it wants through persuasion and attraction rather than coercion, and this type often derives strength from economics , trade, or cultural resources.

Its lack of traditional power tools, such as the vast area , the large army, and the density of population through the development of its soft power and the tools of its influence, and this is because it is aware that this soft power can provide it with influence and influence that exceeds much larger countries in terms of area and population.

** In this context,** the World Cup is very, very beneficial for Qatar and can This is the most important gain from hosting it, and for this particular reason, the World Cup deserves every billion spent on it, and this, by the way, is the same way the Chinese think about the huge sporting events that they are keen to host, even though they cost them tens of billions of dollars. Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Professor of Political Science at Hong Kong Baptist University, tells New York The American Times, commenting on the large sums that China spent on the 2022 Winter Games, when the talk remains on I have the image of China at the global level, its position, and the mental impressions of it, the Chinese at this moment are saying Nothing Is Too Expensive.

I mean, there is nothing precious to anyone here . And who do you think will win the championship?

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