When Russia host the world cup in 2018, over 3.5 billion people all around the world watched the World Cup. So, it’s essential for a World cup host nation, to budget on multiple aspects of the event, such as infrastructure, communication, transportation, accommodation, and hospitality to conduct an event of that magnitude which will be seen all over the world. To develop these matrics the host nation needs to ensure the distribution of resources properly by maintaining quality, managing time, proper expenditure of money, resources, and continuous development flow.
How Qatar won the host nation right?
It was decided 12 years ago. Qatar is a small middle-eastern oil-rich country. Qatar has spent 220 billion for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the most expensive world cup budget in the history of this tournament as a host nation. Qatar is the first Muslim country in the world to host the FIFA World Cup event.
Why Qatar was awarded as the host nation 12 years ago?
FIFA requires multiple parameters and rules to conduct a world cup event, mainly for stadium and infrastructure development. A host country must fulfill all criteria set by FIFA, such as,
- Infrastructure.
- Enough hotels to accommodate FIFA officials, players, and fans.
- Transportation facility.
- Communication facility.
- Adequate utilities.
Usually, countries that host Club Football, already possessed most of the requirements set by FIFA. So, these countries just need to upgrade minor issues and need to spend some additional development costs. On the flip side, countries which don’t host any football events on a regular basis, and for these types of countries, to fulfill FIFA’s requirements for infrastructure, communication, and transportation, need to ensure enough time and resources. That’s the reason to set the host country way before the World Cup event.
FIFA set the host country of the world cup 2018 and 2012 in 2010. To host the 20th world cup of 2018, six countries bid, England, Russia, Belgium, Nederlands, Portugal, and Spain. And to host the 2022 world cup, Australia, Japan, Qatar, South Korea, Indonesia, Mexico, and the USA have made their bid. Eventually, Qatar won the bid.
Qatar actively working to make a big shift as a host nation for the greatest show on earth. And, they spent a whopping $220 billion dollar, which is an incomparable amount compared to other nations who host the FIFA World Cup event before. For any country who wants to be the host nation of the football world cup, FIFA has a few criteria that a host country must fulfill, to manage and conduct the event successfully.
FIFA’s Requirements for a Host Country
- Stadiums
- Renovation
- Transportation
- Accommodation
- Infrastructure
Stadiums must have the capacity for 40,000 – 80,000 spectators, and have at least 8-12 stadiums. Though stadium capacity depends on the type of match, for example, in the opening ceremony stadium must have a capacity for 80,000 spectators. For Semifinal matches stadium must have a 60,000 capacity.
From 2026, FIFA will increase the participant teams from 32 to 48, and a minimum of 14 stadiums will be required from 2026 for a host country.
Transportation: Near each stadium, there must be an airport that can handle the load and capacity of 1450 passengers at every hour.
Accommodations: For accommodation, FIFA requires 72 base camp hotels. and 4 hotels near each venue. For the audience in each host city, there must be 1760-8080 hotel rooms.
As Qatar is not a Football superpower and its Club Football is not as popular as European Leagues and other contemporary leagues, so, it has been a very challenging journey for Qatar to become ready for such an event by ensuring all significant aspects, they had to work from the ground to develop these infrastructure requirements by FIFA.
Fifa World Cup 2022 Controversies
The process of selecting Qatar as the official host nation of the 2022 FIFA World Cup was a massively controversial one. To begin with, Qatar is the smallest country to host an event of that magnitude as its total land area is 11, 571 square kilometers with a population of over 2.8 million.
Furthermore, Qatar hasn’t got any reputation in football, even though Qatar hasn’t qualified for a single world cup of the last twenty-one FIFA event, they’ll play in 2022 according to FIFA’s policy.
Generally, the football world cup is held during the break of football leagues, in June-July in most cases. As Qatar is a desert country of middle-east, the average temperature during July in Qatar can be as high as 108° Fahrenheit, which is unbearable for mass people and spectators. As a result, FIFA scheduled the 2022 world cup on November 20. But, it creates a massive schedule conflict with football leagues around the world. This controversial timeline and schedule set by FIFA have gone through an enormous amount of criticism and inappreciation.
According to a few sources, officials that participated in official voting to select the host nation, took bribes, misuse their voting power, and manipulated the voting results. After some investigation, FIFA suspended multiple executive committee and board members, and a few upper and lower-ranked officials.
According to theathletic, a total of 15 out of 22 executive committee members who voted for Qatar to host the 2022 world cup, were banned and charged with corruption. Sepp Blatter was one of them, who was at that time the president of FIFA. Despite all these controversies and setbacks, Qatar got the official host position in FIFA World Cup 2022.
Qatar’s Expectation
Qatar is a gas-rich and oil-rich nation. Other middle-east countries already made some solid initiatives to lower their dependency on oil and gas, and trying to diversify their natural resource-based economy. In the meantime, another rich middle east country UAE has set itself as a tourist nation. Qatar’s main goal is to be a transportation hub and to become a tourism and global business-centric economy. And for all of these, they’re keen to represent themselves as a country of tourist destinations and business hubs. And all of this humongous expenditure in their infrastructure development regarding the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2022 is a part of their big plan as it also aligns with their 2030 national vision.
Informative!