In 2010, when FIFA awarded Qatar the much-coveted status of host for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, football fans around the world were surprised that this Gulf country had beaten so many leading international sports giants to the prize. Yet in many ways, the award was a recognition of the major investment Qatar has been making in sports in recent years, with the sector seen as a key plank of the country’s development. Sport has become a driver of growth in many other areas of Qatar’s economy, and also ties into efforts to improve human resources and quality of life across the country – and region.
National Plans
Sports development in Qatar has come about within the context of a number of national strategies. Indeed, planning for the sector’s growth goes back over a decade, with the first major fruit of this effort being the country’s successful bid for the 2006 Asian Games, which Qatar won in November 2000. It was a watershed moment, with around $2.8bn eventually spent on the tournament and some 45 countries represented, making it the largest Asian Games ever held. A cumulative audience of 1.5bn watched 39 sporting events, during some 2000 hours of TV coverage. The Doha Asian Games Organising Committee (DAGOC) was set up by the Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC) to put the event together. DAGOC enlisted the help of a number of local and international consultancies to help with everything from delivering the venues to security, and from transport to event-managing the opening and closing ceremonies. This experience also played into the next steps Qatar was to take in the sector’s development, with the success of the Asian Games green-lighting a further major push into sports.
Key to shaping this was the QOC’s 2008-12 Strategic Plan. The plan set out six priority areas for the sector: development of sports and leisure facilities; promotion and publicity; sports education, awareness and cultural change; athlete pathways development; sports management; and hosting international events.
This plan then became the basis for the Sports Sector Strategy (SSS) 2011-16, drawn up by the QOC and the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics. The SSS was put together as the sector’s contribution to the National Development Strategy 2011-16 for the country as a whole, with this in turn a stepping-stone within the broader Qatar National Vision 2030 (QNV), the country’s long-term development plan which was launched in October 2008 and provides a comprehensive framework for national strategies and implementation plans.
According to Sheikh Mohammed bin Faleh Al Thani, the chairman of Qatar Racing and Equestrian Club (QREC), “The vision of the Father Emir goes far beyond the 2022 FIFA World Cup. It is true the event has brought a lot of attention to Qatar, but the vision was always to develop a sporting hub in the state, which can be seen by the amount invested in all sports and the amount of international sporting events that have been held in Qatar.”
A Key Part Of Development
Sport is therefore considered to be an important component of the overall development of the country. QNV aims to balance economic growth with social development and environmental management, with the long-term goal of creating a sustainable, advanced country with a high standard of living – and with physical activity seen as an important part of all of this.
Sport’s numerous benefits are noted as including a healthier population – Qataris are far from immune from the increasing regional incidence of chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease – as well as a better environment and improved quality of life. Achieving these goals requires a different approach for each generation, from children to adults. It is also about encouraging those Qataris who traditionally tend not to participate in sports activities, such as women, while providing a place for those with special needs. “The sporting industry has been identified as one of the main economic diversifiers in Qatar, not only because it is regionally unique, but because it ties into youth empowerment, health and education advancement. These are all goals outlined in QNV, and sports acts a facilitator for these,” Sheikh Mohammed told OBG.
Local Level
Thus, while much of the focus recently has been on the big-ticket sports events coming to Qatar, an equally important part of the plan is the development of sports facilities on a more local level. The key to this is encouraging the engagement and participation of Qatari people in sports. With this in mind, a football pitch has been built in each neighbourhood, and in 2013-14 running tracks are being added to these. In addition, five youth centres with sports facilities have also been established, along with two Olympic parks, which include gyms, swimming pools and other facilities. The community is involved in all of these activities, as it is in National Sports Day, now in its third year. This is a national holiday, held on the second Tuesday of every February, with each government department or private sector company organising its own sports activities for its employees.
The Qatari Women’s Sports Committee was also established in 2000, which helped Qatari female athletes participate in eight Gulf championships, four Arab championships and eight Asian championships in the 2000-09 period. Since then, the committee has been pushing for further participation, building on the fact that in 2009 – the last year for which data is available – only 15% of all Qatari women regularly engaged in sports activity, while 17% never participated. At the same time, the country has been supporting its special needs athletes, with the Qatar Paralympic Committee taking a leading role in this. Qatar sent a squad to the 2012 London Paralympics, while access to facilities for those with special needs has also been a priority of the sports programme.
A schools’ Olympics programme has also been started to encourage Qatar’s schools to compete with each other, instilling a sporting culture at an early age. Some 11 different sports are currently covered by the games, now in their seventh edition, with some 70,000 students, both boys and girls, participating in the most recent, according to the QOC.
Aspiring To Success
The schools’ Olympics held its final races at the Aspire Dome, the world’s largest indoor multi-purpose sports stadium, located at Qatar’s most iconic sports venue – the Aspire Zone, a fully integrated complex of sports facilities set up for the 2006 Asian Games. The zone’s facilities include the Aspire Academy of Sports and Excellence, which was set up in 2004 and then incorporated into the Aspire zone in 2008. The academy teaches a normal Qatari school curriculum to its students, and this is supplemented with rigorous sports training.
