The Controversial Games: Responses to Qatar’s 2022 World Cup

Abstract

This chapter discusses the negative scrutiny Qatar has received since being awarded the 2022 World Cup, and, in doing so, centres on the ways in which certain international actors have come to respond to the state’s use of sport and sports events for soft power. It does so by first focusing on how the competitive pursuit of soft power plays out between state and non-state actors and locates how the latter—particularly international non-governmental organizations and the global media—seek to gain their own soft power through strategies that simultaneously ‘disempower’ others. In doing so, the chapter argues that whilst the staging of a major sports event can provide the host state with an opportunity to (re)shape their image on the world stage, so too do such events provide non-state actors with the opportunity to significantly damage state’s reputations. In showing this process in action in the context of the 2022 World Cup, we argue that the negative scrutiny levied towards Qatar has centred on three keys areas: Qatar’s human rights record; accusations of bribery and corruption; and Qatar as a sports events destination. In discussing each of these three areas, we also locate the ways in which such negativity has come to damage the state’s attempts at international soft power acquisition.