World Cup money, drama and fans focus a white-hot global spotlight on Qatar

Qatar remains an obscurity to much of the world, but that will change beginning Sunday, when the massive global soccer community tunes in to watch the tiny Middle East country host Day 1 of the 2022 World Cup.

For the next four weeks, oil-rich Qatar — a Muslim nation with oppressive laws targeting women and the LGBTQ community, close ties to Iran, and accusations of human rights abuses against migrant workers — will be at the center of the sports universe.

An estimated 1.5 million soccer fans from around the world are expected to converge on the capital of Doha, and many millions more will watch or listen to World Cup broadcasts.

“I don’t think I would ever go to Qatar, but the World Cup is a reason for me to go,” said soccer fan Mitchell Woody.

Mr. Woody, 32, will be one of about 100,000 American soccer fans traveling for the tournament, even though in just four years the World Cup will be in North America. A Scottsdale, Arizona, native, Mr. Woody has never been to a World Cup — but he already knows this year’s event won’t be his last. 

The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and turning 30 was an “epiphany” for Mr. Woody, who said he has caught the “travel bug.” Qatar will be the ninth country he has visited, most of them since 2020. 

He’s expecting some culture shock, but that’s the point, he said. 

“I just latched onto that feeling of wanting to know more about other cultures and countries,” said Mr. Woody, who will arrive in Qatar Tuesday and attend six matches, including the United States-England match on Nov. 25. “I want to be pulled to a country I’d never go to or an experience I’d never have.”

Dogged by controversy 

The decision by FIFA in 2010 to have wealthy Qatar — a country smaller than every U.S. state except Delaware and Rhode Island — host the largest single sporting event in the world was second-guessed immediately, and the criticism has only grown since. 

Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter even admitted last week to Swiss publication Tages Anzeiger that picking Qatar was a “bad choice.” 

“It’s a country that’s too small,” Mr. Blatter said of Qatar, the smallest nation — both by geographic size and population — to host the quadrennial event. “Football and the World Cup are too big for that.”

In the years since the event was awarded to Qatar, bribery scandals and a corruption investigation into the decision have hung like a cloud over the upcoming tournament, and the country’s harsh laws that deny rights to women, gays and lesbians haven’t helped. Qatar has also come under fire for the alleged mistreatment of migrant workers. 

Women in Qatar must get permission from their male guardians to marry or travel. The Qatari government has said it will welcome LGBTQ fans at the 32-team tournament, but male homosexuality is illegal and carries a sentence of up to three years in prison. Qatar is one of 69 countries that criminalize homosexuality.

“They have to accept our rules here,” Qatar World Cup ambassador Khalid Salman said during a German television interview last week. “[Homosexuality] is haram. … It is damage in the mind.”

The eight stadiums in Doha were built by migrant workers under inhumane conditions, according to several human rights groups. British newspaper The Guardian reported that more than 6,500 migrant workers died in Qatar in the decade after FIFA granted it the World Cup.

The Qatari government has said that figure is “wildly misleading.” 

But while many in the West have expressed concerns about the World Cup legitimizing Qatar, holding the monthlong event there has given the tournament historic import.

Qatar’s match against Ecuador will kick off the first World Cup to be held in the Arab world — a development long overdue, according to advocates who note that Muslims make up one-fourth of the world’s population.

Yoav Dubinsky, a sports business instructor at the University of Oregon, said a significant portion of the outrage against the Qatar World Cup is “justified.” Some of it, however, is caused by the “Western lens” through which Qatar — and by extension the Middle East — is being judged. 

“Football specifically is very popular in the Arab world,” said Mr. Dubinsky, who grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel. “I think that we see a lot of support from the Arab and Muslim world and most of the global south of having a World Cup in a non-Western country. I think the West doesn’t necessarily recognize that significance. That isn’t an excuse for human rights violations, but there is significance of having the World Cup somewhere not in the global north.”

A focus on customs

While much of the resistance to Qatar from human rights activists has been about the country’s repressive laws and treatment of migrant workers, many soccer fans have been more focused on Qatar’s customs surrounding alcohol consumption.

Around the globe, beer and soccer are inextricably linked, in much the same way that beer and American football go together in the U.S.

But drinking a few cold ones won’t be that simple in Qatar.

Alcohol isn’t illegal in Qatar as it is in neighboring Saudi Arabia, but the country’s laws on alcohol are more conservative than in the United Arab Emirates, one of three countries that shares a maritime border with Qatar. Visitors will be able to buy alcohol at bars, hotels and at designated tents outside stadiums, but beer will not be sold inside the arenas. Drinking outside permitted areas and public drunkenness are strictly prohibited and punishable by up to six months in prison. Mr. Woody said some people in WhatsApp group chats he’s in with other World Cup goers regularly chat about where they’ll be able to purchase alcohol, with some even contemplating sneaking it into stadiums. 

