Qatar 2022: The World Cup That Changed Everything
Qatar 2022 will see a host of exciting new and unexpected challenges.
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The World Cup is a big deal, it has been described as the “the greatest sporting spectacle in the world” and for the past 12 years it has been the ultimate show of global sport. During this time there have been plenty of unforgettable moments, some of which have been documented, including some of the best and most controversial moments of the tournament. Some of my favourite World Cups are the 1982, 1986, 1990, 2002 and 2014 tournaments and at the end of this week we are moving on to a new generation of the greatest World Cup’s, with the 2019 tournament now being the most recent.
This year’s tournament is set to be the most expensive World Cup ever. The tournament will be held from May 26th to June 24th, 2022 and will see Qatar hosting a World Cup for the first time. The cost of this tournament has been estimated at a staggering $40.5 billion, with the final cost of the tournament being a staggering $71.5 billion (see here).
However, the real cost to the global sporting culture is arguably the impact and lasting legacy of the 2022 Qatar World Cup that will last around 100 years and will be felt almost as much as the 1998 Brazil World Cup that was played in the same year.
For decades we’ve seen global sport in unprecedented growth both in the number of games and in the number of people watching them. But it hasn’t always been the best for both the national teams and those watching them. We have seen too many examples of national sporting teams failing to produce a truly winning team but instead taking turns failing to qualify for the finals, in some cases being kicked out of the tournament early. We’ve seen too many examples in which teams have gone from being the world power in terms of competition to being the world power in