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Why Qatar wanted to host the World Cup - It's not just about sportswashing

The most controversial World Cup ever is a result of the sport being used as a political tool – one which shows both the power and vulnerability of its hosts.

AS WE REACH the reality of this thing, the question persists.

Why did Qatar want to host the World Cup? 

It remains the roughly $200 billion question. 

fifa-world-cup-decorations-at-dohas-corniche Fifa World Cup decorations at Doha's corniche. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The general response to that question is that the Qatar World Cup is a sportswashing project, but that reasoning doesn’t fully explain why the country has spent a fortune on a month-long football tournament that has invited international scorn. 

First, to define terms: Sportswashing is the practice of a controversial company or country using sports sponsorship to improve its reputation. Can Qatar really have said to have improved its reputation by hosting the World Cup? Without the World Cup, many of you reading this piece may have been unaware of the country’s medieval set of rights for women and the LGBTQ community, and remained ignorant of the horrors of the country’s (now theoretically reformed) kafala system of work sponsorship and its attendant, obscene human rights violations. 

Has anyone really looked at Qatar since they won the World Cup and thought better of them?  So, on those terms, it could be argued that Qatar’s World Cup project is already a failure. But ‘sportswashing’ isn’t the sole reason Qatar have splurged so much money to arrange this football competition. 

Simon Chadwick is Global Professor of Sport at Emlyon Business School in France.  “It was never about sportswashing”, he tells The42. “The term serves a purpose but it oversimplifies a complex debate. Those using it are being simplistic, and, I dare say, naive and ignorant.” 

He is keen to stress that sport does bring reputational benefits: he does not dispute the accuracy of the phrase ‘sportswashing’, but says it doesn’t cover all of the reasons Qatar wanted the World Cup. 

Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup is also about power and weakness.  “Fundamentally the World Cup is about Qatar’s strategic vulnerability”, he says.  Qatar is a tiny country – its area is less than that of Cork and Kerry combined – and is surrounded by larger, powerful neighbours: it shares a land border with Saudi Arabia and maritime borders with UAE, Bahrain, and Iran. It is also sitting on the modern equivalent of a gold mine: vast natural gas reserves, which they have efficiently exploited  to make themselves the richest country in the world. 

But with great wealth comes great vulnerability.

Qatar were a British protectorate until 1971, with the British offering support and protection in return for access to oil and gas.  “It was the British at work again in their colonial-era, imperialist way”, explains Professor Chadwick, “but when the British pulled out in 1971, Qatar was vulnerable again. Rather than be dictated to by the British as to how to use their resources, all of a sudden Qatar was on its own. It had to make its own decisions. Fundamentally, Qatar wants to protect itself.” 

Qatar has protected itself by what Professor Chadwick describes as “hedging”, which is geo-political speak for trying not to annoy anyone. So while Qatar has a strong relationship with Iran and housed the exiled Taliban, it is also home to the US Army’s biggest air force base in the Gulf.  Sport is part of that process.

a-view-of-lusail-stadium-it-will-host-final-for-the-fifa-2022-in-doha-qatar The Lusail Stadium, which will host the World Cup final. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The World Cup is undoubtedly Qatar’s biggest project, but it also hosted the Fifa Club World Cup and the World Athletics Championships in 2019 along with the 2016 UCI Road World Championships and the 2015 World Handball Championships. It has also been added to the F1 Grand Prix roster and may yet bid for the Olympics in 2036. 

“They are so small and so vulnerable, they can’t afford to antagonise anyone”, says Professor Chadwick. “So they have to remain visible and present, and appear constructive, trustworthy, and legitimate. The World Cup is part of that narrative. One of the reasons they wanted to host the World Cup is to be seen as legitimate and trusted members of the international community.

“If you can demonstrate to the world that you can deliver on a plan, keep your promises, and have to resources to invest in important projects: this sends a signal to the global community.” 

Sport is also used by Qatar as basic nation-branding, a vehicle to advertise around the world the essential fact that Qatar is its own nation state. 

“Go back 15 years ago and ask someone about Qatar”, continues Professor Chadwick,  “people might have said, ‘What’s a Qatar? Where can I buy one? How does it work?’ Now, people know the country name.” Defining national borders and entrenching them in people’s minds has its own defensive purpose. In his book Inside Qatar: Hidden Stories from One of the Richest Nations on Earth, John McManus writes that there was concern in Qatar that Saudi Arabia might invade during the Gulf crisis of 2017. 

“There is a defensiveness underpinning Qatar which a lot of people have not picked up on”, says Professor Chadwick. “Putin deliberately used sport for offensive purposes, rather than defensive purposes. Without doubt, sport for Putin was of a malign nature. It wasn’t intended to pacify or placate, it was intended to divide and conquer – a totally different strategy.” 

