Pod Save the World - World Corrupt Episode 3: Qatar’s path to the World Cup

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

Tommy and Roger look at how a country roughly the size of Connecticut with documented human rights violations was awarded the World Cup bid. They’re joined by Tariq Panja of the New York Times to discuss FIFA’s corrupt history, and global sports expert Simon Chadwick to explain the concept of sportswashing and why Qatar would want hosting duties in the first place.

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See site for details. The way in which I characterize Qatar is Qatar decided to learn to drive a car in the fast lane of a motorway. So what they decided to do is they were going to bitter stage the World Cup. They won and then all hell broke loose. I'm going to tell you a story. It ends with the person I'm talking about being banned for life from four. Welcome back to World Corrupts. This is episode three from Men and Blazers and Crooked Media.

A crossover so good you'd think Alan Iverson was hosting. I love your framing because I keep thinking about our partnership. It's more like that episode where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar guested on The Bachelor. I have not seen that one, but I do accept your rose, Raj. Okay, enough with this Jesse Palmering, though. You are listening to the third episode in a six-part series. So if you're hearing us for the first time, welcome. It's good to meet you.

But you might want to start at the beginning at episode one, where we cover why we're doing this thing in the first place. And then episode two where we cover the unbelievable corruption that culminated in Zurich, Switzerland in 2010, when Russia and Qatar were awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. The darkness of this podcast series, really, the darkness of our reality is that football, yes, can make fans hearts around the world's sore. are on a different plane. DeBreona. But off the field, sports governed, really self-governed,

in a brazen, craven, kleptocratic fashion with FIFA, global football's governing body really at the centre of the heart of all that darkness. Hence,

guitar currently rushing to get ready to host World Cup 2022 in the style previously only scene, I guess on Great Exumer Island in the hours before the fire festival's grand opening. You just know,

Jarl Rul loves himself a World Cup. And last episode, we discussed what the optics of Qatar hosting the competition looked like from a Western perspective, predominantly that of FIFA, world football's organisers. Today, we will spend time looking at this whole shit show from a Qatari perspective. In short, why would Qatar population fewer than 3 million, who fewer than one in seven is actually native-born, a peninsula smaller than the state of Connecticut, What a try and host a World Cup. This meant to welcome 32 teams and millions of traveling fans in the first place.

To do so, Raj, we're going to have to go back in time. Back to an era when the country was just a barren desert peninsula, not a single skyscraper in the sky. Say that five times fast, buddy. Until 70 years ago, Qatar barely had a settled population, let alone a town of any significant size. But what changed everything for so many countries in the Persian Gulf was the discovery of oil.

Qatar began recovering oil on a commercial scale in the 1940s, though initially most of that money was siphoned off by foreign governments and foreign companies. But the money really started flowing in the 60s, and soon after Qatar declared independence from Britain in 1971. As that old saying goes, the sun will never set on all the geopolitical nightmares created by the British Empire or something like that. King Charles, he's going to fix it, right? Some fresh blood. It'll fix everything, my lord. Oh, my lord. Okay, maybe not.

But the legacy of British colonialism and its tragic consequences will be important to the story later. So put a pin in that one. Fast forward to today, though, Raj. So Qatar is an economic and diplomatic powerhouse because of the massive profits they have reaped from oil and gas. And Qataris citizens are some of the richest in the world. But what they don't have is freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or really any say in what their government does. Gender inequality is built into the culture and the system, and migrant workers who make up 90% of the country's population are treated in a manner that has been compared to

modern slavery. And when you have these kind of surreal, they're almost oxymoronic complexities to grapple with. Riches, beyond the imagination, shared amongst the 300,000 or so citizens of this tiny country, citizens who rely on a ton of expat know-how and even more migrant. labour muscle that make up the other 2.4 million non-citizens who also live there, you're also going to have enormous uncertainty, which itself triggers both a desperate need to confidently assert yourself and an existential insecurity. And I don't know about you, Tommy, but when I feel that cocktail of emotions, myself, I like partaking in a bit of retail therapy. Find it solves everything. You're not alone, Roger. You jump on Amazon and just buy

some stuff late at night. But apparently, few people love retail therapy more than Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Tani, the man who officially became the Emir of Qatar in 2013 after his father abdicated the throne. So the emir is 42, which is my age, which is annoying because he's very powerful and I'm not. And he is not afraid to spend money, Raj. This guy makes the Kardashians look cheap. About a decade ago, empowered by that gigantic fossil fuel windfall. The Emir went on a spending spree, snapping up iconic London landmarks and brands like Herods and even a French soccer club called Paris San Germain. Why would they do that, Raj? Back in 2008, Qatar had to watch golf neighbour slash rival Abu Dhabi snap up Premier team Manchester City for about $360 million.

