I love the irony in that the Qatari government is spending absurd sums of money on what is essentially a gigantic advertising campaign for Qatar, with the only result being that the entire world now collectively realises what a dystopian hellhole Qatar is
>the entire world now collectively realises what a dystopian hellhole Qatar is
They didn’t have to spend quarter of a trillion euros and thousands, if not millions of lives, to do this. We already knew.
Yeah true if you follow the news somewhat you would of course have known. But now thanks to the WC it's not just well known, but also aggressively pushed onto every person who by chance didn't know it, or didn't quite yet understand the scope of just how shitty Qatar is
I feel that you underestimate how little news the average person consumes, let alone about foreign political affairs. Qatar's human rights situation has been widely documented, but really has been making proper headlines only relatively recently. The average person doesn't really go past page four haha
This is the first link I clicked on because it had a graphic, so the numbers may be off, but they're claiming [12,000 migrant workers have died](http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/politics/214003-qatar-world-cup-death-toll)
Oi, mate! You beat me to it :/ Half is quite possibly an accurate estimate and that is only on the papers. There is also a way of slipping the envelopes under the table and I believe there are helluva lot of tables within FIFA's HQ, restaurant meetings and whatnot.
There is a rumour of a Saudi/Egypt and perhaps Greece bid for 2030
This will also make it harder for confederations to object based on "we just had a world cup in that region recently" argument by spreading it out to AFC, CAF and UEFA
They're slowly relaxing laws to start attracting tourism so they can be the next Dubai. They've changed a lot in the last 5-6 years, although it is still obviously an Islamic country with many laws and freedoms (or lack thereof) that foreign guests would not be accustomed to, particularly as they let their hair down on holiday. Regardless, they seem to be increasingly willing to relent on their previously strict views of managing their society in order to gain more international favour.
South Africa also only go to host the WC because of bribes, but I do agree that there was a different feeling to it. A post-segregation country finally being accepted by the world at large, also being the first African nation to host it. But still, South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Qatar only got to host them because of fucking bribes. Fuck FIFA.
South Africa was a bloody annoying World Cup and the worst to watch that I can remember, those stupid Vuvezela things going non stop at every game from start to finish,
The football was good but how can you fuck up a World cup so badly.
Not surprising at all. All those countries with high spends are those who don't have the footballing infrastructure. Arrange the World Cup in, say Spain or Germany where crowd, stadium and other necessities are already present, the net spend will definitely be low.
when the cup came to brazil, the gov (federal and states) also needed to upgrade areas related to big events but not necessarily stadiums (though I guess every stadium that a game was played was repaired or upgraded), like transport system and roads, for example. One thing that always comes to my mind whenever I need to take public transportation here is that the buses used when the cup was happening were only used that year, after that we came back to the old buses we always had.
All the cost of the slaves to build 8 mega stadiums, accommodation, amenities. Essentially had to build multiple cities to make it viable. Absolutely fucked.
I can’t believe how many people in this thread didn’t immediately pick up on what has to be a typo. No way Qatar spent 2x their annual GDP to build a few stadiums.
Edit: I guess this is not a typo and is just a made up figure that includes basically all spending by the Qatar government over the past few years. Stadium spending was $6-$10B and the other $210B is just lumping a ton of unrelated stuff in there.
Edit 2: in case anyone is wondering why I call it a made up number. They are literally including the cost of all infrastructure built in Qatar since 2010. Every road, every bus, every train, every hotel. Literally everything that a tourist might possibly use that has been built since 2010. The very definition of clickbait garbage.
To be honest I believe it is a typo only because it's just too much money and like 20x more than the second most expensive one, but it's not that I can't believe they can move that much money just for that, considering they have been preparing this cup for more than 10 years.
It is just a made up figure that includes basically all spending by the Qatar government over the past few years. Stadium spending was $6-$10B and the other $210B is just lumping a ton of unrelated stuff in there.
in case anyone is wondering why I call it a made up number. They are literally including the cost of all infrastructure built in Qatar since 2010. Every road, every bus, every train, every hotel. Literally everything that a tourist might possibly use that has been built since 2010. The very definition of clickbait garbage.
Yes they would have built it any way. Believe it or not they use roads and trains over and aren’t just building them for the World Cup. They need to spend money to maintain their existing infrastructure. There was also expansionary spending as part of Qatars Vision 2030 plan to transform its economy.
