For European football, the usual drama of the off-season was bookended last year by seismic events with sizable price-tags. In April, twelve of Europe’s top teams announced they were forming their own Super League to bolster their billion-dollar bottom-lines. Within 48 hours, the effort collapsed amid widespread opposition, but not before exposing some of the world’s biggest brands, including Spain’s Barcelona and England’s Manchester City, to reputational and legal losses. Five months later, some of these same teams again found themselves in the news when star forward Lionel Messi departed Barca, his club of 21 years, for France’s Paris Saint-Germain. Years of mismanagement had bound Barca in a financial straight-jacket too tight to re-sign the generational talent; PSG was among the few teams able to accommodate his nine-figure contract.
And the winner of the offseason? Probably Qatar.
After all, it’s Qatari brands like Qatar Airways that fans have seen on the front of their favorite kits, including Barca’s. It’s Qatari figures like Nasser al-Khelaifi whom journalists hear at press events, including Messi’s PSG introduction. And it’s Qatari landmarks like Lusail Stadium that dignitaries will soon take in as the site of next year’s World Cup final.
Indeed, Qatar’s presence in international football cuts across the senses—and not coincidentally. These activities are part of a decades-long effort by Qatar’s ruling family to cultivate global goodwill and exercise what analysts call soft power: the moves a state makes to persuade or attract others to its cause. In Qatar’s case, these moves, underwritten by the country’s vast natural gas reserves, have included striking relationships, steering deals, and shepherding its brand in some of the world’s most visible industries. From media and academia to culture and entertainment, so bold and beneficial appear Qatar’s soft power investments that analysts have characterized them as types of diplomacy—“sports diplomacy” among them.
But for years, international football also has had to contend with the seedier side of Qatar’s sports investments. In some cases, Qatar’s headline-grabbing actions have served to distract actors in liberal democracies from the country’s limited freedoms, if not enlist them to help launder its reputation. In other cases, Qatar’s financial transactions have exploited governance gaps in Western organizations, eroding their credibility. Much like analysts have questioned the “soft” hue of China’s international activities, so too should they reconsider the “diplomatic” character of Qatar’s global reach—beginning with sports.
Qatar’s Football Empire
Qatar’s first cap in international football took place in 2003, when the Qatar-based news organization Al Jazeera launched a dedicated channel for live sports. The channel eventually grew into a separate entity called beIN Sports, and today, it holds the broadcasting rights to European and global football in dozens of markets. Last June, BeIN scored a $600 million extension with UEFA, European football’s governing body, to show continental competitions like the prized Champions League across the Middle East and North Africa.
Media is but one of the ways Qatar has insinuated itself into international football. Beginning in 2011, the Qatar Foundation—and then Qatar Airways—claimed the front of Barca’s kits, the first time the sport’s most valuable club okayed a commercial sponsor. Though the deal ended in 2017, the airliner struck a similar one with Germany’s Bayern Munich and became an official sponsor of FIFA, international football’s governing body. Also in 2011, a subsidiary of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund purchased PSG, its deep pockets credited with guiding France’s most decorated club past a decade of decline. Just a few years ago, that subsidiary almost bought another storied team, this one in England. Perhaps most importantly, Qatar has spent the past decade preparing to host FIFA’s 2022 World Cup, the sport’s top competition. As a warm-up, the country just played host to the Arab Cup, a regional tournament also organized by FIFA.
Reputation Laundering
But even as Qatar’s international brand has evolved, its domestic profile has stayed stubbornly autocratic. Since its independence in 1971, Qatar has been ruled as an absolute monarchy by the Al Thani family. This means family members and allies hold the reigns of state—from federal ministries and the armed forces to more peripheral outlets like the committee organizing its World Cup and the fund brokering its football investments. This also means the public, particularly the 77 percent who are non-citizens, are afforded few civil liberties. As a result, the media are subject to censorship, civil society activists and whistleblowers are detained or disappeared, and labor migrants face exploitative conditions. These are among the reasons why Freedom House has called Qatar an unfree society.
The ruling regime’s politics don’t end at the water’s edge, though—they shade Qatar’s actions abroad, including on the pitch. One manifestation is in Qatar’s manipulation of the information space through sports-washing, the practice of using sport to launder one’s reputation. In some cases, this laundering is explicit. During a 2019 visit, retired English footballer David Beckham praised Qatar’s World Cup preparations, and last November, FIFA President Gianni Infantino highlighted improvements in Qatar’s labor rights practices. Statements like these, when the evidence suggests otherwise, serve as transnational character references, lending the imprimatur of popular or prominent figures to a nation’s blemished brand. To shore up its references, Qatar recruited several former football stars—including Xavi Hernandez, Tim Cahill, and Cafu—to serve as player-ambassadors for its World Cup, and it just added Beckham in a deal reportedly worth $277 million.
In other cases, this laundering is implicit. Since the 1970s, Qatar has hosted over 80 major sporting events overseen by non-governmental bodies. These attributes play into the selection biases that shape what events the media covers. Sprawling crowds, powerful organizations, celebrity athletes, unfolding drama—international sporting events not only reflect values attractive to the media; they can also, in the competition for coverage, enable host nations to displace other, less flattering stories. After a decade of scrutiny, Qatar seems to be experiencing this now, as reporters turn their attention to its World Cup’s qualifying field and architectural feats.
Corrosive Capital
A second manifestation of Qatari politics is in its disruption of sporting institutions through corrosive capital, financing that exploits governance gaps to influence political developments. Both regional and international governing bodies have had to deal with the downsides of doing business with the Qataris. Regionally, Qatar-owned PSG was the subject of a 2017 UEFA investigation into whether the club had run afoul of financial regulations when signing two of the world’s top talents to record sums in the same month. Despite evidence that the French club had used inflated sponsorship agreements to circumvent spending caps, UEFA cleared PSG of any wrong-doing. The decision prompted allegations of an investigative cover-up as well as questions about EUFA’s relationship with PSG president Nasser al-Khelaifi, who has since joined the body’s executive committee and is under investigation by French and Swiss authorities for bribery and corruption.
Internationally, Qatar’s original bid to host the 2022 World Cup sparked multiple probes into FIFA, the event’s Swiss-based organizer. U.S. prosecutors found that several FIFA executives—responsible for selecting competition locations and broadcasters—received bribes in exchange for their votes. The fallout from these investigations has been far-reaching, calling into question FIFA’s culture and Swiss authorities’ credibility amid upheaval in the body’s leadership and indictments against dozens of its officials and associates.
Sports Beyond Borders
To be sure, these sporting tools and targets are hardly unique to Qatar. Since 2008, an Emirati private equity firm with links to Abu Dhabi’s ruling family has owned Manchester City, and last October, a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund purchased England’s Newcastle. In international sport, both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have drawn ire in democratic circles for recruiting transnational references, manipulating media coverage, and corrupting governing bodies. Additionally, the excesses of international sport may have as much to do with their old organizational cultures as with their new autocratic investors. As Gulf officials see it, their sports investments are meant to diversify national economies long dependent on oil and gas and to encourage youth wellness amid troubling healthcare trends.
Still, Qatar’s outsize influence in international football merits serious concern. With its extensive rolodex and active checkbook, Qatar’s ruling family is rare among entrenched authoritarians for its ability to export its designs abroad. So long as those designs were seen as “soft,” they were acceptable to many. But much like China’s “charm offensive,” Qatar’s designs may actually be “sharper”—and do more harm to open societies—than analysts appreciate. Democratic actors across Europe are beginning to feel that and take action. If football is to remain the beautiful game, they’ll need to stay engaged, both on and off the pitch.
