Qatar’s Global Sports Strategy: Soft Power and the 2022 World Cup

Abstract

When seeking out an example of how sport and politics intertwine, few case studies compare to that of Qatar and its acquisition of the rights to stage the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals. As we go on to show in this chapter, Qatar’s use of sport seeks to serve specific emerging- and small-state objectives, a key part of which centres on the desire to showcase the country to the world, and, in doing so, exercise soft power on the global stage. As arguably the quintessential example of sports-soft disempowerment, however, in a multitude of ways—which we discuss here—Qatar’s attempts through sport have significantly backfired, leading to severe international critique over its social policies and laws at home, which, in turn, led to the fall of ex-FIFA President Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter after 17 years at the head of football’s world governing body.

Full text

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(ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT)
This is the Author's Original Manuscript in its final and definitive form. The Version of Record can
be found via the following reference:
Grix, J., Brannagan, P. M., & Lee, D. (2019). Qatar’s Global Sports Strategy: Soft Power and the 2022
World Cup. In Grix, J., Brannagan, P. M., & Lee, D. Entering the Global Arena: emerging states, soft
power strategies and sports mega-events (pp. 97-110). Palgrave Pivot: Singapore.
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Chapter 8: Qatar’s Global Sports Strategy: soft power and the 2022
World Cup
Abstract: When seeking out an example of how sport and politics intertwine, few case studies
compare to that of Qatar and its acquisition of the rights to stage the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals.
As we go on to show in this chapter, Qatar’s use of sport seeks to serve specific emerging- and
small-state objectives, a key part of which centres on the desire to showcase the country to the
world, and, in doing so, exercise soft power on the global stage. As arguably the quintessential
example of sports-soft disempowerment, however, in a multitude of ways – which we discuss here
- Qatar’s attempts through sport have significantly backfired, leading to severe international
critique over its social policies and laws at home, which, in turn, led to the fall of ex-FIFA President
Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter after 17 years at the head of football’s world governing body.
Keywords: FIFA * Soft Disempowerment * Small State Politics
Qatar is, in many ways, an outlier to the other case studies presented in this volume. Russia, India,
Brazil, China and South Africa are, of course, all what we might call ‘medium’ or ‘large’ states.
Qatar, in contrast, is what we would most certainly refer to as a ‘small state’. Furthermore, unlike
our other case studies, Qatar is somewhat of a ‘new kid on the block’ when it comes to sport – it
has a very limited history of competing in the Olympic Games, and has never made it to a World
Cup finals. Despite this, however, and as we discuss in subsequent sections, off the field the state
is arguably one of the most active sporting countries in the world, evident through its insatiable
appetite for acquiring and staging sport events, or via its multitude of sport investments and
sponsorships overseas. In short, the State of Qatar provides a compelling case study for the
examination of state-driven sport politics.
The State of Qatar: a background
The State of Qatar (henceforth Qatar) is a sovereign Arab country, situated on the Persian
peninsula of the Arabian Gulf. Up until 1971 Qatar was as a British protectorate state, and since
gaining its full independence has been ruled as an absolute monarchy. The state is a member of
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a union consisting of neighbouring countries (Bahrain,
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E and Oman) with the objective to create a fast-paced and stable
environment for regional development. Qatar is one of the world’s smallest states: latest figures
suggest the country’s total population stands at just 2.6 million inhabitants, with 88% of this figure
being comprised solely of foreign workers, the majority of whom hail from some of the poorest
areas of India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Nepal (Qatar Ministry of Development Planning