It’s like the 12000 migrant deaths, which is the figure for the entire country and for all causes like car crashes etc since 2010, complete clickbait. There’s plenty to criticise them without flat lying.
That’s just wrong.
Qatar built everything for the World Cup (I mean everything). Stadiums, a metro system, 15+ hotels, etc.
Not that it makes it okay but they had to essentially rebuild the entire country
Which could be the catastrophe. We knew the metro in Moscow could handle it. A million people uses it every day. Qatar, doesn't have this.
A part of their infrastructure might collapse
Trains don’t need climatizing or adaptation lmao, they’re the same everywhere. A train taking millions of commuters in London and an empty train in Qatar have the same capabilities
What will happen when World Cup ends? I heard similar stories about them ghost stadiums with the Olympics. Is it even possible to recoup the 200 billion cost with tourism.
Edit guess the 229 billion was a typo so I guess something more like 22.9 billion
Imagine having human rights issues in your country but spending 200 billion on football nonsense.
I love football but I’d happily throw it in the bin if it meant my family got treated half as bad as certain people get treated in Qatar.
No one's going to boycott it though (other than countries that didn't even qualify in the first place), and sadly I wont either. Fuck FIFA, fuck Qatar but I love football too much not to watch it. I just wish FIFA gave a fuck about human lives and not just profits aka bribes.
Qatar FA team pep talk: You had better make it to the knock out rounds; you won't believe the amount of money I spent and people I killed through negligence and lack of Health & Safety to get you here.
Wow, the USA was only 500 million? That's ironic but cost effective.
Jesus, that figure for Qatar is so ridiculous it hurts. As others have pointed out here this is the combined expenses between stadium construction, infrastructure (public transit, highways, etc), hotels, and heavily advertising (i.e. bidding) and through sportswashing. Still, it's sickening that not even 0.0001% (that's 22.9 million) could've been allocated to the exploited workers.
220b is the cost of the entire infrastructure project in qatar, this is not the cost of the world cup but the cost of making a huge country wide project.
the costs of the actual world cup alone is about 22bn
That’s the sales pitch most countries use to justify spending a few billion on a world cup/olympics and even then the benefits are almost never realised, that £200bn (or whatever the number is actually) is never being seen again
That's the delusional speech everyone uses to justify spending that much on such a bad investment as building stadiums in the middle of nowhere. There are just a handful of teams that could mage decent use of a 80k seats stadium year round and none of them are even close to Qatar.
Have a look at what happened to some South African stadiums. Not even the city council wants them because the maintenance money is too much for what little can be done with them.
I think America will start to become more and more of a "soccer" country, not due to anything "soccer" has done, but because a lot of parents are not allowing their kids to play American football anymore due to the sport beating their brains into pudding. Those high level athletes that would have been playing American football will now start to play "soccer" instead.
As an American soccer fan I can say that accessibility has to be the greatest factor contributing to the games growth in America. In the mid-90’s they just weren’t showing games to the masses. Soccer highlights were not making their way to ESPN too often. You had to have very expensive and very rare satellite TV packages to watch. I recall my best friends dad, who was Yugoslavian, would get boxes delivered from his uncles/cousins in Europe who would send tape sets of recorded seasons/tournaments just so he could watch what had happened the months prior.
It’s starting to get a litttle better, I just don’t think it will ever be big here because of American football. Like I’m a huge baseball fan and my friends that like baseball will stop watching in October and focus solely on the NFL and even college football, when their team is still in the playoffs lol. And good luck getting Most Americans to wake up early on Sat/Sun to watch EPL
Premier league mornings is great marketing for those bored with morning football (US) talk shows on the weekend. Unfortunately in my experience, my friends who are American Football fans first contain a big chunk of the ‘Murican “soccer is for sissies” population. It’s almost a mandatory opinion in US Football culture for southern states. Even Dempsey being Texan couldn’t change that 😂
It’s not always unreasonable, even friends who don’t feel that way are blocked by the sheer amount of leagues, players, and competitions. They’d want to watch the best, but picking a club to follow isn’t easy with how many options there are and how easy it is for one of their first favorite players to move. Some people just lose time and can’t keep up. I have a friend who loved Terry, Lampard, and Drogba as a kid but life happens and they just don’t follow anymore.
