As a big football fan, the other day I was remembering the last World Cup in Qatar in November and it came to my mind, how can a country with less than 3 million citizens host more than 1 million people who came to watch football?

The choice of host

To explain it you have to go back to the beginning, when FIFA selected the Middle Eastern country to host the tournament. Everyone knows and it has been proven that the selection of Qatar was a fraud due to vote buying. But the organisers may not have thought about what the country had to do to host the World Cup.

Construction and accommodation of housing for fans

Qatar needed to build or remodel eight stadiums, training centres, roads, parks and even a new city, but the biggest challenge was to accommodate the 850,000 visitors, politicians, media and teams expected during the tournament. Many of the available rooms were secured by the organisers, leaving a shortage for fans.

The peak of demand would be on 27-28 November when organisers expected 276.000 ticket holders to seek accommodation. In spring 2022, Qatar had some 33,000-34,000 hotel rooms, and at the rate at which the country was building hotels, another 25,000 rooms were expected to be available by November. However, even with this optimistic estimate, the country still fell short of the target, so organisers used several strategies to increase the number of rooms available.

• Launched the “host a fan” campaign to encourage local people to host visiting fans.
• Offered camping in the desert outside Doha in a small tent city as a more affordable option.
• Recommended a satellite city called Madinatna, with two dozen hotels and a huge rental apartment complex that will house up to 27,000 fans.
• Made available two cruise ships that were in the port of Doha with a total of 3,898 cabins.

The Qataris also expected fans to stay in other Gulf cities, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE or Muscat in Oman, thus reducing their hotel demand. However, delay in planning meant that there was constant construction work to build tents or bungalows to house fans while the tournament was taking place, angry fans clamouring for accommodation that had not yet been built and constant chaos on the streets of Doha.

Despite this, Qatar was able to host the World Cup, drawing the largest number of spectators in the event’s history and achieving its real goal, sportwashing the country’s image.