and Statistics, ‘total population’; Snoj, 2017). Nonetheless, despite its size, Qatar is one of the
world’s wealthiest countries: following the discovery of offshore oil and gas fields in the 1970s,
Qatar has gone on to become one of the world’s largest producers of crude oil, and the leading
exporter of liquefied natural gas (CNN, 4 July, 2017). Its latest GDP per capita estimate stands at
$127,532, more than double that of Switzerland ($62,882), the United States ($57,467), and Saudi
Arabia ($54,431) (World Bank, 2016).
Alongside neighbouring counties such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E),
exceptional wealth has permitted Qatar two unique opportunities. The first is to repel any serious
calls for wider democratic participation through its ability to maintain a ‘rentier state’, authoritarian
form of politics: that is, the offering of generous government subsidies to one’s citizenry - accrued
from the sale of natural resources - in exchange for political allegiance (see: Giddens and Sutton,
2013; Beblawi and Luciani, 2015). Through this, the state institutes a comprehensive welfare
system through which it attends to the basic needs of its national citizens from cradle to grave
(Rathmell and Schulze, 2006). Second, Qatar has been able to initiate far greater levels of progress
and modernization than most Middle Eastern countries (Fox et al., 2006), a process that largely
began in 1995 when the previous Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, seized power in a peaceful
coup d’état against his father (Kamrava, 2009). Now under the leadership of his son, Tamin bin
Hamad Al Thani, who was handed power by his father in 2013, Qatar continues to heavily invest
its natural resource wealth towards a project of growth and prosperity. The state’s long-term
strategic plan - the ‘2030 National Vision’ - sets out the leaderships’ ambition to transform Qatar
into ‘an advanced country by 2030, capable of sustaining its own development and providing for
a high standard of living for all of its people’ (Qatar General Secretariat, 2008: 2).
On the domestic front, the result of these ambitions is that Qatar has radically transformed from
a poor, nomadic state into a wealthy settled one in a matter of decades (Peterson, 2006). Qatari
citizens, who number just under 300,000, have over the course of one generation gone from being
almost reduced to starvation by the collapse of the state’s once dominant pearl fishing market, to
living in air-conditioned, modern and luxurious compound’s, surrounded by five-star hotels, malls
and leading American universities (Fromherz, 2012). Furthermore, the capital city, Doha, has
almost overnight been upgraded from a small port town into an internationally-recognized,
modern global city (Bagaeen, 2007).
Away from home, Qatar has heavily invested its natural resource wealth into several projects
which, in-part, look to position the state as an emerging and vital actor in international affairs (see:

Brannagan and Giulianotti, 2018). In media, the Doha-based network, Al Jazeera, for instance, was
the Middle East’s first 24-hour news channel, and today is the only pan-Arab broadcaster to rival
some of the globe’s major global news corporations, such as the BBC and CNN (Khatib, 2013).
Then there is Qatar’s lucrative overseas investments, made primarily through its sovereign wealth
fund, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Establishment in 2005, notable QIA acquisitions
have included: Harrods, Barclays, Miramax Films, Royal Dutch Shell, J Sainsbury, Porsche, the
Canary Wharf Group, International Airlines Group (the parent company of British Airways) and
Heathrow Airport (Forbes, 29 September, 2015; The Telegraph, 17 March, 2017). Finally are Qatar’s
humanitarian and mediation efforts abroad: after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Qatar donated $100
million to help rebuild key infrastructure across New Orleans (New York Times, 30 April, 2008),
and in 2011 Qatar played a key role in rallying Arab backing for the NATO-led campaign to oust
ex-Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi (Foreign Policy, 30 September, 2014).
In the next section, we focus on how Qatar’s endeavours through global sport seek to compliment
these transnational pursuits, and add to the state’s desired image as an ambitious and crucial global
player.
Qatar’s International Strategy through Global Sport
As is the case with many of the emerging economies in this volume, we suggest that Qatar is a
serial user of sports events (Black, 2014). For example, as Table 7.1 demonstrates, between 2004
and 2022 alone Qatar will have staged a total of twenty-four first- and second-order tournaments.
These more sporadic occasions are accompanied by Qatar’s annual staging of the Professional
Golfer’s Association’s (PGA) European Tour, the Association of Tennis Professionals’ (ATP)
World Tour, and the Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme’s (FIM) World Championships.
Additionally, Qatar has also previously staged the Women’s Tennis Association’s (WTA) Tour
Championships (2008 to 2010), the Federation Internationale de Volleyball’s (FIVB) Club World
Championships (2009 to 2012), and the Italian Super Cup (2014).
Event
Year Hosted
Asian Handball Championships
2004
ITTF World Table Tennis Championships
2004
Gulf Cup of Nations
2004
Asian Basketball Championships
2005
World Weightlifting Championships
2005
West Asian Games
2005
Asian Sailing Championships
2006
Asian Games
2006
Asian Indoor Athletics Championships
2008