Good deal. Great deal. Because one of the incredible parts of that acquisition, around the same time, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, they snapped up AM. which was one of the world's biggest microchip suppliers for what British journalist David Conn reports in his book, Richard than God, was a deal worth $4 billion. And then they were shocked by how little press that mega deal got, despite its size, remained pretty much just a trade story. However, the purchase of Manchester City,

a tiny one by Abu Dhabi standards. That one proceeded to make front page noise around the globe and continue to define Abu Dhabi's brand in the eyes of the world a city won trophy after trophy after trophy Manchester City

are the champions of the Premier League once again it's another final day that is now part of this club's growing legend so this French club PSG which is much easier to say are those guys any good at soccer they weren't

before Qatar got involved. Anyway, PSG were the rare football club in a dazzling European capital city that were still underperforming. The team, well, it wasn't exactly a backwater, but they were most well known for playing their games. Wait for this, with two warring sets of their own fans.

Oh, no. Proudly white and racist. The other ethnically and racially mixed fighting each other before, during, and after the game. Jesus. And that changed when a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority brought a controlling stake in PSG, and has since splurged over $2 billion total to transform the team into both a luxury brand and a European juggernaut.

They built an all-star roster featuring Lionel Messi. You might have heard of him, Tommy. The goat, the one true goat, the Brazilian neckt hat enthusiast and football icon Namar, French Wonder Kid, Killion and Bapé. They used all of them essentially to build a... giant global advertising billboard for Qatar, for Qatar Airways, for the Katari Tourist Board. You get the drift. Now, look, we would be the first ones to admit that there's lots of reasons why rich people, rich guys usually buy sports teams.

I would look, I would love to own any of these teams we're talking about right now. But some of it is just vanity, right? I mean, it's competition. It's no different than Jeff Bezos building the next mega yacht or popping all that HGH. Have you seen his biceps lately, Raj? Man is swole. Yeah, look at them and I think, that man clearly been guzzling all those athletic greens. Oh, beautiful. Well done.

Others have pointed out that Qatar was already investing a lot of money in Paris. And look, why wouldn't you want to own real estate in Paris? And maybe they thought, hmm, could be a good idea to do a favor for Nicholas Sarkozy, the then French president and PSG super fan. And we're going to get into all of this a little later in this episode, Raj. But regardless of the motivation, building these economic and diplomatic ties with countries like the U.S. in France can provide Qatar with protection. Whoa, whoa, what do you mean by protection?

Is that like the Knights Watch? Who exactly does Qatar need protection from? And don't they get all the protection they need from, you know, having a U.S. military base on their territory? It would be very difficult to build a giant ice wall in Qatar, Raj. I would put money on the fact that at one time or another the Qataris have explored that very idea. Yeah, it was probably in their PowerPoint somewhere.

But look, you're right. The U.S. has a huge base in Qatar. There's something like 11,000 U.S. military personnel who live there. And look, that base has been a key staging ground for U.S. military operations, airstrikes against ISIS targets in places like Iraq and Syria. But the broader truth is that Qatar is a tiny country in a tough neighborhood. They share a border with Saudi Arabia. They're down the road from Iraq.

They're just across the Persian Gulf from Iran. Plus, Qatar has been more than happy to stir the regional pot and create a little trouble. When you say the words, stir the pot and create trouble, the way you talk about it, it makes all of this just sound like some giant, terrible episode of like the real housewives of the Gulf. How exactly does a petrodollination state stir the pot? First, you throw your wine in Egypt's face, right? Then you DM his X on Instagram. Right. No, here's one example, Raj.

