The location of the 2034 World Cup has caused questions to be asked of the awarding process. Controversies will swell around the Saudi Arabia World Cup for years to come. Aaron Davoren gives his view.
It has been two months since the official announcement of the hosts of both the 2030 and 2034 World Cup. This global event commenced with supposedly all 211 FIFA member nations watching through a video link on December 11 2024. The announcement that the 2030 tournament will be held in three continents may raise an eyebrow or two for some people, however it is the successful bid of Saudi Arabia to be 2034 hosts that has certainly caused outrage and concern among many football followers and non-fans alike.
Of course this is not a surprise to the many football fans who have seen FIFA’s decision making since the turn of the twenty-first century, with the most recent World Cup being held in Qatar which had many unsavory similarities when it came to not being fit for hosting the World Cup.
An Insult to democracy:
The FIFA congress meeting that changed the future of football happened on 11 December 2024.
Despite Saudi Arabia being the only official bid for the 2034 World Cup, FIFA opted for the usual bid process proceedings, one of which being a congress meeting with all members to ‘vote’ on the hosts. It was already a controversial decision for FIFA to give Saudi Arabia the tournament, but to then strangely opt for an online meeting via a video link which was described as “a meeting plagued by technical difficulties created more questions for the world’s biggest sport.
The controversies continued as the ‘vote’, which in reality was a video call full of people clapping their approval, was for both the 2030 and 2034 World Cup - two separate bids.
Two separate tournaments were decided on a single ‘vote’, a move that to many doesn’t appear to be very democratic.
Additionally some nations didn’t seem to be involved in the ‘clapping vote’, as it was noted that Cape Verde and Qatar were not seen on the call. Some of the absentees may well have been caused by technological issues, however it is not too outrageous to assume the absence of Qatar, the most recent World Cup host, was intentional given the history between the neighbouring nations. It has to be questioned as to why this video conference was required when it is already unanimous on who the host will be. It seemed that all the technical difficulties which lead to a PR disaster could have been easily avoided.
The unopposed run that Saudi Arabia have had for this World Cup could be viewed to be manufactured by FIFA, with this conspiracy potentially adding more insult to democracy within the organisation. As Jacob Whitehead, a writer for The Athletic, precisely explained, “If a country from a federation hosts a tournament, any other nation from that federation is then not able to hold it for at least the next two cycles.”
This concept is to prevent a certain continent from constantly hosting the World Cup. The 2026 World cup will be held in North America, (USA, Canada, Mexico) which rules them out of the next two cycles. The 2030 World Cup coincidentally has 3 continents hosting with Europe, Africa and South America all playing hosts to the tournament which will feature the majority of games in Spain, Portugal and Morocco with Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina all hosting a single game each as part of centenary celebrations for The World Cup. Some believe the ‘centenary celebration’ ploy that FIFA are spearheading is a handy step in limiting the options for where to host the 2034 tournament. Due to the rules, this 2030 decision left only Oceania and Asia as viable options for 2034.
Australia were a candidate at one point, however there were a lot of complications for them to iron out in order to be a strong option for FIFA. Certain infrastructural issues and complicated stadium contractual issues to deal with made it difficult and unattractive. They also can’t acquire the large amount of money that Saudi Arabia seems to have to fix these issues and improve certain aspects. Saudi Arabia also made it clear to any potential other Asian candidate that they had extremely serious intentions to host the 2034 World Cup, which likely would have scared off any other nation. This unopposed run, if not mapped out, certainly was aided and structured to some extent to cater for Saudi Arabia’s turn at the global football competition.
Sports Washing and Diversifying the Economy:
Why are Saudi Arabia spending so much money on sports?