Asian Optimist Sailing Championships
2009
Asian Fencing Championships
2009
ISF World Gymnasiade
2009
IAAF World Indoor Championships
2010
ISAF World Junior Sailing Championships
2010
AFC Asian Football Cup
2011
Pan Arab Games
2011
ASC Asian Shooting Championships
2012
FINA Short Course World Championships
2014
INF World Handball Championships
2015
AIBA World Amateur Boxing Championships
2015
UCI World Cycling Championships
2016
FIG Artistic World Gymnastics Championships
2018
IAAF World Championships
2019
2022 FIFA World Cup
2022
Table 7.1: Sports Mega-Events Hosted in Qatar from 2004 to 2022
In pinpointing how Qatar’s leadership seeks to use sport for achieving specific international
objectives, we may return to our soft power package (Figure 2).
1
Given that Qatar has yet to stage
the 2022 World Cup, here we divulge the state’s hoped-for outcomes through the staging of first-
and second-order sports events, as well as the country’s broader international strategy through
sport. As the below shows, on culture, a key strategy for Qatar’s leadership lies in the desire to
distance the state from its more hostile neighbours, and in doing so, position itself as a stable Gulf
state (Brannagan and Rookwood, 2016). Although Qatar itself has not experienced the kind of
outright conflict found in some parts of the Middle East or the ‘Greater Middle East’, such as in
Iraq or Afghanistan, its relative close proximity to these countries can come to significantly and
negatively impact its global image. This process is commonly referred to as the ‘neighbourhood
effect’ (see Steiner, 2010, 729), and can come to severely damage a state’s foreign direct investment
and tourism potential. For Qatari foreign policy-makers, one way to overcome this
‘neighbourhood effect’ is through the hosting of first- and second-order sports mega-events. These
major international events do, of course, reach a wide-ranging audience, and thus can be used to
educate foreign publics on Qatar’s difference from some of its more volatile regional counterparts.
1
The findings presented in figure 2 have emerged from document analysis and semi-structured interviews conducted
by one of the authors with officials located within Qatar’s sport and foreign policy sectors as part of a recently
completed PhD.

Figure 7.1: Qatar’s Soft Power Package
Closely aligned to the aforementioned strategy lies the second objective: to showcase Qatar’s
cultural features abroad for the pursuit of long-term tourism. According to the World Bank, in
2014, out of the 1.16 billion people who travelled the globe, Qatar welcomed a mere 2.8 million
tourists to its shores, compared to Saudi Arabia’s 18.2 million, and the U.A.E.’s 7.1 million. Picking
up on this, the World Travel and Tourism (WTTC) Council estimated Qatar’s total tourism
contribution to national GDP in 2014 was $10.9 billion, one-third that of the U.A.E, and one-fifth
that of Saudi Arabia (WTTC Report, 2015). In seeking to boost its tourist intake, in 2000 the Qatar
Tourism Authority (QTA) was established. Its underlying purpose is ‘to promote Qatar both
regionally and internationally as a quality destination for both business events and leisure travel,
including cultural, leisure, sports and educational tourism’ (Qatar Tourism Authority, n.d.).
According to the strategy, hosting sports events such as the 2022 World Cup are intended to attract
‘sport enthusiasts [who] can expect to enjoy the experience of a lifetime in Qatar’ (Qatar National
Tourism Sector Strategy Q&A, n.d, 13), as well as - and most ‘importantly’ - to ‘introduce Qatar
to more people around the world…helping them discover what the country has to offer and
further tempting them to visit’ (ibid., 17).
The third strategy lies in the desire to raise awareness of Qatar’s various achievements and, in
doing so, position the state in the minds of international audiences alongside notions of excellence,
admiration and leadership. Building on its success as the smallest and first-ever Middle Eastern
state to win the rights to stage a first-order sports event, further attempts here include the desire
to attach Qatar’s name - and the names of its successful organizations - to world-renowned and