Al Jazeera. You heard of it? You're talking about the state-owned TV and radio network based in Dohaar, the capital of Qatar? I actually do remember Al Jazeera launching in the mid-1990s with huge noise, soon becoming the focus of some totally bonkers conspiracy theories in the United States. In 2003, I believe CIA analysts were so convinced that terrorists were sending hidden messages to Al Jazeera programming that the US government literally grounded 30 flights in response to some analysis. There was just pure fix. It was just daytime television.

The early 2000s were not a banner period for the U.S. intelligence community, but that's another story. The CIA wasn't the only one given Al Jazeera at the side eye, though. I mean, Hosni Mubarak, then the president of Egypt, visited Al Jazeera's offices in 1999 and reportedly said, all that noise coming out of this matchbox? Now, we should point out that much of what Mubarak considered noise was in reality just more open, honest discussions of topics that were forbidden on state TV, areas like foreign policy, governance and religion. The kinds of discussions that your average autocratic leader just lives to suppress. That's exactly right.

And they blamed Qatar for allowing these conversations to happen. And frankly, it got worse from there. Many Gulf leaders hated Al Jazeera's coverage of the Arab Spring. They returned to Tahrir Square, thousands of Egyptians, to chant the same chant of the revolution. People want the downfall. Those who may not remember, the Arab Spring. back in 2010, that wave of massive anti-government protest that kicked off one after another, spiraling across the Arab world and threatening the rule of over a dozen leaders.

In Egypt, Raj, the protesters actually forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign. I mean, I actually was still in the White House at that time, and I can remember it being this shocking, momentous event. At one point, you know, standing outside of President Obama's office, the Oval Office, he had President Mubarak on speakerphone. could hear both of them shouting at each other through the door. But this was so shocking because for decades, Mubarak had projected this image as a nearly invincible strongman. And so his ouster terrified autocratic leaders across the Arab world, many of whom blamed Al Jazeera for the protests.

And they later blamed Al Jazeera when the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood Party took power. You learned something new every single day. I had no idea that the Muslim Brotherhood had their own Fox News. Yeah, Tucker Carlson used to work there. It was great. But look, it wasn't just Al Jazeera that was the problem. Qatar also made enemies by meddling in political disputes in countries like Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and have been accused of supporting Islamist radical groups in the region. Even I, in my own dim, slow on the uptake fashion, can see how all of this might not go over well. And the more you talk, the more you realize just how much of a regional outlier Qatar is.

and just how much it needs Paris, Sanjouement. The team and maybe even the liqueur, right? But, you know, look back to this brewing conflict. It's very good. It all came to a head in 2017 when a coalition of countries in the Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia, cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar.

They launched an economic boycott. They blocked planes and ships from coming out of the country. It was a real problem. Where are we on a scale between another real housewives of Qatar kind of fight and something which is geopolitically pre-intent? Good question.

Look, I would describe this as a genuine diplomatic crisis. The Saudis, the Egyptians, the Emirates, and several other countries accused the Qataris of supporting terrorist organizations. And they threatened to continue the boycott until Qatar met this list of public demands that they made that included shutting down Al Jazeera, limiting their diplomatic ties with Iran, and ending all support for terrorist organizations, which I should note, you know, Qatar denies that final allegation. So listen to you, I'm just like, and I'm sure all our listeners will join me in this thought.

Just thank God we had a president with the deft diplomatic touch of Donald Trump in charge to manage this mess. I'm sure, Tommy, he resolved things immediately, right? Yeah, Trump, of course, made things worse in this mess. Frankly, wasn't resolved fully until years later. But I do think this story and this diplomatic crisis helps explain why the Qataris go on these spending. sprees. They want friends all over the world who can help them when they're in a pinch. And also want the megaphone, the PR benefit that comes from being associated with a team as good as PSG, or that times a million, which is what you get from hosting the World Cup. There is no better

way to burnish the message that Qatar is a world-class state over the future, the border where the West meets the Islamic world. Exactly. But look, enough of this foreign policy stuff. I have to ask this because it's bugging me. It's Qatar? Any good at football? Do they have any history, any bona fides that would suggest they want to host this thing?

God, now that is a great question. And I don't know how you say chutzpah in Arabic. But it has been quite a leap. The bid for the World Cup around that time, the Qatarian national team, I think we're about 113th in the world back then. Is that good? 113? It's not great, Bob.

