Doha kicks off

Building on the momentum of its World Cup success, Qatar's capital is scoring highly across transport, tourism and culture projects as it looks to net its long-term goals for economic diversification

- GEMMA GREENWOOD

The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 will go down in history as far as football firsts are concerned. Not only did football legend Lionel Messi lift the World Cup for Argentina for the first time, but he also set the new FIFA World Cup appearance record at some 26 matches.

The tournament saw 172 goals scored, attracted 3.4 million stadium spectators (up from 3 million in 2018) and the final captivated some 1.5 billion global viewers according to FIFA, topped up with six billion social media engagements.

At that point in time, the eyes of the world were on Doha and its impressive 89,966-capacity Lusail Stadium - the largest stadium in the Middle East and one of seven built for the tournament. They were part of a whopping US$229 billion investment pumped into World Cup preparations in the decade leading up to the largest sporting event on earth.

This remarkable outlay also gets etched in the record books, with FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 not only marking the first World Cup to be staged in the Middle East, but also the most expensive, with the amount spent exceeding the cost of all other World Cups combined, according to 2023's Skift Advisory Thought Leadership Report.

So, the question is, was it worth it? What has Qatar, and more specifically, its economic powerhouse, Doha, gained from this mammoth investment, and will the legacy match expectations?

A national tourism vision 

Staging the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 wasn't a one-off boost, but part of a much larger masterplan for long-term economic development. Like many of the Gulf States, Qatar has ambitions to rapidly diversify its nonenergy economy and its Qatar National Vision 2030 (QNV 2030) sets out a roadmap to achieve this.