White Elephant

When it comes to hosting the FIFA (football) World Cup, countries are usually falling over themselves to own, as per this article by Ravi Dev, the white elephant. Hosting a World Cup is very expensive. For not so rich countries, the sums involved are enough “to completely transform a (host) country’s political and economic agenda”! Take “Brazil’s over-budget World Cup”, says Dev: it’s estimated to cost more than $13.5 billion, the most expensive World Cup till date. Now consider that Brazil is similar to India in terms of how well off it is, and you’d wonder whether that money would have been better spent on, I don’t know, roads or hospitals or schools?

Or consider the weird case of selecting Qatar as the venue for 2022. The estimates there would blow you away: $200 billion! Why the astronomical sum, you wonder? The venue for the final, Lusail, is a city that is yet to be built! No, not a typo: the city is going to be built for the World Cup and will cost $45 billion.

Why FIFA chose Qatar is even more strange given that World Cups are hosted in summer, when most of the professional leagues are off. But playing in the desert heat in summer? Is FIFA crazy? What were they thinking? In case you’re wondering, moving it to winter isn’t easy: the football leagues of England, Spain and every other European country would be up in arms protesting the clash with their schedules.

And some of FIFA’s demands (on any host country, not just Qatar) are just insane: like having 8 stadiums with 40,000 capacity. Does Qatar even have 320,000 citizens who want to watch football after the World Cup in those stadiums? What a colossal waste! Some of the stadiums of the 2010 host, South Africa, are still bleeding money.

If this is the case, why do countries still vie for the “honour” of playing host? I guess I am missing something, but I just can’t see what.

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