Why Would You Want to Host a World Cup?

Chances are you’ve seen the pictures of the empty World Cup stadiums in Brazil and other World Cup countries.

Hosting a World Cup requires a ton of upfront investment in stadiums and ancillary structure to support the huge influx of traffic to the country, and since the influx in traffic isn’t sustained - its just a big spike for a couple months - a lot of the infrastructure that was built to support the influx rots away after the World Cup.

This begs the question, why would a country that doesn’t already have the infrastructure and demand to support a world-cup like event want to even consider hosting the World Cup?

Countries that don’t have a lot of tourist visits or international businesses investing in the countries can use the World Cup as a way to show the world they have tourist attractions and they are a good place to do business.

People will come to your country - no matter what country it is - for the World Cup. So its a good way to change the way your country is viewed for millions of people.

The Qatar World Cup was received an estimated 1.5 billion global viewers. Not only is there an international viewing audience for the matches, but there are also people from all over the world flying in to watch the matches. These people are not only watching the matches, but spending money in the country on hotels, food, and other things. They’re interacting with the local businesses and people in the country.

Qatar spent a reported $229 billion to build the infrastructure necessary to host the world cup. Normally an amount this absurdly high would make no sense, but Qatar’s goal was to change its worldwide image and transition from an oil dependent economy to more of a tourism destination. This is something that the UAE seems to have pulled off already and Saudi Arabia is next in line trying to pull off a feat like this.

Building for the world cup didn’t come with out its challenges, Qatar’s human rights practices in building the infrastructure required for the world cup came into the spotlight many times leading up to the world cup. Many people even vowed not to attend the world cup as a form of protest for the human right violations. Despite these challenges, the world cup was still a massive success for the country and for FIFA.

According to FIFA, the 2022 world cup in Qatar saw 3.4 million spectators, including over 1 million visitors coming from abroad to watch the matches in person. What other event can bring in over a million people to your country?

Qatar has been investing heavily in sports, not just the world cup. Qatar Sports Investments owns majority control of Paris Saint-Germain. Additionally, Qatar hosts Formula 1 races and Moto GP races annually.

Although the infrastructure built may not see the same strain as during the world cup, Qatar’s investments in soccer and other sports show that there is potential to bring people to Qatar to watch sports regularly.

The difference between Brazil and Qatar is that Brazil built this infrastructure without a real plan for how they would use it after. While Qatar spent significantly more money, much of it was to built a train system that would connect the different areas that people needed to go to - an investment that would still come in handy after the world cup. Qatar’s spending was part of a long term plan to bring more tourism and sports into the country, while Brazil didn’t really have a long term plan for all the infrastructure - or they weren’t able to carry out those plans.

The downside with the hosting the world cup is that although you have to make all the upfront investment, FIFA gets all broadcasting, ticket sales, and marketing revenue. Yes, the country benefits from the increase in visitors to the country and the money the visitors are spending in their country, but generally hosting a world cup is an activity that you won’t walk out with making a profit - if you have to build the infrastructure to support the world cup.

If you’re a country that already has the required infrastructure to host a world cup, then hosting a world cup is a win win for you. If you don’t need to build stadiums or extend roads or create a subway system to host the world cup, its a no brainer for you - do it.

However, if you need to make significant investments to bring the world cup to your country, its really important to have a long term plan of how the investments will still be worth if after the world cup because you’re not going to make your money back from the world cup itself, and you won’t be getting another world cup for at least 50 years. Only 5 countries have hosted the world cup twice…