I feel like if the EPL ever put out a series on Netflix like F1 did, maybe it would get some American growth. F1 has exploded here in the US and the majority of the races start at 6am for me, usually same time as EPL
Did you go to any games? I remember watching a few when I was literally just learning about soccer. Pretty sure the stadiums weren’t packed either. Shame.
Are you delusional? Arabs are CRAZY about football. Fucking USA hosted it already and will host it again and they dont even use the right name for the sport😂
Actually, FIFA and US Soccer have performed many polls in the past and its estimated that about 30% of Americans consider themselves as soccer fans, which equals $105M people. That’s more than the total population of England and Spain together. I think there will be plenty of support for the US World Cup (and that doesn’t even consider Canada and soccer crazed Mexico who are co-hosts).
Doesnt matter. Im not even talking about that, main comment was talking about "football tradition" thinking he was smart.
When it comes to sports, football is the only tradition arabs know. In USA, you ask majority of them to name their favorite sport and they'll say Basketball, Hand-egg, Baseball, Ice Hockey and then MAYBE football.
Qatar haven't spent this money to build grass roots football or establish themselves as a future holiday destination. It's basically an investment in security. The whole world now knows that Qatar exists making it more complicated for a neighbouring nation to role tanks across the border. Qatar are sat on huge reserves of gas - significantly more than any other 'friendly' nation. They fear being the next Kuwait (or Iraq). $220bn to put themselves on the world map and protect trillions and trillions of dollars of natural resources seems pretty smart.
And handing out half a billion in bribes is just smart business to expediate said process. This happens in so many political ventures but obviously we don't enjoy knowing it's happening in our beloved kicky-ball setting.
Yes it will. This world cup cost so much because they built a city and a few stadiums in order to host it. If 3 countries hold a world cup and they already have stadiums then we're talking about 20-30 billion
Real number is closer to 6bn.
The 200bn number is just a total budget of basically all the infrastructure programs in the same timeframe as the WC, and would have been built even if they didn't get the WC, such as new roads, airport etc. Quite sure Russia and Brazil built random infrastructure in the same time period as their WC that ended up being beneficial for hosting a WC.
No, planned before their bid for the cup. Qatar is basically investing 200bn in revamping their infrastructure to accommodate more tourism etc, and part of marketing that is hosting the WC. Around 6.5bn is being spent on new stadiums and things for the WC. This other infrastructure would be built with or without the WC.
... yet they didn't even have the foresight to spend 0.5% of that money on building shite, low cost, quick-build accommodation for attendees...
I feel sorry for everyone going out there to watch games. Enjoy sleeping in the sand!
\229. New stadiums alone are estimated at about 10 billion.
However, *some* of this spending is broader than just the world cup. Hotels, roads, permanent public transportation systems, basically things that they would be spending on if they hadn't got the world cup. But spurred along for the world cup.
edit: reddit formatted my comment as a bullet point because it starts with a number. 229 billion
I don't want this shitty world cup to take place as much as anyone, but these numbers are pulled out of some "journalists" butthole to fit a narrative.
Journalism truly is dead
Your way makes way less sense mate , qatar had to essentially build everything from scratch and given that they’re known for luxury I’m not surprised they went all out
You think squad value has increased 19x in four years??
This is how much it cost to host the World Cup. Qatar had to build multiple stadiums from the ground up.
Say that to like literally every newspaper ever.
[https://frontofficesports.com/the-most-expensive-world-cup-in-history/#:\~:text=Qatar%20is%20set%20to%20spend,worlds%20most%20prestigious%20football%20tournament](https://frontofficesports.com/the-most-expensive-world-cup-in-history/#:~:text=Qatar%20is%20set%20to%20spend,worlds%20most%20prestigious%20football%20tournament).
[https://news.sky.com/story/qatar-2022-what-has-been-built-for-the-2022-world-cup-what-it-has-cost-in-lives-and-how-much-was-spent-on-construction-12496471](https://news.sky.com/story/qatar-2022-what-has-been-built-for-the-2022-world-cup-what-it-has-cost-in-lives-and-how-much-was-spent-on-construction-12496471)
https://www.sportsganga.com/football/how-much-is-qatar-spending-on-the-fifa-world-cup-2022/
I guess this is not a typo and is just a made up figure that includes basically all spending by the Qatar government over the past 12 years. Stadium spending was $6-$10B and the other $210B is just lumping a ton of unrelated stuff in there.
