[Text/Observer Network columnist Tokamak Crown]
The World Cup has begun, and for countless real and pseudo-fans, sleepless nights have begun; For brewers and advertising producers, the time for the big profit market has begun; For those who gamble, the time of great joy and sorrow begins...
But today we are not talking about football games, but about issues that are off-course but closely related to the stadium.
Before we get into the discussion, let's establish two simple basic common senses: there is a cost to doing things; Resources are not unlimited.
Once common sense has been established, a discussion can begin.
"Trench"
This World Cup may be called the most controversial World Cup ever.
This kind of controversy is very different from the controversy of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup in terms of sources - the controversy of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup is mainly related to the cleanliness of the field, especially the whistle problem, almost anyone who knows a little football can scold two sentences, and the controversy of this World Cup is mainly in cost.
The Qatar World Cup has set several records, one of which is impressive – it is by far the most expensive World Cup.
Since winning the right to host the World Cup in 2010, Qatar has spent no less than US$229 billion on the construction of 7 stadiums and renovated 1 stadium in the 12-year preparatory process. Investing more than $30 billion in the new Doha Metro to connect the city to the arena, and using driverless technology that seemed stunning at the time; In order to accommodate more flights, the new Hamad International Airport was built with an investment of 16 billion US dollars, which has a terminal area of more than 588,000 square meters, 41 near-aircraft slots, a designed annual passenger throughput of 58 million person-times, a cargo throughput of 2 million tons, and 320,000 aircraft takeoffs and landings, which is a 4F military-civilian joint international airport.
In addition, in order to provide supporting facilities and services for the reception of the World Cup, the village of Lucer, where the main venue of the Qatar World Cup, is located at the Lusail Stadium, was rebuilt into Lucerle City. Based on the principle of daring to compete with Saudi Arabia and not ceding an inch to Dubai, all infrastructure and supporting facilities are built according to the most luxurious and advanced standards, and even a weather control system will be installed throughout the city to improve the local climate to some extent.
Source: Shandong TV Sports Channel
In addition to these luxury consumption, Qatar in order to welcome the public fans with less generous economic conditions, has also prepared a series of affordable tourist reception facilities, advocating a variety of accommodation methods to relieve the pressure of reception - after all, more than 1 million tourists poured into Qatar during the World Cup, they can't all stay in luxury hotels with thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a night, many South American fans save four years to watch a World Cup live, the game is like a pilgrimage for them. Therefore, luxury cruise hotels from container hotels and hotel-grade desert tents to "Europa", "Poetry" and "Opera" are also involved in this reception feast.
Qatar's long-term thinking
The reason why Qatar has invested such huge financial, human and material resources for an event, in addition to meeting the reception needs of tourists during the World Cup, is to use this as an opportunity to realize the modernization of the country and the transformation of its economic structure.
Qatar is very rich, there is no doubt about that. As a member of the Gulf oil producers, Qatar is not large, but it has a staggering oil wealth - Qatar's oil production is about 1.5 million barrels per day, and most of it is light high-quality crude oil, which is not a large number in itself, but considering that the real Qataris are only about 310,000, its wealth is relatively considerable.
Qatar itself is one of the world's best natural gas suppliers, with proven natural gas reserves of 25 trillion cubic meters, stable and pressure-rich gas layers, and the lowest cost in the world to extract natural gas. Sinopec signed a 27-year long-term LNG purchase and sale agreement with Qatar Energy.
However, just like the problems faced by most resource-based economies, Qatar inevitably faces several common problems faced by resource-based economies, such as a single economic structure, economic conditions seriously affected by commodity price fluctuations and surrounding geopolitical conditions, rigid social forms, and poor ability to resist risks.
In addition, Qatar's opposition to one-sided and irrational hostility towards Iran led to a diplomatic crisis in 2017, when many countries, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Maldives, and Chad, broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar that year. Qatar, as an energy exporter, withdrew from OPEC in 2018 for various reasons.
In order to solve this series of economic, social and diplomatic problems, especially as it tries to escape the resource curse, Qatar has been trying to explore other directions for economic and social development.