But while the World Cup has betrayed Qatar’s vulnerability it has also projected its power. That power has increased since Russia invaded Ukraine. Qatar’s gas exports for April this year were more than double what they were in the same month a year earlier, as Western leaders descended on Qatar to strike deals. The West’s reliance on Qatari gas has been articulated through criticism – or the lack of it – of the World Cup.

Western governments have rarely spoke as one on the matter, and often tempered whatever criticism they have mentioned.  To give an example: Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in October that “it would be better if the World Cup wasn’t awarded” to countries with a human rights record like Qatar, which earned her a swift rebuke from the Gulf State. She clarified her comments a week later, saying her comments were “misinterpreted” and Qatar in fact had introduced “very good laws” in improving the living and working conditions of migrant labourers.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also praised Qatar’s “progress” on improving labour rights in the country, speaking on a visit to Qatar during which he inked gas deals with Qatar and the UAE. 

(Amnesty International have acknowledged those same laws and improvements, but warned that there remained a gap between the writing of the laws and their implementation across all infrastructure, not just the projects directly related to the World Cup.)

“What we have here is a very small country with outsized power, and that outsized power is a consequence of their resources and the interdependence that allows them to exert power and control over countries like Britain and Germany and many other countries across Europe”, says Professor Chadwick. 

“This outsized influence and power and control has thrown up some very stark contradictions. I recently posted a tweet in which I talked about Britain needing to reflect on its relationship with Qatar. One English guy replied saying, ‘We need their gas but we don’t need their World Cup. That’s why we deal with Qatar.’ “A Qatari replied to that to say, ‘Oh, the only time we are friends is when you need it.’ “This particular World Cup is crystallising issues about not just the World Cup or football or sport, but about the world we live in right now.” 

file-photo-dated-01-04-2022-of-fifa-president-gianni-infantino-and-qatar-emir-tamim-bin-hamad-al-thani-it-is-safe-to-say-no-world-cup-has-generated-as-much-debate-and-controversy-before-a-ball-is-kic Gianni Infantino and Qatar Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Only this week French president Emmanuel Macron wheeled out the hoary old line that sport and politics shouldn’t mix. “We must not politicise sport”, said Macron, a line that is always aspirational rather than diagnostic.  In awarding the World Cup to Qatar, Fifa have allowed the competition and the sport to be used as a political tool; to become one plank of a nation-building strategy. 

The politics will never consciously leave the World Cup unmolested: it will always be of use to someone, somewhere. It is Fifa’s job to ward those politics off. In that respect, they have failed. 

For the latest news coverage on the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022, see here >

         

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    Mute Clevie Sal
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    Nov 19th 2022, 7:06 AM

    Should have been shut down after the 2nd or 3rd migrant worker death…..here we are 6,000 plus death’s later and still going ahead. Fifa are a disgrace

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    Mute Celtic Eagle
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    Nov 19th 2022, 9:47 AM

    @Clevie Sal: The ILO estimates that some 2.3 million women and men around the world succumb to work-related accidents or diseases every year; this corresponds to over 6000 deaths every single day.

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    Mute Mogh Roith
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    Nov 19th 2022, 9:00 AM

    This farce of a WC isn’t about Qatar, its about FIFA. They have sold their soul for a healthier bank balance.

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    Mute Marty Moosehead
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    Nov 19th 2022, 9:07 AM

    @Mogh Roith: you can add Irish horse racing and the rugby to the list aswell…

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    Mute Hotirish
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    Nov 19th 2022, 10:39 AM

    @Marty Moosehead: “the rugby”??!

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    Mute Marty Moosehead
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    Nov 19th 2022, 11:09 AM

    @Hotirish: The main sponsor of the URC and EPCR is now Qatar Airways which is a state owned company, so the Irish provinces are now getting a sizeable amount of money each season direct from the Qatari government, and barely a word written about it…

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    Mute Shaun Gallagher
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    Nov 19th 2022, 11:18 AM

    @Marty Moosehead: Well said Marty. It’s not only them sports either

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    Mute Neil Collins
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    Nov 19th 2022, 2:02 PM

    @Shaun Gallagher: Yup! DP World from Dubai, main sponsor of European Golf PGA, and heavily involved in Cricket and Formula 1. UAE is ranked higher risk for human rights abuse compared to Qatar, but is a playground for the West for shopping vacations.

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    Mute geoff waters
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    Nov 19th 2022, 8:03 AM

    Thousands of migrant workers are killed or injured across the gulf states every year, we turn a blind eye to all the sports events across the gulf, over 100,000 migrants have been killed building these places

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    Mute 2thFairy
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    Nov 19th 2022, 9:27 AM

    I’d love all the countries to pack up and come home. Time to stop money calling ALL the shots.

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    Mute Neil Collins
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    Nov 19th 2022, 10:13 AM

    Getting bored with West’s hypocracy towards Qatar.