“I’m going to be on my best behavior. Especially after the Brittney Griner stuff, it’s all very scary,” said Mr. Woody, who is traveling to Qatar alone. Griner, a star women’s basketball player in the U.S., was arrested by Russian authorities in February for carrying vape cartridges containing hashish oil in a Moscow airport and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Christina Smart, a 33-year-old from Mobile, Alabama, also isn’t going to push the envelope for the five days she and her family are in Qatar next week. 

“I feel like it’s not going to take away from my experience if I can’t drink at a stadium,” said Ms. Smart, who has tickets to four matches, including the United States-Wales game on Monday. The U.S. is favored to make it out of Group B but isn’t expected to advance much further, and certainly not to the final on Dec. 18. “Having a drink before or after at a restaurant seems like a good balance to where I’m able to be respectful of their culture but also have a good time.”

Ms. Smart said she and her husband will be carrying a copy of their marriage certificate around with them as a precaution. Otherwise, Ms. Smart isn’t concerned. Qatar is regularly ranked as one of the best countries for expatriates, and a 2021 study by Global Finance ranked the nation as the world’s third safest.

“I’ve been to the Middle East by myself as a female traveler,” said Ms. Smart, a regular tourist who has been to 61 countries, including five in the Middle East as well as Brazil for the 2014 World Cup. “I’ve never felt anything when I was there by myself to make me feel like I shouldn’t go there again.”

For any sporting event, there will always be superfans such as Mr. Woody and Ms. Smart who are eager to attend. Others, though, are conflicted about this year’s World Cup, with some declaring they’re going to boycott.

At Bundesliga matches across Germany this week, fans held “Boycott Qatar” signs in protest. “Qatar 2022 — the biggest crime in football,” read another sign.

Mr. Woody admits he’s “pretty naive” about all the details surrounding the controversy of having the World Cup in Qatar, but he doesn’t believe those traveling to the tournament are in any way endorsing the human rights abuses in the Persian Gulf country.

“If I don’t go to this World Cup, they’re still going to sell just as many tickets,” Mr. Woody said. “I don’t think me not going would have an impact.”

Into the spotlight

When Qatar bid to host the World Cup, one of the country’s main objectives was to overcome its “invisibility” as a small state, according to Danyel Reiche, a visiting associate professor of political science and international relations at Georgetown University in Qatar. 

That it did. Home to just 2.9 million people — a figure that has soared from just 600,000 in the last 20 years — Qatar has emerged from global obscurity. 

“Today, everybody knows Qatar,” said Mr. Reiche, who has been researching the country and the upcoming World Cup since 2014. “Qatar is certainly on the map.”

The other reason, Mr. Reiche said, was as a tool to boost its national security. Hosting the preeminent soccer event in the world improves Qatar’s “interconnectedness” with other countries, potentially making it less likely to be engaged in a military conflict.

“As a small state, Qatar has military and security vulnerabilities. It cannot defend itself,” said Mr. Reiche, co-author of “Qatar and the 2022 FIFA World Cup: Politics, Controversy, Change.” 

“It’s centered between two big countries — Saudi Arabia and Iran. And, of course, it’s concerned that what happened to Kuwait in 1992 when it was invaded by Iraq could happen to them. So, by investing into sport, they’re also investing into their national security.”

However, achieving those goals by hosting the World Cup is costing the emirate a pretty penny. A staggering estimate of $220 billion has been spent on infrastructure — from glitzy new stadiums to a driverless metro system to luxury apartment complexes. For comparison, the 2014 World Cup in Brazil ran a tab of just $15 billion.

But Qatar, swimming in riches from natural gas, can more than afford the extravaganza. Global Finance ranks Qatar as the fourth-wealthiest country in the world. 

Even so, the 2022 World Cup will hardly be the first time a country has used sport and its exorbitant wealth in an attempt to bolster its standing or image on the global stage — a trend that has come to be derisively referred to as “sportswashing.”

“This idea goes back thousands of years,” said Mr. Dubinsky, a former sports journalist who now conducts research on how countries use sport to improve their reputations. “It started in ancient Greece with city states, using competition to showcase their worth and value and also to collaborate together.”

In recent years, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia have poured money into international sports as a way to burnish their stature on the global stage and, at least in part, deflect Western criticism of repression and corruption.

From the 2018 World Cup in Russia to the 2008 and 2022 Olympics in China to the LIV Golf tour funded by Saudi Arabia, countries that have been “shunned by the West are taking a large foothold on sports culture,” Mr. Dubinsky said. 

But Mr. Reiche, who has lived in the Middle East since 2008 and in Qatar since 2020, doesn’t view sportswashing as an accurate term to describe the World Cup in Qatar. 

“Sportswashing gives the impression that there’s a simple explanation for something I consider to be complex,” Mr. Reiche said. “It’s been said that a country would invest into sports to distract from human rights violations. That may be part of the story, but for Qatar it’s mainly a tool for national development.”