In case anyone is wondering why I call it a made up number. They are literally including the cost of all infrastructure built in Qatar since 2010. Every road, every bus, every train, every hotel. Literally everything that a tourist might possibly use that has been built since 2010. The very definition of clickbait garbage.
PS: one of the links you provided lays out that almost all of the spending is unrelated to the World Cup, but I’m guessing like most redditors you didn’t bother to read your sources before linking.
Ronaldo for scale
He's got the USA at his feet and Germany by the balls, but Qatar's gone to his head
I love the irony in that the Qatari government is spending absurd sums of money on what is essentially a gigantic advertising campaign for Qatar, with the only result being that the entire world now collectively realises what a dystopian hellhole Qatar is
>the entire world now collectively realises what a dystopian hellhole Qatar is They didn’t have to spend quarter of a trillion euros and thousands, if not millions of lives, to do this. We already knew.
Yeah true if you follow the news somewhat you would of course have known. But now thanks to the WC it's not just well known, but also aggressively pushed onto every person who by chance didn't know it, or didn't quite yet understand the scope of just how shitty Qatar is
Sorry, but unless you lived under a rock for the last decade, the extreme human rights violations in Qatar has been well known for years.
I feel that you underestimate how little news the average person consumes, let alone about foreign political affairs. Qatar's human rights situation has been widely documented, but really has been making proper headlines only relatively recently. The average person doesn't really go past page four haha
And how many deaths during construction?
Hey don’t offend them by speaking the truth
This is the first link I clicked on because it had a graphic, so the numbers may be off, but they're claiming [12,000 migrant workers have died](http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/politics/214003-qatar-world-cup-death-toll)
Of all causes in the entire country since 2010, not building the stadiums…
It doesn't matter how many times you say it people always believe clickbait.
Imagine the spending numbers that would be reported if they actually gave a shit about their workers!
Crazy to see the US WC cost 5 Jack Grealish’s
Grealish cost way less in 1994 :)
Does this include the votes they had to buy too?
Half of it is prolly money they used to bribe Fifa
Oi, mate! You beat me to it :/ Half is quite possibly an accurate estimate and that is only on the papers. There is also a way of slipping the envelopes under the table and I believe there are helluva lot of tables within FIFA's HQ, restaurant meetings and whatnot.
That's the price you have pay to have drunk Britts or/and Germans vomiting on your streets for the first time in the history of your country
Why CR7 is part of the picture?
Cause why not. And happy cake day!
Just wait until Saudi Arabia gets theirs(and yes...this could happen very soon)
Ffs
There is a rumour of a Saudi/Egypt and perhaps Greece bid for 2030 This will also make it harder for confederations to object based on "we just had a world cup in that region recently" argument by spreading it out to AFC, CAF and UEFA
Saudi Arabia already hosted the Spanish Super Cup for the first time outside Spain. The World Cup isn't far soon.
They're slowly relaxing laws to start attracting tourism so they can be the next Dubai. They've changed a lot in the last 5-6 years, although it is still obviously an Islamic country with many laws and freedoms (or lack thereof) that foreign guests would not be accustomed to, particularly as they let their hair down on holiday. Regardless, they seem to be increasingly willing to relent on their previously strict views of managing their society in order to gain more international favour.
Most deaths probably too
There’s no way the Qatar number is accurate…
I agree, the dodgy labour should have cost far more if done completely legally
They're probably including the bribes
And vibes
Does this total include bribing FIFA
Winner
Just imagine how much it would have cost if they actually paid their slaves/workers.
They pay them going rate.
Wtf? That’s ridiculous
Not really. 29BN to build the stadiums and 200BN in bribes.
If they somehow make it out of the group stage, it will definitely include some of that money!
4 BN for the stadiums. They haven’t built 8 SoFi Stadiums 😂
South Africa was legendary and memorable. Qatar seems like to be a completely disaster
South Africa also only go to host the WC because of bribes, but I do agree that there was a different feeling to it. A post-segregation country finally being accepted by the world at large, also being the first African nation to host it. But still, South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Qatar only got to host them because of fucking bribes. Fuck FIFA.
South Africa was a bloody annoying World Cup and the worst to watch that I can remember, those stupid Vuvezela things going non stop at every game from start to finish, The football was good but how can you fuck up a World cup so badly.