prestigious sports competitions and clubs. For example, the Qatar Racing and Equestrian Club
(QREC) is the main sponsor of two of the world’s most prestigious horse races, the Prix de l’Arc
de Triomphe and the Glorious Goodwood Festival (New York Times, 16 June, 2014; BBC, 22
December, 2014); in 2014, the Qatar Investments and Projects Development Holding Company
(Qipco) become the core sponsor of the esteemed Royal Ascot – the first ever commercial deal in
the tournament’s 303 year history (Financial Times, 16 June, 2014); and a year later, Qipco signed a
£50 million sponsorship agreement with the British Champions’ Series – the largest ever
commercial deal in British racing history (BBC, 11 June, 2015). Then there is the sponsorship of
the FC Barcelona shirt, first by the Qatar Foundation and later by Qatar Airways (BBC, 12
November, 2014).
Aligned to this is Qatar’s desire to demonstrate its on-field excellence, efficiency and expertise. A
key resource in this regard is the Aspire Zone and Aspire Academy for Sports Excellence. The
former, which in recent years has attracted leading elite professional athletes and teams from across
the globe - such as renowned football clubs, Manchester United and Bayern Munich, as well British
distance runner, Mo Farah - is a state-of-the-art, 250-hectare sports complex, with facilities that
include a 50,000-all-seater football stadium, two five-star hotels, the only FIFA Medical Centre of
Excellence in the Middle East (‘ASPETAR’) and the world’s largest indoor multi-purpose dome
(Brannagan and Giulianotti, 2015). The latter is the state’s elite talent development programme,
with the underlying mandate to effectively overcome the challenge of converting its relatively small
populace into highly successful future athletic professionals (Aspire Academy, ‘overview’, n.d.); in
assisting this goal, and in looking ahead to Qatar’s performance during the 2022 World Cup, in
2012 Aspire purchased Belgian First Division football club, KAS Eupen, to act as a feeder club
for academy trainees in order to maximize their competitive athletic experience and development
(The Guardian, 18 November, 2013).
A fourth strategy relates to Qatar’s desire to invest in sport-for-humanitarianism. Key here is the
desire to position Qatar as a ‘good global citizen’ in the eyes of international audiences, as a country
who seeks to be involved and invest in attractive causes which extend beyond its borders. One
resource here is the state’s not-for-profit International Centre for Sports Security (ICSS). Established in
2010, the Centre, in seeking to become a ‘global hub of expertise’, was set up with the clear
objective ‘to improve security, safety and integrity in sport by addressing real issues and providing
world-leading services, skills, networks and knowledge’ (ICSS Securing Sport Report, n.d, 3). A
further resource in this regard lies in Qatar’s hosting of various conferences and forums, which,
in-part, also look to position the state as a global knowledge and expertise hub for sport and the

staging of sports events. Examples here include: the annually-held Aspire4Sport Exhibition, which
invites the world’s leading sports experts to share best practice knowledge around youth
development, event organization and athletic performance (cf. Aspire4Sport Post-Show Report,
2015); the ICSS’s ‘Securing Sport Symposium’, an annually-hosted event which acts as a platform
for international policy-makers to advance global knowledge on the safeguarding of the security,
protection and integrity of sport; and the Doha GOALS Forum, considered to be the ‘world’s
premier platform for world leaders to create initiatives for global progress through sport’ (Doha
Goals, n.d.).
The final strategy relates to the state’s desire to seek out and take advantage of various overseas
sports investment opportunities as part of the Qatari leadership’s broader attempts to create a
more diversified economy, and thus move away from the country’s heavy reliance on the sale of
dwindling oil reserves. One way this is achieved is through the procurement of sporting properties:
an example here would be the Qatar Sports Investment’s purchase in 2011, and full acquisition in
2012, of French Ligue 1 club, Paris Saint-Germain, for an estimated €100 million (Financial Times,
28 March, 2014; Doha News, 7 March, 2012). In seeking to transform PSG into a ‘€1 billion’ brand,
the QSI has broken several Ligue 1 and world transfer records by investing millions into the
acquisition of some of the world’s most renowned football talent, the most notable of which is the
Brazilian forward, Neymar, who shattered all previous transfers sums when moving from FC
Barcelona in 2017 for £200 million (Financial Times, 28 March, 2014; The Independent, 3 August,
2017).
A further resource in this regard is the state-owned Qatari Diar’s 2011 purchase - in collaboration
with British property developer Delancey Estates - of the London 2012 Olympic Village for £557
million. Qatar’s goal here is to convert much of the athletes’ housing and surrounding area into
luxury rented apartments, as well as various public bars and restaurants (The Guardian, 12 August,
2011). Additionally, we can also point here to the Al Jazeera subsidiary, beIN Sports. Run by QSI
and PSG Chairman, Nasser al-Khelaifi, since its establishment in 2003 (then known as Al Jazeera
Sport), beIN has sought to challenge multiple established media corporations in acquiring the
rights to sports competitions all over the world; in 2010 beIN competed with Canal Plus to secure
several rights to broadcast across France live games from Ligue 1, Ligue 2, UEFA Champions
League, UEFA Europa League, the English FA Cup and La Liga (cf. Reuters, 2 April, 2012; The
Guardian, 3 April, 2014); in the US, beIN airs live football from English, Spanish, French and
Italian leagues, as well as covering U.S.A World Cup qualifying games (New York Times, 30 August,
2012); and in 2015 beIN won the Middle East and North African rights to broadcast the 2018 and

