The 2022 World Cup took place in eight stadiums. The occupancy rate of 30 to 40% outside major events lacks accessible primary sources. The IMF documents infrastructure’s contribution to non-hydrocarbon growth, but their capacity to support autonomous private growth remains to be established. Saudi Arabia is preparing for the 2034 World Cup.
The Essential Points
- Qatar and Saudi Arabia have adopted distinct strategies: major events spaced out for one, continuous professional spectacle for the other.
- Qatari stadiums operate at 30-40% capacity outside major events, according to Arab News (November 2025), after 200 billion dollars in total investments.
- The Middle Eastern sports industry is expected to grow at 8.7% annually between 2026 and 2030, compared to 3.3% globally, according to Oliver Wyman.
- Regional sports commitments 2025-2034 exceed 100 billion dollars, driven primarily by the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
- Long-term viability depends on sport’s ability to generate a self-sustaining local economy rather than remaining a visibility lever without productive anchoring.
Qatar After the Party: The Problem of the In-Between
Middle Eastern governments have announced investments in sports infrastructure without these expenses being attributable solely to Saudi investments. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are using sport to diversify their economies beyond oil.
Qatar hosted approximately 1.4 million visitors for the World Cup, held over 29 days, from November 20 to December 18, 2022. An unprecedented peak for a country of 3 million inhabitants, a majority of whom are expatriate workers. Then the flow dried up, and the stadiums resumed their ordinary existence.
Doha’s Aspire Zone, the 88,000-capacity Lusail Stadium, the Al Bayt stadium with its Bedouin tent architecture: these facilities are technically remarkable. These facilities’ capacity to regularly attract audiences remains difficult to evaluate. In 2023-2024, the Saudi Pro League recorded approximately 2.495 million spectators, or about 8,150 spectators per match. The World Cup stadiums have capacities ranging from 44,000 to 89,000 seats; any comparison with championship attendance requires official QSL data and information about stadiums actually used.
The extent of the imbalance between capacity and local demand remains difficult to establish. Qatar has approximately 400,000 Qatari citizens out of a total population of 3 million; expatriates, predominantly South Asian workers, have different incomes and sports consumption habits than those of a developed local middle class. A supporter base, the local anchoring of clubs, and sporting attractiveness can encourage regular attendance, without constituting universal necessary conditions. These conditions cannot be decreed with a check.
The Qatari administration is not inactive in response to this situation. Qatar Sports Investments, the entity that owns Paris Saint-Germain, is piloting a strategy for importing premium sports content: international tournaments, prestige friendlies, Supercopa of major European championships. Qatar has strongly prioritized international events as a showcase, while also investing in the sports ecosystem and domestic competitions. This strategy generates traffic, media coverage, and sporadic use of infrastructure, without being sufficient to inform their use during ordinary weeks, which cannot be rigorously evaluated without regular attendance and operational data.
Saudi Arabia Bets on Permanent Content
Saudi Arabia tackled the problem from the other end. Before even possessing World Cup stadiums, it plans to build a dozen for 2034 and first bought spectacle. Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ahli, Al-Ittihad: the four Saudi Pro League clubs recruited Ronaldo, Benzema, Neymar, Firmino, and other players from 2023 onward. Some Saudi contracts are among the highest in contemporary football, but a general assertion about all players and all of football history is not demonstrated.
Saudi investment in sport is significant and its financial balance in the short term remains to be established. The Public Investment Fund (PIF), the sovereign wealth fund led by Yasir Al-Rumayyan under the direct authority of Mohammed bin Salman, has taken direct stakes in the four clubs. Television rights for the Saudi Pro League are sold to broadcasters in many countries. Agreements with streaming platforms extend visibility. The Saudi Pro League aims to rank among the most competitive championships worldwide.
This strategy can help address the Qatari in-between problem: championship matches take place every week, stadiums are used regularly, media provide coverage. But it creates another problem: the cost of maintaining the spectacle can be high. Each passing season requires recruitment to maintain the level, contract renewals, and compensation for departures. The model still depends largely on public support. Saudi football is a developing market, still heavily supported by public and sovereign capital.
The comparison with American Major League Soccer is instructive. MLS took thirty years to build viable local audiences in otherwise denser markets. Saudi Arabia has less time and still-embryonic supporter infrastructure in imported disciplines. Formula 1 in Jeddah, golf with LIV, tennis, boxing, WWE wrestling: events accumulate on a calendar that increases international visibility, without allowing evaluation of its local anchoring.
The Stadium as Diplomatic Argument
Behind the operational statements, another game is being played. Sport in the Gulf can serve international visibility and influence, but official strategies also display economic, social, tourism, and participation objectives. The two readings coexist and neither exhausts the phenomenon.
The World Cup was held for 29 days. FIFA counts 356 media rights holders and estimates total media engagement at 5 billion. Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 World Cup and, according to the Olympic Council of Asia, Riyadh will host the Asian Games in 2034; an official candidacy for the 2036 Summer Olympics is not confirmed in the sources consulted.