Qatar had never ever qualified for the World Cup before, but back in 1995, Qatar did host the under 20 men's World Cup. It's a minor crumb that FIFA had thrown their way. That is the event that was perceived by many to be the seed of the idea for 2022. But again, I mean, normally, if you host the World Cup,

you kind of want to win the thing, right? Or at least compete. And how is that going to be possible if you're 113th in the world? Don't you risk humiliation? Yes. And Qatar suddenly had to get good at football so their team would not crap its pants with the entire world watching. And Qatar did this in perhaps the most Qatari way possible by spending billions

on a youth development academy named a spire. And it had the goal of developing a Qatari Messi. I just love that at Qatari Messi. investing in. That's tough. We all want a messy of our very own. Bite your arm off to have like a Connecticut messy by investing in, according to their website, biochemistry,

altitude, physiology, biomechanics, and anthropometry. I'll be honest. Don't know if you can tell by the way I pronounce that. I have absolutely no bloody idea what anthropometry is, but the academy also included an arm that scouted kids in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia. they span it as a humanitarian effort, but it's pretty clear to everyone in the football world,

it was really an effort to peddle influence in other FIFA nations, as well as to identify and pluck talented young prospects, move them to Qatar, and make them eligible to play for the Qatari national team. Ah, there it is. I think it's every child's dream across Southeast Asia and Latin America

to one day grow up and play for the Qatari national team to strategy known as talent harvesting. And in one of their recent games, seven of the 11 Qataris starters were born outside of Qatar. And through life hacks like that, you too can take a state with fewer than 7.5,000 registered footballers. Turn them into the current champions of Asia. A squad that's now ranked 48th in the world at all for the low, low price of a couple of billion dollars. Beautiful. Qatar's got talent harvesting.

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supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit Athletic Greens.com slash world. Again, that's athletic greens.com slash world to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Most athletic green since Darrell. So, Raj, again, stepping back. So far, we've established that Qatar is not a democracy. And until recently, they were toiling in, you know, football irrelevancy. But we also know that the country is ruled by a leader with an iron fist who calls all the shots and

loves to spread money around. That sounds a lot like FIFA, no? I mean, it's not hard to see how these guys would get along. And it's not hard to understand how a nation like Qatar, with a desperate hunger for power and infinite resources to just outpay all of the nations could win the rights to host, because as we discussed in episode two, FIFA delegated that hosting decision to its executive committee,

a group of just 22 members who reveled in the fact that there was practically no oversight at all, all of which made it the perfect target for Qatar to wine and dine and shower with expensive mouldy bags and watches, spending what the Guardian newspaper reported was $200 million on their bid campaign and hiring some of the biggest names in football to act as mercenary advocates for their bona fide ace. Lig's in it in Zedemm. No, not the French guy who headbutted the other guy in the World Cup final. Don't tell me they got to him too. The very same ball king. Manchester City, managerial, genus, Pep,

cordial, the two, essentially, Catalan Bill Belichick. If you make a deflakeet joke, I will cry. Sorry, des and flargate. When given back trucks full of cash, those two gents will sing, your footballing praises.

Remember, at this time, Europe was starting to come out of a recession while Qatar and golf money was flowing. But England and Australia, they were found to be doing dodgy stuff too. Everyone was bribing or attempting to be bribed. Think of it like Carl Douglas's Kung Fu fighting, but for payoffs and kickbacks. So, okay, but if all these countries were doing shady stuff too, are we being unfair to single Qatar out? You could attempt to make that argument,

but Qatar won the bid to host a World Cup because it was the only one that could burn money in an absolutely infinite, unlimited way. And it was actually an English paper the mail on Sunday that published a special report informed by a Qatari whistleblower on the eve of the World Cup hosting decision, and they revealed their crooked methodologies and predicted, quote, little-known Middle Eastern State, Qatar was about to shock the world and win the right to host the 2022 World Cup. And you remember Tariq Panja with the New York Times, right, Tommy? The bloke who helped us in episode two, he helped us understand FIFA's corruption. He returns now to explain the origins of Qatar's desire to host the World Cup and the roots of

its collaboration with FIFA to bring the great game. to the desert. I'm going to tell you a story. It ends with the person I'm talking about being banned for life from football. The guy I'm talking about is a Qatari billionaire. Okay, so Tari's talking here

about Mohammed bin Hamam, a Qatari football administrator, a fine upstanding member of FIFA's executive committee and a Gent who played a crucial role in Qatar's World Cup bid. He realized very quickly that the world of football,

the planet FIFA, is extremely bidderable. By that means you can buy off most people and you can get your way. It reportedly paid out a cool $5 million to get the support for that country's World Cup campaign. Five million. Okay, so a World Cup costs about one five millionth of a Bezos. Is that right? And that was back in 2014. Think how much one five millionth of a Bezos was worth then.