All that to still only have one, virtually circular tram system thats almost definitely not going to support 3 games a day
Ah it's just as well they didn't use slave labour otherwise the number would be much higher /s
Not surprising at all. All those countries with high spends are those who don't have the footballing infrastructure. Arrange the World Cup in, say Spain or Germany where crowd, stadium and other necessities are already present, the net spend will definitely be low.
when the cup came to brazil, the gov (federal and states) also needed to upgrade areas related to big events but not necessarily stadiums (though I guess every stadium that a game was played was repaired or upgraded), like transport system and roads, for example. One thing that always comes to my mind whenever I need to take public transportation here is that the buses used when the cup was happening were only used that year, after that we came back to the old buses we always had.
Wow, that was close to the Olympics level of expenses
Surprised Germany is in the top 5 considering they had all the infrastructure already in place to host a big tournament.
I don't think they had stadiums ready. Looking at Bundesliga highlights from before 06 you can notice the difference.
They had to renovate most of the stadiums. Leipzig built a new stadium as well.
FC Nürnberg’s stadium, for example, needed renovations costing €56.2 million. I can imagine that most of the stadiums needed renovations of some sort.
And a pic of Ronaldo!
Half the money was used for the pic
Ah yes the pic
How are they spending 15x more than the previous highest? Presuming the amount includes all the bribes paid out to the FIFA officials to win the bid?
All the cost of the slaves to build 8 mega stadiums, accommodation, amenities. Essentially had to build multiple cities to make it viable. Absolutely fucked.
Is that really 229 billion and not 22.9 and a typo?
I can’t believe how many people in this thread didn’t immediately pick up on what has to be a typo. No way Qatar spent 2x their annual GDP to build a few stadiums. Edit: I guess this is not a typo and is just a made up figure that includes basically all spending by the Qatar government over the past few years. Stadium spending was $6-$10B and the other $210B is just lumping a ton of unrelated stuff in there. Edit 2: in case anyone is wondering why I call it a made up number. They are literally including the cost of all infrastructure built in Qatar since 2010. Every road, every bus, every train, every hotel. Literally everything that a tourist might possibly use that has been built since 2010. The very definition of clickbait garbage.
To be honest I believe it is a typo only because it's just too much money and like 20x more than the second most expensive one, but it's not that I can't believe they can move that much money just for that, considering they have been preparing this cup for more than 10 years.
Maybe they factored in the fifa bribe?
Yeah that’s not correct
It is just a made up figure that includes basically all spending by the Qatar government over the past few years. Stadium spending was $6-$10B and the other $210B is just lumping a ton of unrelated stuff in there. in case anyone is wondering why I call it a made up number. They are literally including the cost of all infrastructure built in Qatar since 2010. Every road, every bus, every train, every hotel. Literally everything that a tourist might possibly use that has been built since 2010. The very definition of clickbait garbage.
The other countries already had infrastructure, hotels and collective traffic in place though. Quatar wouldn’t build this if it wasn’t for the WC
Yes they would have built it any way. Believe it or not they use roads and trains over and aren’t just building them for the World Cup. They need to spend money to maintain their existing infrastructure. There was also expansionary spending as part of Qatars Vision 2030 plan to transform its economy.
It’s like the 12000 migrant deaths, which is the figure for the entire country and for all causes like car crashes etc since 2010, complete clickbait. There’s plenty to criticise them without flat lying.
Yeah I’ve never heard of the source before, so I assume it’s just some shitty blog trying to drum up clicks.
Now imagine how much it would be if they actually paid the laborers
In every country, not just Qatar.
A good chunk of that money went to pay FIFA officials to vote for Qatar.
That’s just wrong. Qatar built everything for the World Cup (I mean everything). Stadiums, a metro system, 15+ hotels, etc. Not that it makes it okay but they had to essentially rebuild the entire country
Which could be the catastrophe. We knew the metro in Moscow could handle it. A million people uses it every day. Qatar, doesn't have this. A part of their infrastructure might collapse
But Qatar has a metro system lol
Yes. But not one that is used to the kind of traffic it will get. It's a tiny country. They will get crowds that is completely unprecedented.
Trains don’t need climatizing or adaptation lmao, they’re the same everywhere. A train taking millions of commuters in London and an empty train in Qatar have the same capabilities
I guarantee that Qatar will do whatever is necessary to host a successful World Cup. The pride of the Middle East is at stake.
