How the FIFA World Cup helps social integration

The hosting of the World Cup in Qatar forms part of wider economic and social trends in the region, which ought to help integration with other cultures around the world.

Qatar is the first nation in the Middle East to host the FIFA World Cup, and the event forms part of a broader strategy of economic and social development. Incentives extend beyond prestige or economic motives.

One of the objectives is to encourage wider participation in sport, including for women. Among the many recipients of investment capital in recent years have been providers of sports facilities. These include tennis courts, cycle paths, golf courses, gyms, athletics tracks, and swimming pools, as well as football pitches for youth and local sides – not just the major stadiums. Access to high-quality sports facilities has increased exponentially in Qatar in the past decade.

This has encouraged an understanding of sport as something to take part in, not just to watch. There are health benefits to this trend. Historically, participation in sports has been low in the region. Given that some of the traditional dishes are high in sugar, this has been linked to rates of obesity and other health problems that have been comparatively high for a wealthy part of the world.

A report by the international consultancy PwC in 2021 projected that the growth in the sports industry in the Middle East was expected to be the fastest in the world in the period 2021-2026. In total, Gulf Cooperation Council members have invested some $65 billion in sports development. This year statistics released by Saudi Arabia showed 48% of citizens now take part in sporting activity of at least 30 minutes weekly, including 38% of women, a rise from low levels of participation earlier, and in line with the nation’s 2030 Quality of Life initiative.

A misleading impression given by some of the western media is to portray the hosting of the World Cup in Qatar as something of an anomaly or a one-off in a country supposedly with a weak sporting tradition.

Sport has become hugely more popular in the Middle East in recent years, for the participant and the spectator alike. The region has hosted high-profile sporting events, for example in golf, cricket, Formula 1, horse racing and others, drawing in thousands of fans from all over the world. Qatar hosted the Asia Games in 2006, and will host the games again in 2030. It was the venue for the FIFA Arab Cup in 2021, in part to test the facilities for the World Cup a year later. Football is thriving in Qatar, with competitive leagues. Attendances for some games are low, but tens of thousands will attend cup finals and other major fixtures, so the World Cup venues will not become ‘white elephants".

There can be few more powerful ways to bring cultures and peoples together than sport. The benefits for health, the excitement of the contests, and the inherent fairness of competition all mean that differences of culture, religion and politics can fade into the background, if not disappear completely.

It is unfortunate and rather ironic that western media have been somewhat hostile towards the hosting of a World Cup in the Middle East, given that it forms a part of broader social and economic developments that hold the potential to lessen differences between the region and the west.?