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What Qatar Built for the Most Expensive World Cup Ever

Story by Simone Foxman and Adveith Nair
Graphics by Sam Dodge
November 18, 2022 at 5:00 AM CST

The 2022 football World Cup gets underway Sunday, with hosts Qatar taking on Ecuador. In the 12 years since the tiny gas-rich country was awarded rights to the event, it has spent $300 billion preparing for kickoff. Doha has been transformed, with the capital now dotted with new stadiums and hotels built to accommodate more than a million fans over the next month.

The tournament is the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East, in many ways the culmination of the wider region’s grand ambitions in the world of sports. Qatar and its wealthy neighbors have plowed billions of dollars into major European football clubs, the region will host four Formula 1 races next year, and the Saudi-backed LIV tour aims to dominate professional golf.

A tournament of many firsts, Qatar 2022 has been accompanied by controversy from the beginning. There have been concerns over Qatar’s record on policies that limit rights of women and LGBTQ people and its treatment of migrant laborers. The government’s claim of hosting a carbon-neutral World Cup has been discredited. On top of the disruption of shifting away from the traditional summer time slot, there was a last-minute change to the schedule.

All told, the tournament is still expected to deliver record revenue for organizers FIFA and top the roughly $5.4 billion that the 2018 World Cup in Russia generated for football’s governing body. About 3.6 billion watched the last World Cup and billions are set to tune in to this edition.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-what-qatar-built-for-the-world-cup/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&leadSource=uverify%20wall