    Since when did a World Cup or Olympics bid NOT involve corruption!

    Ireland’s record on LGBT rights is in it’s infancy…. pre 1993 homosexuality was illegal; legal recognition of gay marriage just 7 years old.

    For horrific treatment of migrants, just visit UK for Kent’s holding centres for Asylum seekers.

    The list of the West’s transgressions is long and more recent despite our collective amnesia.

    I am no apologist for Qatar, but the exceptionlist attitude of the West makes me want to vomit every day.

    I would be more interested to hear if any serious groups from West are using quiet diplomacy to exert real influence for change in Qatar….. but that kind of activity does not make headlines or create click bait!

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    Mute Kevin O'Hara
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    Nov 19th 2022, 2:20 PM

    @Neil Collins: Whataboutery. Thousands of migrants have endured (and still endure) abuse, exploitation and death specifically in the preparation and construction of these stadiums for this tournament. Security guards are earning 35 pence an hour in one of the richest countries in the world. Let alone even mention their stance towards LGBT issues, something which FIFA apparently promote. It is right to call this out.
    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/nov/18/security-guards-doha-qatar-world-cup-park-claim-they-are-paid-just-35p-an-hour

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    Mute Jake Kelly
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    Nov 19th 2022, 4:57 PM

    @Neil Collins: the whataboutery is strong with this one. Ireland had a very bad track record with LGBTQ rights and still have some ways to go but the difference is we actually tried to change. The Qatari’s got the tournament and never tried to change, hiding behind their religious beliefs like we used to do.

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    Mute Neil Collins
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    Nov 19th 2022, 11:38 PM

    @Jake Kelly: @Kevin O’Hara, yes, I am guilty of whataboutery….. but don’t be fooled by all this virtue signalling from the western press. Their motive is anti Arab racism, and very little concern for the rights of migrant workers, and LGBT community. On the topic of LGBT, of the 32 countries competing, in 8 of them Homosexuality is illegal, and in 5 more same sex marriage is still not recognised, but no one calling that out, and we should be

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    Mute Dave Hammond
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    Nov 19th 2022, 11:49 AM

    Workers dying building stadiums on 2 dollars an hour – Ireland shrugs shoulders

    Qatar Announces no beers sold outside stadium – Ireland gets outraged “ah ya can’t be doin that lads“

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    Mute Jake Kelly
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    Nov 19th 2022, 4:59 PM

    @Dave Hammond: the outrage about the worker deaths has been around for years, I couldn’t give a flying fanny about the beer if anything it’s a ploy by the folks in charge to distract from the human rights issues

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    Mute Neil Collins
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    Nov 19th 2022, 11:42 PM

    @Jake Kelly: The beer topic is an anti Arab racist story. I have been to Ireland attending games all over Europe over last 20 years, and for more than a decade, the beer sold in european stadiums at internationals is 0.5% alcohol. But no one reported that because they are not Muslim countries.

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    Mute Paul O Connor
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    Nov 19th 2022, 11:17 AM

    And the next world cup is largely in the US and Mexico. No human rights issues there. Drug cartels running the mexican country with torture and I’d be here all day typing about the human right abuses the US has done. Pot and kettle comes to mind.

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    Mute Vincent Hickey
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    Nov 19th 2022, 3:19 PM

    @Paul O Connor: what bout Canada…they make us work in minus forty here,cruel feckers lol

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    Mute Celtic Eagle
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    Nov 19th 2022, 9:20 AM

    This World Cup is going to be great. Messi and Ronaldo, two of the best ever, more than likely going for their last world cup.

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    Mute Míchael Búrké
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    Nov 19th 2022, 11:53 AM

    @Celtic Eagle: ah, Ronaldo has a couple more in him. Just ask him.

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    Mute M.J. O' Neill
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    Nov 19th 2022, 9:39 AM

    Riiiiiight…. So what the article is saying is that it Is about sport washing….

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    Mute RZ
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    Nov 19th 2022, 1:12 PM

    @M.J. O’ Neill: Rather sportpowerwashing, but yes

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    Mute Wade Wilson
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    Nov 19th 2022, 12:43 PM

    Large oil reserves? Horrible human rights violations? Oppressive dictatorship? Sounds like someone needs to bring Qatar some freedom!

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    Mute Paul Furey
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    Nov 19th 2022, 9:52 AM

    Watch the FIFA documentary on Netflix and prepare to vomit.

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    Mute Shaun Gallagher
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    Nov 19th 2022, 2:58 PM

    @Paul Furey: It’s a great watch alright. Pathetic what goes on

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    Mute RJ
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    Nov 19th 2022, 1:43 PM

    It’s the strict Islamic teachings and laws that are the problem here why is everyone afraid to state the obvious?

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    Mute adrian j aungier
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    Nov 19th 2022, 5:10 PM

    Dodged a bullet in 2009 was offered a H&S manager job

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