The British paper, the Sunday Times, then said it had obtained millions of emails and other documents that showed Binhamamam, made payments of up to $200,000 each into accounts controlled by the presidents of 30 African Football Associations. That seems a little suspicious. You're not crapping, Tommy. The times went on to add, oh yeah, MBH, he'd also paid 1.6 milly into bank accounts of then FIFA Exco member Jack Warner, gent from Trinidad and Tobago.

That is certainly an efficient, though, not particularly subtle way to buy influence. And so the prosecutors, they saw this happen. They had all the facts in the newspaper, and they nailed bin Haman for these offenses, and he's serving a prison sentence somewhere, right? Has to be. Oh, not quite. Football doesn't work like that, Thomas.

After greasing palms to get the World Cup, pretty much like Henry Hill entering the Cooper in Goodfellas, bin Haman decided, God, that worked. I'm going to run for FIFA president! Oh, no. And he decided to take on set blatter in 2011, and as Tariot will tell us,

that's ultimately what did him in. You know, those Acme cartoons, if you were to design a corruption plot that you're going to get caught up in and get banned, this is the one. Jack Warner always had his hands out, said to Mohammed bin Hamam, why don't you come to the Caribbean

and pitch to my members? So he says, yeah, I'll come over. Private jet. And in the jet, he has some gifts. There is a meeting. which someone recorded Jack Warner speaking about on the telephone. And he said, Mohammed's here and he's got gifts for all of you.

If some of you are too pious to accept them, that's up to you. So there was a hotel suite set up, a list of names, and you go up to the hotel room, knock on the door. One by one, they went in, and they were given envelopes with stacks of $100 bills to the total of $40,000 per person. And they could do with it what you will. If you want to work in football for football development, that's down to you.

So literally, old-school brown envelopes full to the brim with $100 bills were handed out. And that was the end of bin Haman. As Tariq mentioned, it got him a lifetime ban from football. Again, that specific incident may not be related to the $5 million. It reportedly shelled out to Hellcatah. get the World Cup, but we're just painting a picture of the upstanding moral fiber of those who were involved in the Qatari bid. This is how business was done. We're essentially talking my pillow levels of integrity. I was just thinking that Trump could make a great FIFA president. Maybe that's

our exit strategy as a nation here. You know what? He's got everything that they look for, a FIFA for a future president on his resume. But now we do want to get to a story that details how Qatar pulled this off. And it wasn't just enveloped stuffed with cash that did it. It was what's considered diplomacy, saying, forget you, fellow FIFA execs, let me speak to your manager,

aka their heads of state. And this, this, this is the story you hinted at earlier, Thomas. And like Chekhov, we'd never hang a rifle in the first act, but wasn't going to go off in the third. And this is a very specific example, not just envelopes of cash

and how they make football work, but global commerce being used as a lever for bringing the tournament to Qatar. Take it away, Tariq. There was a dinner, famous dinner at the Elise Palace, the home of the French president, the time, Nicholas Sarkozy.

The other dinner was the then-crowned prince and current emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tameen, Michel Pletini, another French great footballer, the head of European football, Nicolas Sarkozy, and I believe the French sports minister was there. That dinner had huge implications

for the world of football. football and for the 2022 World Cup. Here is why. Afterwards, Qatar places an order for French jets worth billions of dollars. And Plotini has his head turned. Nicholas Sarkozy says, for France, the World Cup, your vote, should go to Qatar. And Michel Plotini, to his credit, is one of these few voters who at least tells everyone publicly who he voted for in that secret vote. He says he voted for Qatar, though he says he would have done it anyway. I'm not so sure about that. So, Raj, let me just make sure I got this straight.

