Twelve years after receiving the attribution of the 2022 World Cup from Fifa, Qatar only has a few days to wait. Sunday, November 20, his national team will face Ecuador for the first match of the competition, after an opening ceremony, in the Al Bayt stadium, north of Doha, which promises to be disproportionate. Like an emirate that uses sport to gain a place in the concert of nations.
By aligning 220 billion dollars since 2010 to organize this competition, according to a study by Front Office Sports published last April, Qatar wanted to mark the occasion. It must be said that the country, with 2.8 million inhabitants, sees in the organization of the most watched sporting event in the world the consecration of its sports diplomacy, imagined in 1995. Twenty-seven years after this offensive launched by Emir Hamad ben Khalifa Al-Thani in the field of sport, the Middle Eastern country does not intend to stop at the World Cup.
“The World Cup is a culmination and a stageexplains Raphaël Le Magoariec, researcher specializing in sports policies in the Gulf States and co-author of The Empire of Qatar – the new master of the game. An achievement, because it is the first major event that Qatar is organizing. But it’s still a stage because the emirate talks about foreign policy when it talks about sport.“
But what is the relationship between a goal scored by the Costa Rican team during this World Cup, and the foreign policy of Qatar? “The creation of networks of influence“, replies Raphaël Le Magoariec. “Qatar has implemented a policy of global influence, in particular with investments in sport and the organization of competitions. It has, in fact, emerged from its status as a small-area state with significant gas resources. Qatar was a safe, easy to rob by a neighboring state, which is no longer the case today thanks to this sports diplomacy.”
After the World Cup, Qatar cannot stop there. And this even though the emirate’s sports diplomacy has borne fruit since the end of the 1990s. After the World Cup, the country led by the Al-Thani family could aim to organize the Olympic Games. “This is what Qatar wants. But in the eyes of the institutions of world sport, the image of the country can be scary“, nuance Raphaël Le Magoariec.
If FIFA has found nothing wrong with the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar in 2010, the International Olympic Committee could think twice before making this choice. In recent years – and especially in recent months with the approach of the kick-off of the World Cup – Qatar has been criticized for its failures in terms of human rights (6,500 workers died on the construction sites of the Worldwide according to a survey of The Guardian), women’s rights and the fight against the environment (air-conditioned stadiums, numerous daily plane shuttles to neighboring countries during the competition).
This tarnished image would not, however, affect the Qatari leaders, as Raphaël Le Magoariec explains: “The Qataris make communication agencies work in order to seduce Western opinion and no longer have this damaged image. But they also know very well that the issue of human rights does not shock another part of the world as much. Qatar’s primary goal is not to have a golden image on a global scale, but to exist. The emirate implements policies of influence more than policies of image.”
For migrant workers in Qatar, World Cup 2022 looks like this:
– thousands of deaths
– confiscated passports
– wages never paid
– extreme working conditions
…It’s necessary #BringingtheCupToReason ! pic.twitter.com/NG5tW9lKaG
— Amnesty International France (@amnestyfrance) October 23, 2022
In other words, Western outrage over Qatar will never be worth what the emirate earns by continuing to be involved in the sport. If the emirate did not organize the Olympic Games, because it was not frequentable enough in the eyes of the IOC, it could continue to flood the world of sport with its money to organize smaller events, like the Grand Prix. Formula 1, included in the 2023 calendar.
Following this controversial World Cup, Qatar’s sports diplomacy will also continue to develop in three distinct areas of the organization of competitions: investment in football clubs (Qatar Sports Investment, Qatari owner of Paris Saint -Germain since 2011 bought 21.67% of the Braga club in October) and in eSports; gaining influence within major sports institutions (Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, president of PSG, was elected president of the European Club Association in April 2021); and continue to invest in sports infrastructure.
“The question of infrastructure is essential. Qatar works a lot behind the scenes, with the purchase of actors and a company of seduction by material goods. The emirate builds networks of influence in this way in more peripheral countries, such as in Latin America, Asia or Africa“, describes Raphaël Le Magoariec. This is the whole purpose of the 974 stadium, which will notably host the second match of the French team at the World Cup, against Denmark, on November 26. An enclosure entirely built with containers and removable , which should then be delivered to a country in need of sports infrastructure.
Qatar will therefore be able to continue to weave its web to expand its networks of influence after having organized the most watched sporting event on the planet. The final of the World Cup – December 18 at the Lusail stadium – over, Qatar will certainly continue its policy to make people talk about it in the ecosystem of world sport.