The zone also features the ASPETAR Qatar Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Hospital, which offers athletes a full range of the most cutting-edge treatments in injury management and prevention, as well as facilities for performance improvement.
The final, third part of the zone is a fully enabled logistics arm, with Aspire therefore able to manage its own national and global events – tournaments that sometimes require major logistical support in terms of providing equipment, transport and accommodation for athletes and fans. On the latter point, the zone also has two top-flight hotels – including the 300-metre-high Torch – and one of the country’s largest shopping centres, the Villagio Mall.
Aspire’s educational, medical and logistical arms have now all been brought together under the Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF), with the integration of these different aspects enabling AZF to offer complete packages to the international market. Recent successes in this field include winter training deals with football clubs Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain, as well as with national squads such as Australia. Aspire is particularly well suited for acclimatisation training for hot climates – offering specialist support to athletes from ASPETAR, which is a FIFA-accredited medical centre of excellence – while also able to set different temperatures within its training facilities to help with acclimatisation. The zone, which also includes the giant Al Khalifa Stadium and its FIFA-standard football pitch, has also helped to raise Qatar’s global sports profile, establishing it as a venue for much of the “back room” for international clubs and squads. In addition, the zone is home to the Anti-Doping Laboratory Qatar, the only one of its kind in the Middle East, which was opened in 2012. There are also plans to expand the Aspire Zone, and it has recently established an overseas branch in Senegal.
Planning On
The success of the Asian Games undoubtedly spurred Qatar on in its drive to become a global sporting hub. Bids were launched to host a variety of other international sporting events, including an unsuccessful attempt to host the 2016 Olympics, followed by the crowning achievement of the winning 2022 FIFA World Cup bid. This is not to overlook the many other international events that Qatar has also secured, however. Since 2006, the country has hosted the Asian Indoor Athletics Championships, the WTA Tour Tennis Championships, the FIVB Club World Championships, the IAAF World Indoor Championships and Diamond League, the Davis Cup and the Asian Football Cup, the Arab Games and many others. In addition, before the 2022 FIFA World Cup event, the country will host world championships in squash (2014), short-course swimming (2014), handball (2015), boxing (2015), road-cycling (2016) and gymnastics (2018).
There are a number of annual competitions held in Qatar, such as the Qatar Masters (golf), ExxonMobil Open (tennis), as well as numerous racing events, including horse, camel, powerboat, auto and motorcycle. Meanwhile, the QREC sponsors the annual Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe, a world-famous flat horse race taking place in Paris in October.
The successful 2022 FIFA World Cup bid, however, truly galvanised Qatar, with an emiri decree establishing the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee in March 2011. An emiri decree issued in January 2014 changed the name of the committee to the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SCDL). Preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup have been split between the SCDL, which will oversee delivery, contracts and ensuring a lasting legacy, and the newly created Local Organising Committee, which will oversee all event planning and tournament operations. The overall strategy has been broken down into a series of shorter-term plans, with the current one being for 2012-15. All of these fit within the broader QNV and National Development Strategies and rest on the same pillars of human, social, economic and environmental development.
Legacy
Fitting the achievements of 2022 into the longer-term QNV is a key part of the SCDL’s legacy planning. Legacy is and was central to the World Cup bid. Enhancing the local transport and sporting infrastructure, as well as instilling a greater sporting and fitness culture in Qatar and the Gulf region are important aims of the 2022 plan. In keeping with this framework, the 2022 plan has six main goals.
These are first, to drive and deliver an outstanding World Cup programme; second, to build high-quality talent and establish Qatar as a centre of excellence; third, to deliver an exceptional national and international experience; fourth, to support economic diversification and business environment development; fifth, to promote football and a healthy, active lifestyle; and finally, to improve environmental sustainability, awareness and behaviour. The planning draws on the accumulated experience of the QOC and other bodies within Qatar, with a stated aim to include as many stakeholders as possible. Indeed, the key is to get the whole country to engage.
Qatar is also investing in sports internationally. In line with its goal to invest in projects within Qatar and internationally, Qatar Sports Investments, a Qatari private shareholding company established in 2005, owns Paris Saint-Germain football club and has also signed a five-year partnership deal with FC Barcelona.
Facilities
Driving and delivering an outstanding World Cup naturally also involves the construction of the full range of facilities to host the event. The last, 2010 tournament in South Africa saw 32 teams and 64 matches, watched by a cumulative total of 3.17bn spectators, with an average of approximately 50,000 attending each game. All these will have to be accommodated, and possibly more.
The exact number of stadia to be built for the tournament had not been finalised, but officials said that five were being prioritised for the World Cup and would be tendered in 2014, with three more being dealt with by other stakeholders. The idea is for international stadium contractors to bring their expertise and partner with local firms. In terms of design, in November 2013 the first of the stadium plans was unveiled – the Al Wakrah Stadium, to be located in the coastal town of the same name, 15 km south of Doha. Construction of the new facility, which will have a capacity of 40,000, is due to start in late 2014, and tenders for initial enabling works were set to begin being issued in early 2014, with a 2018 delivery date.