For example, the famous Al Jazeera, a professional news outlet founded in 1996, has long exerted an influence disproportionate to its size. With its ability to directly reach and interview various armed personnel and its bold reporting style, Al Jazeera has made a name for itself in the midst of successive wars in the Middle East, becoming one of the most recognizable world-class media platforms and making the media industry a new calling card for Qatar.
Having been immersed in the media industry for a long time, Qatar has long been exposed to the public around the world, and is well aware of the traditional stereotype of the rest of the world about the Gulf energy exporters – the Gulf states always seem to mean oil and the vast wealth it brings, and then the flamboyant and extravagant lifestyles shaped by it. This stereotype of "rich man" is by no means all good for Qatar, so Qatar also intends to show an open and modern social image to the world through this World Cup.
At the same time, it is also an important opportunity for Qatar to gradually resolve the follow-up issues arising from the diplomatic crisis in 2017. For example, at the opening ceremony of the World Cup, FIFA President Infantino, Qatari Emir Tamim, and Saudi Arabia's real power Crown Prince Salman attended the opening ceremony and talked happily. In March this year, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed Mohammed visited Cairo, the capital of Egypt, and held talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Shoukairi. These two events are seen as major breakthroughs in Qatar's breaking diplomatic isolation.
The King of Qatar (second from left) speaks at the opening ceremony, as Infantino (second from right) and Salman (first from right) sit side by side
In essence, Qatar is an opportunity to turn this World Cup into a major leap forward in its economic and social development and achieve the "National Vision 2030". Therefore, it is not so much that Qatar is spending money to host the World Cup, but that Qatar is investing in its own future, and it also has a bit of courage to "fight here".
Is it worth it to host the event as funding continues to rise?
The author does not comment on whether Qatar's huge investment can achieve the expected results.
It should be pointed out that the preparation funds for this World Cup, even for a rich country like Qatar, are very large, and the pressure on its economy is not easy, and it is by no means as some people claim that "Qatar has money, just throw it away."
After all, no matter how rich the oil wealth is, Qatar is a small country after all, with a land area of 11,521 square kilometers, which is even slightly smaller than Tianjin (11,966 square kilometers); Although GDP per capita reached a sizable high of $77,136 in 2019, its total GDP in 2021 was only $179.571 billion, and the $229 billion in investment far exceeded its total GDP in one year.
In addition, Qatar planned and prepared for the World Cup in 2010, when its GDP was $125.122 billion. At that time, Qatar made an investment deployment that almost twice the size of its GDP, which was very advanced.
Qatar's economy has been growing along with the strong demand for bulk energy products in the world market, and the whole country is optimistic about the future global economic trend; In 2014, its economy reached an all-time high of US$206.225 billion, but then due to the deterioration of the global economic environment and falling energy prices, Qatar's economy fell all the way, falling to a low of US$151.732 billion in 2016, and then after several years of restorative growth and several shocks, it barely reached the current level.
To say that such a huge scale of investment is a heavy weight, not to mention that the global economy is still in a downward trend, and landlords may not have enough surplus food.
The author has listed such a large number of boring figures to put forward these views for readers to discuss, that is, the current model of holding large-scale international sports events based on huge investment in human society is not sustainable in the long run, and whether too strong commercialization characteristics are conducive to the healthy development of sports competition is probably quite debatable.
Looking back at history, we will find that the scale of investment in the preparation of the World Cup has been climbing almost constantly:
At the 1994 World Cup in the United States, the total investment was only $600 million, which is not high even after accounting for inflation;
However, by the turn of the century, the World Cup in France (1998) and the World Cup in Korea and Japan (2002), the investment scale of the World Cup quickly climbed to about $3 billion and $8 billion - Japan and South Korea each exceeded the total size of the World Cup in France;
By the 2006 World Cup in Germany and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, investment declined to $4.8 billion and $3.9 billion, respectively, but by the time of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the 2018 World Cup in Russia, investment soared to $15.6 billion and $14 billion.
