Isabella Papay is a third-year history and international relations student at King’s College London. She is interested in international law and investigative journalism that provides insight into changing political affairs in North America and worldwide.
On December 18, 2022, a record-breaking 1.5 billion viewers around the world watched the FIFA World Cup final between Argentina and France, concluding with Lionel Messi raising the most coveted trophy in football after an enthralling penalty shootout. The Men’s FIFA World Cup has remained the most-watched sporting event internationally, with billions tuning in over the course of the tournament. For this reason, many countries partake in a bidding process roughly 7 years in advance for the chance to host the tournament.
In 2018, at the 68th FIFA Congress, a joint United States, Mexico, and Canada bid was selected as the location for the 2026 World Cup, beating out a rival bid from Morocco. This next World Cup promises to be the biggest yet, with ‘more games, more excitement and more teams.’ The tournament’s new format features a 48-team expansion from the previous 32, an increase in games played from 64 to 104, and an additional knockout round. Due to this expansion, the tournament will last 39 days, a 10-day increase from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and is to be played across 16 North American cities, closing with a final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. As the reach of the World Cup grows ever wider, it’s clear the upcoming tournament goes beyond football.
Sports Diplomacy
Sports diplomacy is a long tradition of public diplomacy that refers to the unique power of sport to bring people, nations, and communities closer together, in this case through a shared love of the beautiful game. The common ground of international sporting events continues to mediate estrangement between people and their governments by promoting intercultural understanding and cooperation, allowing for improved relationships bilaterally and multilaterally. As a different way to influence, participating nations are conscious of having a sustainable, positive social impact using the educational impact of sport. Notably, hosting major sporting events like the World Cup brings with it the responsibility to leave a lasting, positive impact beyond the tournament itself. This legacy can include infrastructure development, social programs, and educational initiatives in host cities. When a host nation ignores this responsibility, it can damage its public image and relationships abroad, as witnessed in Qatar.
The Controversial 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar
Well before kick-off, Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup attracted widespread criticism. As best put in the bookQatar and the 2022 FIFA World Cup: Politics, Controversy, Change, Danyel Reiche and Paul Michael Brannagan state that “while Qatar [intended] to use the 2022 World Cup to promote a positive image of the country abroad, the tournament has, in contrast, come to introduce and educate many global audiences to the state in largely negative terms.”
After being selected as the first Arab nation to host the tournament in 2010, allegations of corruption and bribery during the bidding process emerged against Qatari officials. In 2011, whistleblowers inside FIFA revealed that £3.8m in bribes were offered to members of FIFA’s executive committee by Mohamed bin Hammam, the driver behind Qatar’s bid. After a two-year long investigation by FIFA’s ethics committee, Qatar was cleared to host the tournament as there was no sufficient evidence of corruption to justify stripping the nation of its hosting rights.
Ahead of the tournament, the Qatari government spent more than $220 billion on new infrastructure, including the construction of seven new stadiums, a new rapid transit system, more luxury accommodations for spectators, and revamped roads and airports. Behind-the-scenes the Gulf state relied on millions of low-wage migrant labourers for the twelve years it took to prepare for the World Cup. The migrant workforce in Qatar is estimated at 2 million, making up nearly 95% of the labour force in a country with a total population of just 3 million people. The demands of the World Cup exposed the deeply exploitative nature of the migrant labour system rooted in the state’s ‘Kafala’ system of sponsorship-based employment that legally binds foreign workers to their employers. This system perpetuates a cycle of abuse against migrant workers, who have reported enduring an array of abuses including wage theft, excessive working hours, dangerous working and living conditions, and physical and sexual abuse.
Consequently, Qatar’s official records reported the deaths of 40 migrant workers between 2010 and 2022, with only three being work-related fatalities. However, The Guardian contested these figures, reporting that 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka had died in preparation for the games in Qatar. The Qatari government labelled this total as misleading; however, the International Labour Organisation says Qatar’s original numbers were a gross underestimate because they didn’t count deaths from heart attacks and respiratory failure as ‘work-related,’ even though these are often caused by working in high temperatures. Despite promises of labour reform and compensation for the families of the thousand’s dead, these affirmations have mainly stayed on paper.
Lastly, FIFA declared that the 2022 tournament would be the first carbon-neutral World Cup. While the numbers released by FIFA label the sustainability plan a success, researchers beg to differ after independently calculating the tournament’s carbon footprint. Greenly, a French company that measures carbon footprints, estimated the tournament’s total CO2 emissions to be a minimum of 6 megatonnes. This is almost double FIFA’s claimed estimate of 3.6 megatonnes. Although Qatar pledged to purchase carbon credits to offset emissions, only three projects were approved in the final weeks of the tournament, representing less than 5% of total emissions.
One of the key motivators behind Qatar’s World Cup bid was ‘sportswashing,’ or a state’s use of international sports to launder its tarnished public image. Qatar has been criticised for decades for laws curtailing the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people; thus, hosting the world’s largest sporting event is a sure way to bolster international reputation However, this backfired as the Gulf state faced international scrutiny for twelve years despite its expensive efforts at sports diplomacy.
Lessons from Qatar’s Failed Sports Diplomacy Ahead of 2026
The 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar and the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand have set new standards for human rights and sustainability. The joint North American hosts have plenty to learn from Qatar if they wish to avoid the same international backlash their predecessor experienced. Ahead of the next World Cup, all three hosts need to implement a policy shift that reconsiders their approach to sport as a policy and diplomatic tool to boost engagement abroad and bridge divides.
The 2026 World Cup faces new challenges due to its wide scope, necessitating the formation of an overarching sports diplomacy strategy for each of the three host nations, similar to that of Australia and other countries like the UK, Japan, and the EU. Crucial to this strategy will be the recognition of Qatar’s failures, especially regarding workers’ rights and sustainability. Since the next tournament spans three countries, consideration for the challenge of managing a multijurisdictional workforce is particularly important for the organisers.
Following the 2022 World Cup, FIFA has necessitated that host cities formulate human rights strategies that align with international standards regarding workers’ rights concerns. Thus, many of the chosen host cities have exhibited strong relationships with local labour unions and strong labour protections. However, it’s expected that companies will seek to expand their workforce in or near host cities or move workers across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to support the event in the coming years. In accordance with FIFA’s new ordinances, companies must ensure they comply with the strict stakeholder engagement process to ensure appropriate labour-management relations with migrant workers regarding safety and pay concerns.
Currently, a more substantial issue among critics is the contradiction between FIFA’s commitments to reduce its carbon emissions and the decision to expand the tournament, relating to the increased number of games and the extension of the tournament across North America. Although FIFA pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2040 in alignment with the Paris Agreement, the inevitable carbon footprint from extensive air travel brings into question the tournament’s environmental sustainability. Environmentalists, such as Gary Lineker, have expressed concern over FIFA’s approach to holding the tournament across three countries during the summer months due to the potential climate-related challenges that come with the tournament. Though the expansion promises greater financial returns, it’s at the cost of the environment.
As the future hosts begin to implement sports diplomacy programmes, such as the new partnership between the U.S. Soccer Federation and the State Department aimed at elevating football as a diplomatic tool at home and abroad, their success hinges on perfecting sports diplomacy rather than simple sportswashing like their predecessor. This success relies on ensuring workers’ rights and environmental sustainability. If FIFA and the host nations fail to remedy the key issues of the Qatar World Cup and leave a lasting, positive impact, the tournament will inevitably harm their reputations at home and abroad, as it did with Qatar.
Photo Credit: Yuki Iwamura/AFP
International Relations Today 