A quick review of the stories we've heard on this podcast. We got a DOJ official calling the awarding of this World Cup the most corrupt thing he's ever witnessed. We know that one of the key members of the Qatari bid had a pension for handing out literal envelopes stuffed with cash. He didn't do it for bribery. He did it. It was just a tick. The way you discover it's just a tick. It's just a habit. And we know that the Qataris just so happened to buy a fleet of French-produced aircraft

and that France's representative in FIFA voted for Qatar. And yet there has been surprisingly little accountability. Here's Tarik again. What you see are investigations in France, investigations in Switzerland into this process of the attribution of the World Cup. Some of these, the French one you hear is still going on. The Swiss have shown themselves to be relatively useless of prosecuting FIFA and sports corruption. There is a reason why Switzerland is the home of the IOC, FIFA and the plethora of world sports organizations.

Switzerland is seen as an enabling country, soft-touch jurisdiction. So there have been a bunch of investigations, journalistic projects, books, etc., but no one has been jailed for taking a bribe for gifting the World Cup to Russia and Qatar. I want to make it clear, though, once that World Cup was awarded, no one thought it would actually happen. If we were all like, a World Cup in that heat, in cities that don't exist, that we know was awarded corruptly, it's never going to happen. And yet, here we are, Tommy, on the eve of the thing.

So, Raj, this really does get you into the question of why. Why would Qatar want to spend all this money, build all this infrastructure just to get criticism from schmucks like us across the planet who know nothing about the country before this event. But now we're criticizing their human rights record. We're criticizing their record on labor rights. We're talking about their spending decisions. How does this work?

It's almost if they intentionally did it to get criticism from schmucks like us. And that could have really been their original intention. So going into this project, we assumed they wanted to use the World Cup to distract all of their critics and give them something else to talk about, what's known as sports washing. And there is still certainly some truth to that. But the full picture, it's a little more complicated. But let's start with that term you just use sports washing, trying to define it, and getting a sense of how it actually works.

I am Simon Chadwick. I am Professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy at Schema Business School in Paris. In simple terms, sport washing is a term that was created by cause, organisations to characterise situations in which countries deploy sport, to divert attention away from the crimes and misdemeanours in which that country is involved, or cleanse the image of countries that have been abusing human rights or perhaps denying certain groups in society, their right to equality. Can you give us some examples outside of the World Cup and Qatar? The best example, I think, is one that has really rip and...

and come into full view this year. And that is Gazprom, the Russian Gas Corporation. It first signed a shirt sponsorship deal with the Bundesliga Schalker back in 2006. I signed a sponsorship deal with UEFA Champions League. And for a long time, you know, we were talking about nearly two decades. People just looked and said, hey, there's Gazprom. They sponsored the Champions League. And nobody really questioned or asked about or criticized.

You know, Gazprom will give him lots of money to Europe. biggest football competition, you know, happy days. Yet in reality, I think what Gazprom was doing was to cleanse its image and legitimize its position. There is the question here of why sports, why sports washing? Because a lot of bad people laundered their reputations through charitable giving. I'm thinking about the Sackler family who hooked everyone in the U.S. on opioids and then slapped their name on hospitals. I think about people like Jeffrey Epstein, who gave tons of money to Harvard and burnish his reputation that way. Why did sports become the go-to here for all these autocrats?

It's global. It's something with which people are readily engaged. It's easily consumed. And so sport, I think, is it's seductive. It's engaging. But it also helps to communicate an image or set of values. Imagine that Manchester United was bought by, let's say, the Saudi Arabian government. The going rate for Manchester United would be probably $6 billion.

According to research, Manchester United has 1.1 billion fans. Essentially, what you're doing is you're talking about $6 a fan to buy a fan's influence on social media. So if you were a government seeking to sport wash or to mislead or to distract attention, I'm not saying it's a bargain, but you know, $6 for each fan to get them to say nice things for you and to serve as social media influences on your behalf, I would say, that's pretty good value. you for money. Buy your own off for $6 a fan. Yeah man. If you got $6 billion sitting around, that is a bargain. But we also asked Simon about guitar specifically in what he thinks their endgame is in hosting this competition. What we've seen really is we've seen Qatar using the