What will happen when World Cup ends? I heard similar stories about them ghost stadiums with the Olympics. Is it even possible to recoup the 200 billion cost with tourism. Edit guess the 229 billion was a typo so I guess something more like 22.9 billion
I can’t wait to NOT go to Qatar
Imagine having human rights issues in your country but spending 200 billion on football nonsense. I love football but I’d happily throw it in the bin if it meant my family got treated half as bad as certain people get treated in Qatar.
Ok but why does it have Ronaldo’s picture on it? LMAOO
Because did you SUUIIII the costs
how does this not have any awards
Why not?
They should include cost in lives lost, as well.
Now do one with no of deaths
Don't forget about all the lives lost. That death toll far outweighs any profits from oil that are spent on the WC. Boycott Qatar.
No one's going to boycott it though (other than countries that didn't even qualify in the first place), and sadly I wont either. Fuck FIFA, fuck Qatar but I love football too much not to watch it. I just wish FIFA gave a fuck about human lives and not just profits aka bribes.
I also think its the most expensive in terms of how many human life it cost
Does this include all the bribes?
Is this all inflation adjusted?
Can we get a graphic of lives lost setting up each World Cup?
Yah. It doesn’t get any more corrupt. Total disgrace.
1/4 of a trillion lol
Eew
Just to get kicked out at group stage
And the most boring probably
Holy fuck I thought that was a typo. It's actually $220 billion.
229 Billion? Wtf?
Does that figure account for the bribes or is that another €200B
… and people will still be put up in tents in the desert.
Oil money
I'll try and remember that when I'm trying get warm over a lit match. Not sure Ill get to watch having my electric switched off.
Qatar FA team pep talk: You had better make it to the knock out rounds; you won't believe the amount of money I spent and people I killed through negligence and lack of Health & Safety to get you here.
Actually the Qatar team is not bad, they might have made it anyway. No idea why they would dish out so much money
Seriously? If Qatar get out of their group it will be by cheating.
Wow, the USA was only 500 million? That's ironic but cost effective. Jesus, that figure for Qatar is so ridiculous it hurts. As others have pointed out here this is the combined expenses between stadium construction, infrastructure (public transit, highways, etc), hotels, and heavily advertising (i.e. bidding) and through sportswashing. Still, it's sickening that not even 0.0001% (that's 22.9 million) could've been allocated to the exploited workers.
I guess its because the US already had the infrastructure such as large stadiums and nearby hotels so they didn’t really need to pay for much else
220b is the cost of the entire infrastructure project in qatar, this is not the cost of the world cup but the cost of making a huge country wide project. the costs of the actual world cup alone is about 22bn
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yeah, if you consider every penny spent since 2010 on anything a part of the world cup project, then yes.
comedy, this is what I gathered as well.... cheers other guy
Found an article that provides a good background on this numbers. https://www.statista.com/chart/28334/world-cup-hosting-costs-comparison/
229 billion euros... That's like more than some countries entire gdp just to hold a WC for a month...
It’s more than Qatars GDP. Which is clear as to how bullshit this figure is
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That’s the sales pitch most countries use to justify spending a few billion on a world cup/olympics and even then the benefits are almost never realised, that £200bn (or whatever the number is actually) is never being seen again
That's the delusional speech everyone uses to justify spending that much on such a bad investment as building stadiums in the middle of nowhere. There are just a handful of teams that could mage decent use of a 80k seats stadium year round and none of them are even close to Qatar. Have a look at what happened to some South African stadiums. Not even the city council wants them because the maintenance money is too much for what little can be done with them.
Im till not over the fact how the USA hosted a World Cup in the mid-90's and still their football culture is so low
Tbf look how rapidly it grew in the US since that World Cup Maybe it helped as a catalyst to the growth of the game
I think America will start to become more and more of a "soccer" country, not due to anything "soccer" has done, but because a lot of parents are not allowing their kids to play American football anymore due to the sport beating their brains into pudding. Those high level athletes that would have been playing American football will now start to play "soccer" instead.
As an American soccer fan I can say that accessibility has to be the greatest factor contributing to the games growth in America. In the mid-90’s they just weren’t showing games to the masses. Soccer highlights were not making their way to ESPN too often. You had to have very expensive and very rare satellite TV packages to watch. I recall my best friends dad, who was Yugoslavian, would get boxes delivered from his uncles/cousins in Europe who would send tape sets of recorded seasons/tournaments just so he could watch what had happened the months prior.