Among them, the huge investment of 15.6 billion US dollars in the World Cup in Brazil not only failed to bring the expected high commercial returns and boost local economic growth, but also saddled the Brazilian government with heavy debt, which became one of the reasons for the collapse of the Rousseff government at that time. To this day, Brazil has not been able to completely heal the mess left by the huge investment of the time.
While the scale of investment in the next World Cup is unlikely to be as exaggerated as Qatar's, overall the scale of World Cup investment is still rising, and it is only a matter of time before it reaches a high that most countries simply cannot afford – considering that Brazil did not take over the World Cup as a poor country, but was seen as one of the models of rapid development economies.
The problem of huge investments is also prevalent in other major international sporting events, such as the Olympics.
The Olympics also have serious budget overruns and investment losses: the Sydney Summer Olympics in 2000 invested less than $4 billion, the Athens Summer Olympics in 2004 soared to $14.6 billion, by the time of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the scale of investment reached $40 billion, the 2012 London Summer Olympics expenditure fell to $15 billion, and at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which was already stretched, still gritted its teeth and shelled out $13.1 billion. Then there's the $28 billion for the last Tokyo 2021 Olympics.
It should be pointed out that although the Beijing Summer Olympics investment scale is huge, but the return on capital and profit, a large part of the investment is used for Beijing's infrastructure construction, driving the subsequent economic growth and municipal improvement, from the economic point of view is very cost-effective. But there are really few lucky people like the Beijing Olympics -
The actual expenditure of the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics not only exceeded three times the original budget, but also suffered serious losses, which not only did not bring the expected economic benefits, but detonated Greece's long-hidden economic hidden dangers, causing a serious break in the capital chain; Since then, Greece's economic situation has deteriorated day by day, until then a serious debt crisis broke out, dragging almost the entire European Union down;
The 2012 Summer Olympics in London suffered only a small loss and basically broke even, but the actual expenditure still reached twice the original budget, and the expenditure was seriously out of control;
The most tragic is the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. In order to prevent the epidemic, a large number of events can only be held in empty venues, even the audience seats for the opening and closing ceremonies are sparse, and the ticket revenue is basically zero; The catering, accommodation, entertainment, tourism and other industries serving tourists and spectators did not get the expected passenger flow, a large number of sponsors did not get the expected commercial promotion, and the 28 billion yuan investment was basically lost, becoming the most loss-making Olympic Games in history, which can be called a world-class "big wrong".
For example, the 2024 Olympic Games originally had 5 cities apply to host it, but due to the economic downturn, 3 cities temporarily withdrew, leaving only Paris and Los Angeles to compete; The 2028 hosting rights are even uncared for, and the Olympic Committee is in a hurry, in order to avoid the embarrassing situation that no one will host the Olympics, it has to take out the 2028 hosting rights to bundle sales, and directly grant the 2024 hosting rights to Paris, and the 2028 hosting rights directly to Los Angeles.
The once hot right to host the Olympic Games has actually fallen to the point of apportionment, which is really swept away by Sven.
The huge potential risks associated with hosting large-scale international sports events are becoming increasingly apparent, and the era of stable commercial returns based on huge sports investments is over, and things are fundamentally changing, and we must not live in the past without knowing it, we must face up to and face this potential risk and make the right response.
China should not rub the heat of the World Cup
It is important to note that, in addition to economic risks, we should also pay attention to the political risks inherent in major international sporting events.
For example, because the level of China's men's football team is really humiliating, it failed to enter this World Cup, resulting in some domestic public opinion "sword deviation"; Publicizing the Chinese elements contained in the Qatar World Cup is well-intentioned, but if it is excessively elevated and not screened, it may be counterproductive.
At a time when the World Cup venues are locked in a labor rights dispute, and many people at home and abroad are convinced of the thousands of deaths reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, China jumped out to promote that it had contracted the construction of the stadium, which is likely to make uninformed viewers associate China with this labor rights issue.
In other words, when promoting the Chinese elements of the Qatar World Cup, the specific publicity methods need to be comprehensive, cautious, and avoid eventually setting yourself on fire.
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