The term ‘sportswashing’ has crept into scholars, writers and readers' vocabulary more and more over the last decade and Saudi Arabia have been the forerunners of it in more recent years, along with other gulf nations and unethical multinational
companies. The basic definition of ‘sportswashing’ is “the practice of an organisation, a government, a country etc. supporting sport or organising sports events as a way to improve its reputation.” In recent years, Saudi Arabia has heavily invested in the hugely controversial LIV golf series, high-profile boxing events, Formula 1 races, and of course, club football. The Saudi Pro League has attracted many top players away from Europe with lucrative contracts, the figurehead being Cristiano Ronaldo. Estimated figures on how much money has been invested into sports over the past 5 years are in the billions. There’s been theories around why the country is investing so much into the sports industry, and both theories are related to oil.
Firstly, global society is becoming more aware of the unethical use of fossil fuels and oil, which is Saudi’s main wealth generator. We now know the full scale of damage that these fuels are doing to our planet. Saudi Arabia and other nations and companies involved in these practices aim to use sport to deflect these issues. Current stakeholders of Manchester United and OGC Nice, INEOS, who have also invested in cycling, are also accused of investing in sport for a similar reason. It could be argued that The Kingdom are using sport to deflect their poor human rights record, and to appear better off in the international sphere.
Saudi Arabia has also got a logistical strategy to invest in sports by diversifying their economy. With oil being a finite material, they will eventually run out of it, therefore damaging their economy and wealth without the commodity that they heavily rely on. Additionally, “sixty-three percent of Saudi Arabia’s population of over thirty-two million is under the age of thirty,” This has been noted and ‘Vision 2030’ was launched in 2018 to diversify the country’s economy and relax the dependency on oil, as well as making their nation more active and healthy.
Unwelcoming and Unsuitable:
There are other issues that hosting the tournament in Saudi Arabia will bring to the World Cup .
The 2022 Qatar World Cup had major concerns with regards to human rights and the safety of members of the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as the rights of women. This issue will repeat itself when it comes to the 2034 World Cup.
The spokespeople for the tournament in Saudi Arabia believe that people should respect their culture while visiting their nation. Of course this is important, but in this writer’s opinion, football, particularly the World Cup, is the world's game. The game for all.
There’s fair criticism around hosting the tournament in a country that does not appear particularly welcoming to all football fans. Another huge concern is how unready the infrastructure is to host so many people worldwide. With no metro system for Jeddah, and Matt Slater describing it as “the worst traffic I’ve ever experienced in my life”, you’d have to wonder how people will be able to travel efficiently from game to game. Despite all of the above, FIFA awarded the Saudi Arabia bid a score 4.2 out of 5, the highest ever, ranking both transport and Human rights as ‘medium risk’.
Environmentally speaking, the country continues to cause issues. With less than a third of the fifteen stadiums identified to host the 2034 World Cup matches built, there will be huge pressure to build massive stadia at a fast rate, creating huge infrastructure that may well be no longer needed after the month long tournament ends. This wastage of stadia seems to be a trend in recent World Cups, with recent hosts such as Russia, Brazil, South Africa and Qatar reported to “have been left with a herd of white-elaphant stadiums.” The demand of such huge stadia and infrastructure requirements in a short period of time will also risk creating human rights issues with construction workers, something that was a significant scandal in the build up of the Qatar World cup, with a large number of deaths allegedly occurring during the construction of the stadium.
Other concerns include the likelihood of another winter World Cup due to the heat during the middle east summer. With the increasing number of games at the top level of football, fitting the tournament in the already packed schedule will prove difficult and player welfare concerns. FIFA are constantly pushing progression towards women's football but with the lack of rights held by women in Saudi Arabia you’d have to question the contradicting message it sends.
Unfortunately, the reality is that all of these controversies, issues, concerns and risks are ignored for dollar signs. “Qatar 2022, held for the planet’s wealthiest people but only made possible by the poorest, was an immoral tournament that merely took the game’s carbon-fuelled capitalism to an extreme.” It seems that Fifa have not taken it as a lesson, but as a blueprint for the 2034 World Cup.