Critics have objected to the bidding process, and human rights groups have raised concerns about workplace safety for the migrants who will build the stadiums needed to host the event.
Under its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has unleashed a spending spree on global sports, turning the kingdom into a contender for the biggest events.
On Wednesday, soccer’s governing body is expected to confirm Saudi Arabia has secured the biggest prize of all: the men’s World Cup in 2034.
No other competition on the planet attracts as many eyeballs as the century-old quadrennial, a national team competition that thrusts host nations into center stage in a way only the Summer Olympics can match.
But human rights groups have objected to the Saudis’ bid, saying the country’s human rights record raises risks for the thousands of migrant workers from some of the poorest parts of the earth who will be brought in to build the infrastructure — stadiums, airports, roads and hotels, and even a new city — to stage the tournament.
Other critics, including fan groups, say FIFA — the soccer global body that almost collapsed a decade ago after many of its top leaders were indicted on corruption charges by the U.S. Department of Justice — has rigged the vote for the Saudis by changing the rules for bidding.
Under FIFA’s rules, the organization’s 211 member nations are supposed to select one tournament host during a single vote, and usually there are multiple contenders. This year, though, FIFA’s members will vote at the same time for two tournaments — the World Cup in 2030 and 2034. And they will have to vote in a package deal, essentially approving the bids for both tournaments, or for neither.
What’s more, the only contender for the 2030 event is, for the first time, a group of six countries from three continents — Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. So any nation that votes against the Saudi bid, would also be voting against those countries hosting the 2030 event, too.
FIFA said recently that the rule changes “followed a comprehensive consultation process across all confederations,” but has not explained why the bids for the two tournaments were combined. This week FIFA published an evaluation of the Saudi bid, saying the country was on the path toward reforming its labor system, with changes that will reduce risk to workers engaged in the building work required for the World Cup.
The announcement about the tournaments will be made in Zurich, after the formal vote by the national soccer federations from FIFA’s member nations.
But in contrast to previous years, when the announcements were made with great fanfare, Saudi Arabia will be awarded its prize in an unusually low-profile way: a rubber-stamp vote in a virtual meeting that may create a moment more procedural than celebratory.
Also the international news media will be absent. FIFA has not announced any plans for a news conference after the decisive meeting about its most prestigious event, and most important moneymaker.
Hosting the World Cup forms part of an ambitious plan by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to reorient the country, in part by diversifying its economy. Sports and entertainment have been at the center of this plan over the past decade as the prince brought the world’s top sports and sporting talent to Saudi Arabia, at eye-popping cost.
“We’ve hosted more than 85 global events and we’ve delivered on the highest level,” Saudi Arabia’s sports minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal, told the BBC in a podcast published earlier this month. “We want to attract the world through sports. Hopefully, by 2034, people will have an extraordinary World Cup.”
He dismissed as “shallow” claims made by advocacy groups that Saudi’s sudden and enormous focus on sports was a way to distract the world from its human rights record. Similar accusations — known as sportswashing — were made against Saudi Arabia’s neighbor Qatar, which was host to the 2022 World Cup.
Human rights groups point to a recent report commissioned by FIFA about the treatment of migrant workers who built stadiums and other sites in Qatar for that event. Many of those workers were injured and even killed because of the dangerous working conditions.
The report, which took FIFA a year to publish, said the sports body should compensate those hurt and the families of workers killed, as well as workers who were victims of wage theft and unscrupulous middle men involved in the recruitment process.
Michael Page, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division, said the scale of risk posed by Saudi Arabia hosting the tournament was even higher. “There are about 13.4 million migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, compared to 2 million in Qatar,” Mr. Page said on a call with journalists, in which he was joined by other opponents of the award.
“Many work in remote, harsh conditions that could exacerbate the human cost of hosting the tournament,” he said.
In recent years, tennis, golf, Formula One racing and top level boxing have all been recipients of Saudi munificence, as have some of the highest profile soccer players in the world, like Cristiano Ronaldo, who have been lured away from Europe to play in Saudi Arabia.
But getting to host the World Cup would be an achievement of another magnitude.
It would be “important on all fronts, particularly reputational risk management,” said Andreas Krieg, a fellow at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College, London.He said winning the bid will allow Saudi Arabia to “complete this whole episode of normalization the kingdom has gone through” after the 2018 murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an insider turned critic of the Saudi monarchy. Mr. Khashoggi was murdered inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul. An intelligence report published by the Biden administration said Prince Mohammed approved the killing. The kingdom has denied the allegations.
“It allows the Saudis to say, ‘we are a normal country and the world is treating us like a normal country,’” he added.
One of the crown prince’s earliest moments in the global spotlight came at the opening game of the 2018 World Cup in Moscow, when he sat alongside FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, and Russian president Vladimir V. Putin as their nations met in the opening game. Since then, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and FIFA has deepened.
Last October, FIFA announced that the hosts for the 2034 World Cup would be chosen at the same time as the host for the 2030 event. It said only countries from Asia and Oceania, where New Zealand is the largest country, could bid for the 2034 event because of a rule on continental rotation. Interested countries, FIFA said, would have just a few weeks to formalize their interest.
The move seemed to catch many nations by surprise. Saudi Arabia, however, was ready and within minutes of the FIFA announcement, it said it would bid. Moments later, the regional body for soccer in Asia, run by a member of Bahrain’s ruling family, issued a statement saying the Saudis had the support of the entire region.
That’s because even before it made its bid official, Saudi Arabia had been winning support, signing cooperation agreements and sponsorship agreements with national soccer federations around the world. More than 100 of those federations have since publicly endorsed the Saudi bid.“The bidding process has basically been a stitch-up from start to finish,” said Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s head of labor rights and sport, calling it “a sham.”
He added that the lack of competition weakened the need for Saudi Arabia to improve its human rights record.
The Norwegian federation is the most recent group to criticize the combining of the 2030 and 2034 bids.
For FIFA, Saudi Arabia offers two things it requires most: A country willing to spend vast sums of its own money to stage the World Cup and organizers that are likely to face little internal opposition, dissent or discussion that could derail staging plans.
That usually quiet perspective was said out loud by FIFA’s former Secretary General, its most senior administrator, as frustrations grew during Brazil’s bumpy road to staging the tournament in 2014.
“I will say something which is crazy, but less democracy is sometimes better for organizing a World Cup,” the official, Jerome Valcke, said at the time.
A bid evaluation report for Saudi Arabia that was released by FIFA last week suggested as much.
“Critically, the demonstrable commitment to the bid by stakeholders at all levels in Saudi Arabia, ranging from government to the private sector, is clearly evident and ensures a strong legal framework for seamlessly and successfully organizing the FIFA World Cup in ten years’ time,” FIFA said.
Still, staging the tournament in Saudi Arabia is sure to delight millions of young Saudis, who passionately follow the sport. Thousands crossed the border and headed to Qatar to watch their team at the World Cup where the country’s national team pulled off one of the biggest shocks in tournament history, beating Lionel Messi’s Argentina, the team that went on to win the competition, in the first game.
“They have a genuine fan base that really cares,” ” said Mr. Krieg, the professor.