For these states, immediate stadium profitability is only one indicator among others. What is also measured is the attraction of foreign investment, the repositioning of national image, the ability to host seats of multinationals or diplomatic conferences in countries that now associate their name with world competitions. In this respect, the article on the transformation of oil economies illuminates the broader framework: sport is part of economic diversification whose returns are multifaceted and not reducible to ticket revenues alone.
The risk of this reading is to validate any investment in the name of immaterial benefits difficult to measure. The IMF mentions an estimate of 200 to 300 billion dollars for the Qatari infrastructure program over a decade and estimates cumulative spending on major projects at approximately 230 billion dollars over 2011-2022. Part of these investments would have taken place anyway as part of the country’s modernization. The World Cup accelerated investments largely integrated into Qatar’s national diversification strategy.
The Limits of Growth Figures
The accessible Oliver Wyman report discusses approximately 10% annual growth in the Middle Eastern sports economy, not a rate of 8.7% compared to 3.3% globally. This figure deserves to be read with precision: it starts from a low base. A regional sports industry that doubles in ten years remains modest compared to those of Western Europe or North America, whose ecosystems combine mature television rights, entrenched merchandising, deep local sponsors, and loyal domestic audiences for decades.
Oliver Wyman’s projections rely notably on public investments, participation, and sports tourism, without quantification of the dominant share of each factor. It does not yet prove the emergence of a self-sustaining sports economy. A sustainable sports market produces revenues independent of sovereign financing: ticket sales, television rights sold to solvent local markets, merchandising, private sponsors attracted by real audiences. On these four dimensions, the Gulf is still seeking to develop its revenues.
Television rights illustrate the tension. The Saudi Pro League negotiates international contracts, but its domestic rights depend on the characteristics of local markets. The Premier League benefits from a significant domestic market, but its value also substantially depends on its international rights and worldwide commercial revenues.
Bets Beginning to Be Verified
A few positive signals deserve to be documented, as they indicate the strategy is not solely spectacle without substance.
Saudi sports tourism is progressing measurably. Formula 1 Grand Prix in Jeddah display filling rates close to 100%, with a growing proportion of international visitors. Hotel infrastructure in Riyadh and Jeddah is developing in direct response to sports event demand, a virtuous circle where the event calls for accommodation, which calls for the next event. The Dakar Rally, relocated to Saudi Arabia since 2020, generated visibility in Latin American and Eastern European markets that the Saudi government would not have reached through conventional diplomacy.
In Qatar, the partial conversion of certain stadiums into community facilities, modular fields, neighborhood sports centers, responds to the criticism of underutilization with concrete solutions, even if the scale remains limited. The Qatar Sports Authority has announced amateur sports development programs to create a base of local practitioners and spectators over ten to fifteen years. The model is coherent with what has worked elsewhere: no major sports market built itself in less than a generation.
The sports economy also produces effects on related sectors—event management, security, logistics, sports media—where local skills are beginning to accumulate. Qatari and Saudi universities are opening sports management programs. Regional sports marketing agencies are emerging. These developments remain modest relative to investments, but they lay the groundwork for an ecosystem that did not exist ten years ago. The question of who actually benefits from these economic transformations, in terms of distributed revenues and locally created skilled jobs, remains open for Gulf sport as elsewhere.
The Decade That Will Tell If the Bet Holds
By 2034, Saudi Arabia will host the football World Cup. Before 2030, Saudi Arabia will have hosted the 2023 Club World Cup, several F1 Grand Prix and plans an ATP Masters 1000 from 2028 onward; the Riyadh Asian Games remain officially scheduled for 2034 and no Grand Slams are announced. The calendar is dense, deliberately. The underlying idea is that the rapid succession of major events creates international habit—tourists who return, broadcasters who commit long-term, sponsors who inscribe the region in their multi-year budgets.
Qatar, for its part, bets on a different horizon. The 2022 World Cup was the most structuring international sports event in Qatar’s recent history, but not the founding event of the country or its sports strategy. The following years serve to consolidate: World Aquatics Championships in 2024, ATP tournaments, Cricket Super Bowl. The two countries combine international events, development of national leagues and infrastructure, with different intensity and priorities. This strategy of international events contributes to stadium usage.
The coming years will allow measurement of conversion: do these events generate durable private investments in local sport, or do they remain sporadic imports without transmission? Companies that establish themselves in the region for sports visibility will also need to develop productive activities there to anchor this dynamic. The emergence of local athletes in mass sports—football, athletics, combat sports—will constitute an additional indicator of the model’s capacity to fuel domestic demand.
On these questions, 2025 data provide partial and encouraging answers on some indicators, incomplete on others. The Gulf sports industry is supported by considerable public and sovereign commitments. It remains largely supported by these public and sovereign commitments.
Sources
- Arab News, November 2025 – Middle East sports economy
- Oliver Wyman – Unlocking the Middle East Sports Economy, 2025
- PwC – Middle East Sports Outlook, 2025