World Cup as nation building. So you go back 10 years ago, there was no metro system. Now there is a metro system. You go about 10 years, there was no motorway network. Now there's a Motorway Network. And so the World Cup has been used for nation building purposes, but I also think it's been used for nation branding purposes because one of the things that I think that both Qatar and Saudi Arabia want to do is they want to be Dubai, because Dubai has become a holiday hotspot of the world, global transit hub. And a lot of this has been built on the back of sports sponsorship. You think Emirates, you know, and Arsenal and Real Madrid and AC Milan and Hamburg and, you know, In reality, what the likes of Qatar and Saudi Arabia want is they want people to be flying Qatar

Airways, they want people to be going on beach holidays by the Red Sea. It's not just about changing people's attitudes. It's also about getting them to change their behaviors. I think you're making a more persuasive case that this is really more akin to kind of Qatar's coming out party to the world. I like your use of this description of, you know, this is Qatar's coming out party. Just as the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing was modern China. China's coming out party.

Simon, is there a chance that this 2022 World Cup may be the most profound example of the Streisand effect in which trying to stop people from talking about one thing only has drawn attention to it and makes the world talk about it all the more? The way in which I characterise Qatar is Qatar decided to learn to drive a car in the fast lane of a motorway. So what they decided to do is they were going to bid to stage the World Cup. They won and then all hell broke loose. You have kind of the young progressives.

And they do want things to be different. They do want men and women to be equal. They do want to be more open and transparent. But as with most countries, including my own, there is a significant conservative caucus. I went to an event in Doha, and I spoke just before the pandemic started. At the end of the event, a senior came to me. He must have been about 75, 76 years old. And he said to me, I don't want the World Cup in my country.

And I don't want to why. And he said, I don't want to change. Oh, Simon Chadwick had me in the palm of his hand there. It seemed like he was opening up to finish off and to stick the landing like Kerry Strew by delivering us a sweet old man's story. But it turned out to be... Bigoted old man. Bigoted old man stories are the worst sweet old man stories.

And they don't want to change. And look, you know who else doesn't want to change? The FIFA executives who have used their. positions to get filthy rich. And in the next episode, we're going to explore the realities that that greed has wrought, what it meant to bring the World Cup, the teams, the players, the fans to a country where they will have to confront and navigate this generally horrific human rights record. When you used a word generally horrific, it's essentially using generally in the same way as I tell people I'm generally bald. Well, also, look, we're going to bring

some experts on your hairline and these issues. We're going to talk about guitar's migrant labor practices. We're going to talk about its record on LGBT issues and what it all means heading into this World Cup. We have something like 1.2 million fans expected to visit Qatad. What happens for LGBT people who are visiting? Are they going to be safe? We're also going to hear from a host of footballers, including one of my favorites, two-time World Cup champion, presidential medal of freedom winner Megan Rapino, who talks about the courage that it does take to speak out in a business built on conformity, and the message she has for those heading to this World Cup. The regret of not saying anything is what is going to kill you and what's going to eat you alive.

In a podcast that can too often seem dark and full of terrors, trust me, you'll want to hear the message Megan delivers in the next episode because it's so bloody important. And look, not for nothing, but this is from someone who actually chooses to hear us both yap away on our little shows before we launch this series. A human being who is essentially flawless, except for a tasting podcast. World Corrupt is an original podcast collaboration from Men and Blazers and Crooked Media's Pod Save the World. Alongside Roger Bennett, I'm your host, Tommy Vitor.

The executive producers and writers of World Corrupt are me, Roger Bennett, my great friend Tommy Vitor and Men in Blazers, Jonathan Williamson, who incredibly edited and sound design the episodes, a bit like Phil Collins drumming and singing at the very same time. A talented band. From the crooked media side, our executive producers are Michael Martinez, Sandy Gerard, and Giancarlo Bizarro. Our producers are Ryan Wallerston and Haley Muse.

And our associate producer is Saul Rubin. For Men and Blazers, our producers, Miranda Davis and Martin S. This episode was fact-checked by Nikki Schaeiner Bradford, music by Veselius Photopoulos. With editing assistance from Nick Furrshort. Additional production support from Crooked Media's Zuri Irvin, Kyle Segglin and Ari Schwartz. And Men in Blazers mix discurude. Special thanks to Crooked Media's Julia Beach, Amelia Montuth and Matt DeGroot.

As well as Men in Blazers, Scott Debson, Michael Milberger, and Alex Sale for their promotional social support and love.