Qatar World Cup 2022: Sportswashing, security and soccer

Qatar has arguably had the most uncomfortable ride. Unlike Saudi Arabia, whose human rights issues have long been established -- and other well-known countries like Russia and China that have hosted the Olympic Games -- Qatar had no global image to launder. The awarding of the World Cup 12 years ago was, in essence, the nation's international introduction. Without the World Cup, the country's issues with human rights, the treatment of migrant workers (an issue that existed in the country before the World Cup), the rights of women and the treatment of the LGBTQIA+ community might have gone unchecked.

Same-sex relations are illegal, and men convicted of having them can face seven years in prison, while other laws ban unmarried sexual relations, independent of orientation. According to the U.S. State Department's 2021 Country Report on Human Rights, unwed women risk prosecution if they report pregnancies and "there were cases of hospitals reporting unwed mothers to authorities."

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Securing the right to host the World Cup was never about casting a veil over those elements of Qatar's society. Instead, it was a calculated decision to expose itself to Western scrutiny to make gains elsewhere. For roughly three decades, Qatar has been working on a course toward where it is now, according to Chris Doyle, a director at the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding, a nonprofit organization that promotes human rights, conflict resolution and civil society in the Arab world.

"If you go back to when the previous emir [Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani] came to power in 1995, Qatar was sitting on a large gas field but not exploiting it," Doyle told ESPN. "It was extremely conservative and hadn't seen the explosion of construction that we've seen now.

"It was very closed to the outside world, one of the more conservative states in the Arabian Peninsula, and he attempted to change this in a number of ways. Al Jazeera [the 24-hour English news channel owned by Qatar] was a part of that, opening up the media space, also having the American [military] base at Al Udeid, but probably more important in this respect was the huge changes in education, bringing in western campuses to Qatar."

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Al Thani was set on opening Qatar to the rest of the world, and hosting sporting events was a major part of that strategy. It had two main purposes: to help diversify the economy with expanded tourism and lead to more international collaboration.

"The emir wanted to ... bring in trade, tourism, influence," Doyle said. "Also part of this drive was Qatar Airways and creating the global hub at Hamad International Airport. In other words, he wanted to have Qatar as a rival to Dubai but also to bring people to Qatar.

"Very important in this respect was the ability to sell alcohol in the hotels, which wasn't permitted before. So you saw a sort of a plan, albeit implemented sometimes with two steps forward and one step back."

One of the most high-profile events has been the Qatar Tennis Open, which the country started staging annually in 1993, and the plan extends to many sports. Qatar hosted the Asian Handball Championships in 2004, the Asian Basketball Championships in 2005 and UCI World Cycling Championships in 2016, among other events.

"He wanted to open up to the outside world, so securing the World Cup could be seen as the apogee of that ambition," Doyle said. "It wasn't without internal critics, whether spending this huge amount of money on the World Cup was worth it or not, but it did fit into this pattern."

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Qatar's geographical location is another key factor in its desire to open links to the West. It shares a gas field with Iran and a land border with its equally powerful and influential western neighbor, Saudi Arabia. To the south is the United Arab Emirates, and the two nations have a long history of rivalry and mutual suspicion, with Dubai (the UAE's most populous city) well-established as a tourism destination in the region. To the northeast is Kuwait, a similarly tiny state made rich by natural resources and one that was invaded by a more powerful neighbor, Iraq, in 1990.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was a lesson of how dangerous things could be for a small state in the region and played a role in Qatar's desire to acquire soft power, according to Georgetown University-Qatar professor Danyel Reiche, who co-authored the book "Qatar and the 2022 FIFA World Cup: Politics, Controversy, Change." A term coined in the 1980s, "soft power" is an approach to foreign policy using culture, economics and diplomacy.

All of the above matter to Qatar, which is why security, in addition to sportswashing, is the driving force for wanting to host the World Cup.

"Football and sport serve for the protection of the country," Reiche said. "Visibility, influence and international affairs, national security and also a form of branding to be interesting for tourists and investors. Also initiating a process of economic diversification, I think those are the reasons."

Establishing Qatar on the world stage

Qatar's foray into overseas soccer investments started around the same time it landed the World Cup. It served as a branding exercise and worked, in part, to establish the country as a travel destination.

From 2010 to 2013, FC Barcelona shirts were emblazoned with Qatar Foundation on the front before being replaced by the state-owned Qatar Airways until 2017. The timing was fortuitous or, perhaps, by design: Lionel Messi, arguably the world's most visible athlete during that period of time, shared a close association with Qatar. Eventually, Barca didn't renew sponsorship as it sought new sponsors for "social issues," but not before the partnership with the airline earned the club an estimated $250 million from 2012-17.

Bayern Munich receive a reported $22.5 million a year from Qatar Airways in a five-year deal as shirt sleeve sponsors. Bayern have also been paid $10 million a year in a sponsorship deal with Doha's Hamad International Airport.

The Bundesliga champions' partnership with Qatar has led the club's supporters and members to call on Bayern to not renew the deal when it expires in 2023, but chief executive Oliver Kahn was noncommittal to that request when speaking at Bayern's annual general meeting last month. "There has been progress in Qatar on labor rights and human rights," Kahn said. "Nobody suggested that Qatar is a country that meets European standards. But if you want to change and initiate something, you have to meet people, talk to them and exchange ideas instead of excluding them."

Manchester City are owned and bankrolled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, and their shirts and stadium carry the name of Etihad Airways -- the UAE's international airline -- for an undisclosed figure. Real Madrid's principal sponsor is Emirates, Dubai's international airline, which pays the European champions roughly $70 million a year to have its name on the club's shirts.

Paris Saint-Germain are owned, funded and controlled by QSI. And even though Manchester United have not negotiated huge commercial deals with Qatar or the UAE, the club has previously earned $10 million a year from a sponsorship deal with Saudi Telecom.