The Impacts International Sports Have on the Economy and Its People Part 1

Ghal Singh Rai was 20 years old when he died. His family had barely scripted enough money to send him to Qatar for a job. It cost them $1,300, which they paid to a recruitment agent to get Ghal an in at the labor camps. He was supposed to start working as a cleaner for the camp, and he had been promised enough money to repay his recruiter and his family within the first year of work. And why would he believe it? Qatar is rich. Qatar is the richest country in the world per capita, and they've been hiring migrant workers by the thousands since they were awarded the privilege of hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Mikasa cry must have realized the promise of fair pay was a trap because within seven days of arriving, Ghal l took his own life. Two months ago, The Garden reported on the short, brutal lives of immigrant workers in Qatar. For years, there had already been a steady stream of news about poor labor conditions in Doha, the capital of Qatar. This was especially among Indian, Nepalese, and Bangladeshi migrants who are being tricked into flying in for high-paying construction jobs, only to find recruitment fees, time without pay, and security posits that wiped out their salary.

But now, Qatar is under pressure to build faster and more after bidding for the privilege of hosting the World Cup. Qatar needed a stadium capable of handling all 64 games in the tournament and an average of 50,000 per game. Qatar had piles of money and one of the largest natural gas and oil reserves globally, but not a FIFA-level stadium. So, Qatar started constructing not just one stadium but eight stadiums in total, and you could track the progress of all of them on the official FIFA website. It would draw in an estimated 3M people, where the average temperature in the summer is around 100 degrees and peaks at 122. The FIFA website doesn't list the migrant deaths associated with the FIFA stadium projects, but we have the number right here for you. The number of young, fit and skilled laborers who have died of “natural causes” is over 6,500. The 911 fatality of the Twin Towers was half of that.

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This will be part one of a special two-part episode looking at the cultural and societal benefits of International Sports. In part one, we'll look at how big venues like FIFA and the Olympics affect the individual. Then in part 2, we'll look at how hosting an international sporting event can have economic ripples for your hometown and your country. The Guardian estimates that Qatar paid a little under 200M dollars in untraceable public funds for the right to host the World Cup. England, by comparison, did $24M.

The funny thing is that citizens criticized England for being excessive with a bid of $24M, which just illuminates Qatar’s shadiness with FIFA. Some estimates, this upcoming World Cup will cost over $220B by the time Qatar is ready to host. That $220B will go into stadiums, training facilities, air conditioners, and a whole new city to surround one of the eight stadiums during the opening match. For reference, South Africa spent $3.5B to be ready for the 2010 World Cup. The old, tired argument that hosted an international sports event pays for itself in tourism is completely out the window, thanks to Qatar. According to Investopedia, countries who lack the initial infrastructure shouldn't even bother bidding on FIFA or the Olympics because anytime your country has to break new grounds on colosseums, that should be a warning that your local labor population is about to be turned into slaves - hauling blocks up a pyramid. If you don't believe us, that's fine because during this two-part episode, we will bust a few myths between the two episodes about International Sports:

Myth 1: The Olympics, FIFA, and sports in general are good for morale. We all cheer when the guy wearing our flag skates across the ice really fast. So, where's the harm?

Myth 2: Hosting an international sporting event is a privilege for the host country and a boost to the economy. Just look how prosperous Salt Lake is or Sochi.

Myth 3: What's the benefit in the long run to International Sports? Is it all just bread and circuses to keep the largest masses entertained in the biggest arena possible?_________________________________________________________________________

 Joe: Have you heard of the Josh fight in Nebraska?

 Todd: Josh fight? No.

Joe: It was a sporting event where a guy on Facebook named Josh wanted to find out who the real Josh was. He invited everybody named Josh on Facebook to a fight in Nebraska. A battle of supremacy, if you will.

Joe: So many people showed up, and it looked like a goofy combination of Woodstock and a New Zealand fair. Everybody was armed with a pool noodle, which was how they fought each other.

Todd: Sounds fun!

Joe: Anyways, I do research on the internet pretty much all day, every day. I had heard about deaths in Qatar, but it usually flew under my radar.

Todd: Qatar is a tiny rich country of only 2.8 million people. It has the highest per capita globally and is not a good fit to be hosting a major sporting event. Now, why would a country want to host the Olympics or FIFA This World Cup? Because it's a huge trophy for your country. It puts you on the stage of all the developed, most powerful nations of the world. It makes your country look like you're a world leader.

