Do countries hosting WC make money from it?
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Roshan Amiri
- . November 17, 2022
- . Update: November 17, 2022 10:16 pm
The Olympics are surpassed only by the football World Cup as the biggest sporting event on the planet.
Over five billion viewers are anticipated to tune in to witness the athletic extravaganza in Qatar, with more than a million people actually attending the events.
An event like this generates enormous sums of money from ticket and merchandise sales, corporate sponsorship, prize money, and tourism.
Does it, however, make financial sense for the host nation? The quick response is no. The majority of World Cup host nations invest tens of billions in planning, infrastructure development, hotel construction, and other related activities. Most of the time, at least not in terms of hard currency, much of that is not recovered.
Read | Is Qatar spying on World Cup visitors?
The World Cup is undoubtedly profitable. For a total of $4.6 billion, the TV rights to the 2018 World Cup in Russia were sold to international media outlets. However, FIFA, football’s global governing body, maintains that.
The same goes for ticket sales, which are managed by a subsidiary business that FIFA owns entirely. FIFA also retains the marketing rights, which generated over $1 billion in revenue in the 2018 cycle.
The organisation does, however, pay Qatar almost $1.7 billion to host the competition; this sum includes a $440 million prize pool for the teams.
