With the Qatar men's football team's successful bid to reach the 2024 Asian Cup final on Feb 7, the Middle East's oil-rich nation's use of sports to enhance its image has once again sparked debate. From the World Cup to the Asian Games and now the Asian Cup, Qatar has undoubtedly been one of the most successful countries in the world in raising its profile through sport. A Middle Eastern millionaire formerly dominated by oil exports is using sport to make its way into the global spotlight.
In recent years, promoting the development of the sports industry has become an important national strategy of the Qatari government, and its sports infrastructure and sports events are in a leading position in the Middle East and even the world. Doha was ranked sixth in the world in Durham University Business School's 2022 Global Cities Sports Development Report on the impact of international events, and similarly, the Global Sports Impact (GSI) Country Index published by sports market data company Sportcal ranked Qatar first in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
In fact, Qatar's ambitions are not limited to the sports world, they are more concerned about the economy, but also Qatar's political position in the world. Since 1995, Qatar has gone from being a monarchy to one of the richest countries in the world, with a per capita GDP of $90,000. Still, Qatar is preparing for the days when its oil, gas and other energy sources run out.
Qatar, meanwhile, wants to beat Dubai, its biggest rival in the Middle East, through its sports economy. After successfully hosting the 2022 World Cup, Qatar is eager to surpass its neighbor Dubai through international sporting events. Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which opened up five or six years before Doha, has become a model of successful reform in the Middle East, benefiting from the influx of capital from all over the world. "Beyond Dubai" has been Doha's slogan in recent years, and by hosting major sporting events, including the World Cup, the chances of that dream becoming reality are growing.
The Qatari government knows that although they will invest a lot of human and material resources and financial resources to hold this event, after the event is really launched, you can get a lot of economic benefits in this event, such as welcoming a large number of foreigners to your country during the event, so its consumption is a large amount of income. At the same time, this event will get a lot of exposure, will attract a lot of advertisers to invest in, which is also a lot of money.
So Qatar, having tasted the sweetener, has its sights set on the Olympics. Qatar has applied to host the Games three times so far, with an area of just 11,000 square kilometers and a population of less than 3 million, Qatar is the smallest Olympic bid in history, and the past few times to accompany the run seemed doomed. But today the situation is very different. From a resource-poor desert to an emerging force to be reckoned with on the world sports map, Qatar's transformation has taken just over a decade. In the summer of 2008, this small Middle Eastern country, which is heavily dependent on oil and gas economy, wrote the construction of culture and sports industries into the guiding document "National Vision 2030", proposing the slogan "sports armed nation", and embarked on a very different reform path from the past.
By hosting individual world championships in different sports, Qatar is trying to gradually reverse the outside world's perception of its "sports desert". The 2022 World Cup is the perfect opportunity for Qatar to establish itself as a nation of sports, and winning the right to host the 2032 Olympics would completely establish the country's place on the world sports map and further improve the country's current infrastructure, which is far from complete. This is why almost all Qatari media have linked the bid to National Vision 2030 as an important part of the country's development.
In addition to developing its economy, Qatar has also recognized that investing in sports is the most effective way to market the country's image. Not content with the money, Qatar wants to make its voice heard with a more international image.
