Qatar expects an economic impact of 16.6 billion dollars for hosting the FIFA World Cup, something comparable to the impact of the last two World Cups. But the event will cost 220,000 million, the most expensive figure ever reached since the first edition, in 1930, and twenty times more than Russia 2018. An amount that even exceeds the sum of the 21 previous editions. So where is the business?
It must be taken into account that a large part of those 220,000 million has nothing to do with the Cup itself (the construction of stadiums, etc.), but with a great renovation of the country's infrastructure, including the construction of a metro in Doha, the expansion of the airport and new roads and hotels.
“These are changes that in principle increase the productive capacity of the country. It is probable that many of these investments would have been carried out in the end anyway. In this sense, the Cup has done nothing more than act as a catalyst and compress these investments in a limited period of time”, Oliver Reynolds, economist at FocusEconomics, comments to this newspaper. “In addition –explains this expert-, the Government of Doha has its sights set far beyond the tournament.
It is betting on a lasting boom in the tourism industry after the World Cup and aims to hit six million visitors by 2030, up from just two million in 2019. If this is achieved, the $220 billion spent will start to look a very wise investment.”
According to Kieran Maguire, an academic at the University of Liverpool, the fact that from a commercial point of view the event could end up generating losses is not a cause for concern in a peninsula that is based on a lot of natural resources. Qatar is the country with the third largest gas reserves in the world and the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
In any case, money does not seem like a problem. In 2017, the country's finance minister said $500 million a week would be spent on infrastructure projects. The stadiums should have cost close to 4,000 million, but their bill has doubled. The World Cup will leave a public transport network with three metro lines and 37 stations, as well as a bus circuit.
Financial rating agencies are optimistic about the effects of the World Cup, both direct and indirect. While in 2021 GDP rebounded by a modest 1.6%, this year it could even triple. According to S
Reinsurer Coface estimates that tourism revenues this year will double to $8 billion. Indeed, the country of the Persian Gulf will receive 1.5 million visitors, which represents more than half of its population, estimated at 2.8 million, less than the metropolitan area of Barcelona.
Moussa Bourebka, a Cidob researcher, believes that beyond the economic return there are intangible assets of a geopolitical nature. “The World Cup allows Qatar to consolidate as a mediating country in the Persian Gulf, as a pole of foreign investment and as a regional hub”, he points out. For Bourebka, “the country does not want to end up like Kuwait, trapped between Iran and Saudi Arabia. To avoid its disappearance, Qatar transmits the image of a State capable of speaking to the whole world. The World Cup is not an objective: it is a tool at the service of their strategy”.
