World Cup awards to Russia, Qatar contradict any sense of CSR

If you happen to follow football (soccer) then today marks a special day on the calendar as the host nations for the World Cup in 2018 and 2022 were both announced. I’ve written before about how CSR is now naturally part of the bid process for large sporting events such as the Olympics, World Cups and the Commonwealth Games. With that in mind (and taking emotion out of it as I wanted England to host the 2018 event) I am completely amazed at the selections that FIFA announced today – Russia will host in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.

Already the Internet and news sources are ablaze with talk of corruption and bribery impacting the decisions of FIFA (the world governing body for the sport) and indeed it does look like an extreme example of money talking but from a green or CSR perspective both winners don’t fit the bill in terms of what a green profile would represent. The preparation for hosting the World Cup includes having suitable infrastructure already in place or facing the choice of having to build, modernize or reconstruct what is already in place. Hosting the World Cup requires at  10 world-class stadiums, sufficient hotel space and a strong  transport infrastructure. European bidders for the World Cup such as Spain/Portugal (a joint bid) Belgium and the Netherlands (a joint bid) and England each possess essentially enough modern stadiums, ample existing hotel space for visiting fans and a modern domestic transport network. In addition the countries are not particularly large which eases the movement of fans and of course the carbon footprint of the event.

Experts felt that the strongest bids on paper belonged to the Western European nations mentioned above for some of the reasons I’ve mentioned in addition to of course a historic passion for the game and strong existing domestic leagues. When taking all the factors together and then adding the rather unimpressive national CSR indexes for Russia and Qatar respectively (neither nation ranks in the top 60 globally) that the decision by FIFA looks rather dismal.

Russia not only would require fans to travel huge distances between matches on the public transport network that likes behind what is needed, but more importantly no more than two or 3 stadia in the country are up to the standard required by the FIFA. Yes they have 7.5 years to prepare but an immense amount of construction, new construction, or modernization will be required to host the event.

Qatar on the other hand does benefit from being very small (less than 5000 mi.²) so domestic travel will be easy however at least eight new stadiums will have to be built and the most recent article I read stated that Qatar will have approximately 29,000 hotel rooms by 2012. Far short of the approximate visits of a typical World Cup from overseas where between 75,000-125,000 fans of the sport arrive to support their respective nations. Once again a huge construction burden will be placed on Qatar and although the construction will be green I would hope, many other nations already have suitable hotel space.

I believe both nations have the financial backing to complete the projects on time and I’m sure many green and innovative features will be included in the stadiums, transport networks and necessary hotel and support infrastructure that will need to be built. With that said it doesn’t address the fact that other nations are better prepared. There’s also the legacy of hosting the World Cup or Olympics – there is no logic in the world that says Qatar will ever be able to use the empty eight or nine stadiums that will be built. There is no flourishing domestic league with huge crowds not to mention the fact the country has a population of under 2 million and far from the perfect climate for football in the first place.

I hope that environmentalists and CSR experts take a long hard look at the decisions made by FIFA and ask all the right questions, as the decisions today look to be appalling.