In February 2014 the SCDL also announced that it had awarded international technical and management support firm AECOM the contract for remodelling Al Rayyan Stadium and engineering consultancy Ramboll has been appointed the design consultant. The committee released photographs of preliminary plans, which include a large digital display board wrapped around the stadium, increasing capacity from 22,000 to 40,000 via the addition of a modular top tier that can be disassembled and a cooling system to maintain temperatures between 24°C and 28°C.
Other proposals include major renovations of the Al Gharafa also in Al Rayyan; the completely new Al Khor and Al Shamal stadia, in the districts of the same name; the brand new Doha Port Stadium, a complete renovation of Aspire’s Al Khalifa; a new Education City stadium at the educational complex of the same name; a brand new Lusail Stadium, in Al Daayen; new Qatar University and Sports City stadia; and another new stadium at Umm Slal. Stadium construction is only one part of the overall construction effort, however.
The new, $45bn, 35-sq-km Lusail City, currently being constructed outside Doha, will also include five FIFA-certified training grounds and some 22 new hotels hoping to host both players and fans during the competition. The 2022 competition has also given impetus to other major ventures, such as the $13bn Hamad International Airport, the $5bn Qatar-Bahrain Causeway, metro connections within the Doha area and rail links to neighbouring states.
Tourism Upgrades
There are major plans to expand the tourism sector, with an eye to accommodating the expected rise in visitors for the World Cup, but also with longer-term growth in Qatar’s tourism numbers in mind. In the short term, there are plans for a fleet of floating hotels – cruise ships moored off the new, artificial Oryx Island development – to accommodate visiting World Cup fans. These are projects that have been deemed key to the broader QNV, yet which have been given extra drive by the country’s ambitious sports programme.
Concern
This construction effort has not been without its critics, however. Reports on the conditions of labourers working for some contractors were a cause for concern in late 2013, with this tying into wider criticism of the country’s employment system, under which foreign workers can have their passports taken away by employers and their right to leave restricted. The SCDL has responded by stating that no construction work directly related to the World Cup had yet begun, but that it would press for an investigation into the issue. In late November 2013, Hassan Al Thawadi, secretary-general of the SCDL, told reporters that the committee was “working hard” to produce a “sustainable system for the long term”.
Beating The Heat
Another criticism that has been raised is that hosting a football tournament will be challenging in such a hot climate, especially as the World Cup is traditionally held in the summer from mid-June through mid-July. Qatari officials and FIFA have responded to this by pointing out that the country has already hosted successful international athletics events, while the stadia’s heat-deflecting exoskeletons and cooling technology should reduce pitch-level heat to around 25°C and crowd-level temperatures to about 32°C – feasible levels for football, and similar to those found in countries such as Mexico or Brazil (2014’s host), locations that have not given rise so far to any climate-related concerns. Qatar can also point to the local expertise in acclimatisation for athletes provided by the Aspire Zone.
The ways in which the stadia might tackle the heating issue also highlights the Qatari organisers’ goal of achieving carbon neutrality. The plan is to use the sun during the day to generate electricity that would be used to power the cooling systems, with a renewable energy bias built in to all tournament facilities. With environmental sustainability one of the six main aims of the strategic plan for 2022, the facilities being constructed and revamped will have to meet the highest green standards in energy and water use, conservation and management of waste.
Nonetheless, there is still some pressure to move the dates of the tournament to the cooler winter months. In November 2013 FIFA President Sepp Blatter suggested November-December could be the best time to avoid a potential clash with the January-February Winter Olympics. According to FIFA no final decision will be taken until after the 2014 World Cup, and only after lengthy consultation.
Outlook
The QOC had taken on many of the responsibilities of a ministry of sports in Qatar, but since the accession of the new Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, a reorganisation has begun of many government agencies, with a new Ministry of Youth and Sports (MoYS) created. It is expected that MoYS will take over responsibility for all non-Olympic sports, such as horse and camel racing, motor and motorcycle racing, and speed boat racing, among others, while the QOC will retain oversight of all Olympic sports.
New bids are definitely in the offing for future Olympic Games, as well as many other tournaments. In 2013 the country held a total of 41 international sporting events, and around 41-43 are set to take place in 2014. According to news reports, a bid was recently launched for the 2017 World Fencing Championships, while the 2017 World Athletics Championships has been mentioned as a possibility.
Much of the success of the sports programme in Qatar though will be measured by the degree to which it inspires and enables ordinary Qataris, both male and female, to become involved in sports – and in developing a healthier lifestyle as a result. The “Sports for Life” initiative is a strong sign of how seriously the Qatari authorities take this task, with the aim there also to encourage the development of a sports culture both locally and throughout the Gulf region.
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