What infrastructure has been built for the World Cup in Qatar?
What did Qatar do to build for the World Cup?
Fast forward to 2022 and the completion of the project, numerous media accounts have confirmed that Qatar spent $220 billion on the World Cup—a staggering 15 times more than Russia did in 2018 as the previous hosts (Craig, 2022). Surprisingly enough, less than $10 billion was spent on the construction of the Qatari stadiums. The majority of the funds were actually spent on hospitality, transportation, and telecommunications. In Doha, the capital city of Qatar, $36 billion alone was spent on creating an extensive metro system, new airports, and new hotels to help alleviate the large crowds coming in from around the world (Zimbalist, 2022). This project was always going to be a massive financial commitment for Qatar. To put it into perspective, Qatar’s annual average GDP is around $180 billion. Having been awarded the World Cup in 2010, the country has spent an average of $18.3 million each year, amounting to about 10% of its yearly GDP (Zimbalist, 2022). By comparison, Russia, the host of the 2018 World Cup, spent around $14 to 15 billion USD and has an annual GDP of about $1.7 trillion. Russia’s GDP is a staggering 9.5 times greater than Qatar’s, and they spent substantially less money on the World Cup. Because of the small size of Qatar and the limited real estate, most of the stadiums will be dismantled after the tournament once they are devoid of their use and transformed into schools, health clinics, cafes, and other service buildings (Craig 2022). Fortunately, some of the new infrastructures will continue to remain a useful contribution to Qatar after the soccer tournament. For example, the highways connecting cities and stadiums will make longer travel quicker and more efficient. While all of these figures fall on the cost side of the book, what about the revenues?


