Hosting the World Cup in Qatar: Managing Fans and Building Infrastructure in Double Time

The tiny emirate of Qatar stunned the world of international association football when it won the right to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022, the first time the tournament will be held in an Arab nation. Despite allegations of bribery in the bidding process, Qatar’s bid was competitive and included key components such as the promise to dismantle and relocate some of the purpose built stadia to less developed MENA region countries, where FIFA has been attempting to develop a toehold but has been stymied by the lack of economic ability in such countries to develop the sport. Success in the bidding process does not guarantee a successful World Cup and Qatar has many hurdles to overcome. One key area of development is in creating a fan base within the county as well as preparing for the often rowdy football fans who will descend on Qatar. Despite having numerous stadia and hosting a variety of friendly matches between national teams, the stadia in Qatar are usually fairly empty during both regional and international matches. As one example, during a recent World Cup qualifying match, Qatari officials bussed in school children to fill the stadium, gave away free tickets to any fans they could find, provided free food and free Qatar promotional materials including scarves, hats and flags. Despite having a huge expatriate population from football loving nations, Qatar has not capitalized on their presence to develop a local fan base. A related issue is managing football fans during the World Cup. As a conservative Islamic country where public behaviour is typically quite sedate, alcohol consumption is tightly controlled, and public drunkenness is illegal, Qatar has many challenges in attracting and managing fans from outside of the country for the 2022 World Cup. Finally, managing the immense building needs for a summer World Cup—both constructing the infrastructure and managing the excessive summer temperatures—is fraught with monumental barriers. In this paper I outline and expand upon the issues Qatar faces including construction challenges, managing human rights issues in the huge migrant worker population required to build the infrastructure, managing fans during the World Cup and developing a fan base.