2022 Winter Olympic Games and the 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympic Games (IOC, 27 July,
2015).
Nonetheless, as we have we have argued throughout this book, states’ ambitious objectives
through sport and sports mega-events do, in many cases, fail to live up to their projected
expectations. In the case of Qatar, we can point, for example, to the way its desire to use sport to
project a positive international image of itself has, to-date, largely backfired. The leadership’s intent
to use sport to showcase acts of humanitarianism and benevolence abroad have, for instance,
arguably been repressed by the ‘international outcry’ over the country’s human rights violations,
highlighted by various media and non-governmental organizations since the state’s awarding of
the 2022 World Cup in 2010 (The Guardian, 1 June, 2014). Broadcast to the world through a series
of investigations in 2013 and 2014 by British newspaper, The Guardian, it was revealed how many
of Qatar’s South Asian construction workers - the majority of whom hail from some of the poorest
parts of India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan - faced daily cases of exploitation, abuse, lack of pay,
little access to food and free drinking water, and the seizing of passports, equating to forms of
‘modern-day slavery’, and a clear illustration of ‘one of the richest nations exploiting one of the
poorest to get ready for the world’s most popular sporting tournament’ (The Guardian, 25
September, 2013). Such conditions have, it is claimed, led to ‘thousands’ of workers dying on
World Cup-related projects across Qatar (Huffington Post, 3 June, 2015). This has led to numerous
commentators suggesting Qatar should be stripped of the 22FWC: Sharan Burrow, General
Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, for instance, has previously proclaimed
that ‘FIFA needs to send a very strong and clear message to Qatar that it will not allow the World
Cup to be delivered on the back of a system of modern slavery’ (The Guardian, 26th September
2013).
Furthermore, we can suggest the state’s desire to position itself as a global hub for sports expertise,
efficiency and excellence has been overshadowed by accusations of bribery and corruption
surrounding the 2022 World Cup, which has arguably instead situated the state in the minds of
international audiences as one who resorts to cheating in the quest for excellence and victory (see:
Brannagan and Giulianotti, 2018). Broadcast to the world by UK-based newspaper, The Sunday
Times, it has been claimed Qatar unfairly acquired the rights to host the 22FWC via a series of
undisclosed payments-in-kind to various political and sporting officials (Sunday Times, 1 June, 2014;
12 April, 2015). Most notable here has been the purported role of Qatari-born and former Asian
Football Confederation President and FIFA Executive Committee member, Mohammed bin
Hammam, who, it is claimed, used multiple slush funds to pay in excess of £3 million to FIFA

officials to ensure Qatar won the rights to the 22FWC (The Sunday Times, 24 November 2014; 19
April 2015). The result is that, as opposed to talk of Qatar’s achievements - such as being the
smallest and only Middle Eastern state to be entrusted with staging a first-order sports event -
being met by others with admiration, they have instead been met with a sincere amount of
suspicion.
Finally, we may suggest Qatar’s desire to use sport to project itself as a safe and attractive tourist
destination has also largely backfired. This has manifest through, first, concerns expressed over
Qatar’s climate. With average temperatures in Qatar ranging from 30-40°C in the hottest months,
continuous questions have been raised by international audiences over the potential dangers posed
to players and fans during the country’s staging of the World Cup (cf. The Sun, 22 July, 2011).
FIFA’s own Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jiri Dvorak, for example, proclaimed a July-August
World Cup in Qatar would equate to a ‘highly critical risk’ to those expected to travel to the state
in 2022 (The Guardian, 3 Nov, 2014). Although in 2015 such concerns resulted in FIFA moving
the tournament to the cooler months of November and December, the drama surrounding the
state’s climate has arguably forced many onlookers to seriously question Qatar’s suitability as an
appealing summer holiday destination (New York Times, 18 March, 2015). Furthermore in this
regard has been the 2017 blockade of Qatar by the coalition of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and
the U.A.E, which has done little for the state’s desire to promote itself as a stable country. The
catalyst for the blockade, it is argued, centres on Qatar’s purported continued support of the
Muslim Brotherhood and other ‘extreme Islamist’ groups such as the Hamas Movement, as well
as the it’s growing ties to regional rival, Iran (Al Jazeera, 13 September 2017).
Concluding remarks
The chapter set-out to provides readers with a nuanced account of the State of Qatar’s socio-
political intentions through the use of sport and sports events. The results remind us that the
staging of major events such as a FIFA World Cup or Summer Olympic Games can have
significant negative effects for a state’s soft power, leading to forms of ‘soft disempowerment’.
The case study of the State of Qatar demonstrates this, perhaps more than most; indeed, as we
have seen in this chapter, many of the state’s intended objectives through global sport and the
staging of sport events have had the opposite desired effect on the country’s international image
and soft power portfolio. Looking ahead to the 2022 World Cup, the country’s soft power will
now depend on how successfully Qatar organises and stages the tournament, as well as how

effective it will be in meaningfully addressing many of the criticisms levied towards it by
international onlookers and organizations.

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