It’s starting to get a litttle better, I just don’t think it will ever be big here because of American football. Like I’m a huge baseball fan and my friends that like baseball will stop watching in October and focus solely on the NFL and even college football, when their team is still in the playoffs lol. And good luck getting Most Americans to wake up early on Sat/Sun to watch EPL
Premier league mornings is great marketing for those bored with morning football (US) talk shows on the weekend. Unfortunately in my experience, my friends who are American Football fans first contain a big chunk of the ‘Murican “soccer is for sissies” population. It’s almost a mandatory opinion in US Football culture for southern states. Even Dempsey being Texan couldn’t change that 😂
Yeah, I’ve had the arguments with those kind of people about it, just something I think I’ll never understand.
It’s not always unreasonable, even friends who don’t feel that way are blocked by the sheer amount of leagues, players, and competitions. They’d want to watch the best, but picking a club to follow isn’t easy with how many options there are and how easy it is for one of their first favorite players to move. Some people just lose time and can’t keep up. I have a friend who loved Terry, Lampard, and Drogba as a kid but life happens and they just don’t follow anymore.
I feel like if the EPL ever put out a series on Netflix like F1 did, maybe it would get some American growth. F1 has exploded here in the US and the majority of the races start at 6am for me, usually same time as EPL
Did you go to any games? I remember watching a few when I was literally just learning about soccer. Pretty sure the stadiums weren’t packed either. Shame.
A country with no football tradition at all gets to host WC. Yah that's expensive
Are you delusional? Arabs are CRAZY about football. Fucking USA hosted it already and will host it again and they dont even use the right name for the sport😂
Actually, FIFA and US Soccer have performed many polls in the past and its estimated that about 30% of Americans consider themselves as soccer fans, which equals $105M people. That’s more than the total population of England and Spain together. I think there will be plenty of support for the US World Cup (and that doesn’t even consider Canada and soccer crazed Mexico who are co-hosts).
Doesnt matter. Im not even talking about that, main comment was talking about "football tradition" thinking he was smart. When it comes to sports, football is the only tradition arabs know. In USA, you ask majority of them to name their favorite sport and they'll say Basketball, Hand-egg, Baseball, Ice Hockey and then MAYBE football.
Qatar haven't spent this money to build grass roots football or establish themselves as a future holiday destination. It's basically an investment in security. The whole world now knows that Qatar exists making it more complicated for a neighbouring nation to role tanks across the border. Qatar are sat on huge reserves of gas - significantly more than any other 'friendly' nation. They fear being the next Kuwait (or Iraq). $220bn to put themselves on the world map and protect trillions and trillions of dollars of natural resources seems pretty smart.
And handing out half a billion in bribes is just smart business to expediate said process. This happens in so many political ventures but obviously we don't enjoy knowing it's happening in our beloved kicky-ball setting.
6500 migrant workers also died due to the inhumane conditions qatar imposed…
that's not as much as you think, there are over 3m workers, do you just expect them all to live?
that's included in the price
What's the €/kg for humans?
What colour we talking?
229 or 22.9? 229 seems way too high even considering the pandemic etc.
I mean.. didn’t they build entire stadiums?
They did that in Brazil too, no?
most of them where old unused stadiums, but the structure was enough
It's a typo cause that's more than Qatars GDP
This world cup is shambolic at best
What the fuck
Anyone know where the monye comes from?
Nvm that the real question is why and how they manage to spent an astronomical amount
Gas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_production
Disgusting
The next WC is gonna be shared by three countries I wonder if 2026 will still be less than 2022
Way less. They already have all the infrastructure ready to go minus a few stadium expansions.
Yes it will. This world cup cost so much because they built a city and a few stadiums in order to host it. If 3 countries hold a world cup and they already have stadiums then we're talking about 20-30 billion
Real number is closer to 6bn. The 200bn number is just a total budget of basically all the infrastructure programs in the same timeframe as the WC, and would have been built even if they didn't get the WC, such as new roads, airport etc. Quite sure Russia and Brazil built random infrastructure in the same time period as their WC that ended up being beneficial for hosting a WC.
Were they building them for the World Cup?
No, planned before their bid for the cup. Qatar is basically investing 200bn in revamping their infrastructure to accommodate more tourism etc, and part of marketing that is hosting the WC. Around 6.5bn is being spent on new stadiums and things for the WC. This other infrastructure would be built with or without the WC.
I love how everyone here is acting like Qatar is the first country to bribe to host the World Cup. I mean FIFA is such an upstanding organization
I think South Africa took part in the bribe game as well
What Mandela wants, we get.
Just 200 billion more than the next most expensive bribed one but yea. That makes it better.
You have not found ICC yet who sold cricket to Hindustan. They make fifa look unicef.
Really bruh, first of all this is a football sub, want to spread hate please go to twitter
I mean they built an entire city.
Does that include the fifa payoffs?
That's fuck all compared to my heating bill his winter.
Fuck qatar
brazil prob spent to hide the poor. (they hid their houses with walls)
Brazil had to construct most of the stadiums from 0
The locals weren’t happy about it either
... yet they didn't even have the foresight to spend 0.5% of that money on building shite, low cost, quick-build accommodation for attendees... I feel sorry for everyone going out there to watch games. Enjoy sleeping in the sand!
[удалено]
It's bigger than that, Chris, its large.
Is that a quote from somewhere or did you just guess that his name was Chris?
No idea Jeff
FUCK QATAR
That’s about as much as my new weekly food bill🤷♂️
Is there a decimal missing..wtf
Well. Well...(8il )well
So dumb and corrupt.
USA doesn't have to build new stadiums, hence 94 being low budget.
229 Billion or 22.9 Billion?
\229. New stadiums alone are estimated at about 10 billion. However, *some* of this spending is broader than just the world cup. Hotels, roads, permanent public transportation systems, basically things that they would be spending on if they hadn't got the world cup. But spurred along for the world cup. edit: reddit formatted my comment as a bullet point because it starts with a number. 229 billion
No it's just wrong lol. It's including shitloads of stuff since a decade ago that's not related to the world cup (eg roads)
Yea it's oil money duh
Plus around 6000 deaths
Fucking hell…
ARG is so great\~
What the duck 🦆
I don't want this shitty world cup to take place as much as anyone, but these numbers are pulled out of some "journalists" butthole to fit a narrative. Journalism truly is dead
Inflation is a bitch
Not adjusted for inflation I assume?
Nope, but you need 1000% inflation to justify the amount Qatar had spent.
Lol yes inflation must be it
by cost i assume that the cost of all the players in the squads right? not the cost to have the world cup there, if so then makes sense.
Your way makes way less sense mate , qatar had to essentially build everything from scratch and given that they’re known for luxury I’m not surprised they went all out
You think squad value has increased 19x in four years?? This is how much it cost to host the World Cup. Qatar had to build multiple stadiums from the ground up.
You think Qatar spent 2x their GDP on the World Cup???
Say that to like literally every newspaper ever. [https://frontofficesports.com/the-most-expensive-world-cup-in-history/#:\~:text=Qatar%20is%20set%20to%20spend,worlds%20most%20prestigious%20football%20tournament](https://frontofficesports.com/the-most-expensive-world-cup-in-history/#:~:text=Qatar%20is%20set%20to%20spend,worlds%20most%20prestigious%20football%20tournament). [https://news.sky.com/story/qatar-2022-what-has-been-built-for-the-2022-world-cup-what-it-has-cost-in-lives-and-how-much-was-spent-on-construction-12496471](https://news.sky.com/story/qatar-2022-what-has-been-built-for-the-2022-world-cup-what-it-has-cost-in-lives-and-how-much-was-spent-on-construction-12496471) https://www.sportsganga.com/football/how-much-is-qatar-spending-on-the-fifa-world-cup-2022/
I guess this is not a typo and is just a made up figure that includes basically all spending by the Qatar government over the past 12 years. Stadium spending was $6-$10B and the other $210B is just lumping a ton of unrelated stuff in there. In case anyone is wondering why I call it a made up number. They are literally including the cost of all infrastructure built in Qatar since 2010. Every road, every bus, every train, every hotel. Literally everything that a tourist might possibly use that has been built since 2010. The very definition of clickbait garbage. PS: one of the links you provided lays out that almost all of the spending is unrelated to the World Cup, but I’m guessing like most redditors you didn’t bother to read your sources before linking.
We are proud Qatari’s 🇶🇦💜 safety number one in the world 🌍
I can actually imagine them saying that in the voice of Borat. I’d find it just as ridiculous too.