Joe: So, super-rich and super small – that is what Qatar is.

Why does the world love and need sports so much? Why do we have international sports? Why are we so competitive? Furthermore, what's the harm? One of the things that I looked into was how many physical things you can actually live vicariously through with sports; one of them was heart attacks. This comes from a Vox article on sports fan psychology, and they talked about how you can suffer from heart attacks from very tense moments when people are living vicariously through their teams. No, we don't have actual stakes and what's going on in the field, but have you ever heard the term mirror neurons? They are brain cells that are active when you are carrying out actions, like shooting a basketball or something. Mirror neurons can also fire off when you're watching somebody else do it. It helps humans adapt to a task. If you are an ancient man and watching another dude throw a spear for the first time, your body tenses like you are also making that grab motion. That is a mirror neuron reaction. That is your body being like, okay, let's do it too.

This is, in part, because it's a really good survival strategy. Your team win will also lead to higher testosterone levels in your brain. That aggression hormone that both males and females have go way up when you watch a big victory during the NFL season. That is the total benefit when we're talking about why International Sports are important for humankind on the individual level. You feel like a winner when your team wins for your country, which lasts for like a week. There is also something to be said about bringing a country together to cheer for somebody – almost unifying. Overall, there is a positive to it.

Now, this comes from a Cracked article, and it lists reasons why being in the Olympics is a nightmare. So, this one is going to come up over and over again, but money is the biggest issue. Your job is to play your sport and rally a country together. These people literally have been doing this for 20 years and haven't made a cent yet. By definition, the Olympics is supposed to be non-professional, and if they do well, they get sponsorships and become rich winners. But if they don't do well, they will live in poverty. Chances are they're bankrupt by the time they get to the sport because their family has paid through the nose to get them their equipment and to wherever they need to practice. By the time the Olympics is over, they have proven they can be superhuman, and they have almost nothing to show for it. So, the Olympics themselves, as a nonprofit organization, have an annual budget of about $170M, which is quite small.

You are basically going to be serving your sport until you are rejected. We also want to recognize that depending on what sport you're in, there are also health risks. Add in the fact that concussions are a very high risk in any Olympic sport, especially synchronized swimming when they get kicked in the head all the time and there are also weird psychological things that can happen. This article brought up something called Target Panic, which I've heard drummers get this too. They don't talk about drummers in this article, but archers and shooters in the Olympics will train to shoot a target over and over again with such an insane repetition that it makes them look like robots. Once in a great while, they will freeze up while they're trying to sight down the target – like their brain is telling them it is just done. An extraordinarily similar psychological event happens to drummers. The drummer for The Black Keys talked about this exact phenomenon where he would be playing and just sort of feel like he [is about to get out of timing with his drum set and freeze.

By comparison with FIFA and the Olympics, the reason why they both have the same kind of impact on people's lives and economies is where they choose to host their event. FIFA athletes individually seem to fare a little bit better and make more money in the countries that pay them more equitably. Women are paid less than men on average, and the top earners in FIFA are just over the top - like the amount of money they get is ridiculous.

This comes from a Forbes article, which states that the top earners in FIFA can come away with about $126 Million.

So, if we're talking FIFA, why did Qatar go through so much trouble to bid higher than the competitors? They really fought for hosting FIFA; why? Qatar is just like a rich kid, a rich kid with too much money to spend.

There are a lot of reports over the years on the corruption in FIFA. Just because you have the most money bid, the most money doesn't mean you're the best country to promote that sport. So, if they started with that level of corruption, I'm guessing they have had media eyes on them the entire time they started. The deaths were probably reported early, and you would think that they're doing this to get good press to promote their country, not hinder it. The committee organizing the event for the World Cup, when they asked about these things and all these deaths, gave the politically correct answer that they deeply regretted all these tragedies and were investigating each of them. If we are strictly talking about good press and good branding, why the heck would they choose Qatar? Because there's less red tape. They don't have to get a lot of people to sign off on it. They can just have one person. For them, they can take all the bribe money and get it done.

We'll talk more about this in the next episode, but the idea is that during one of the Olympics in Britain, anybody that had Olympic stuff out would get a huge fine. It was supposed to be tourism, right? However, they cannot make any money off the Olympics. If you're tuning in next week, we will talk about what international sports does to your local area and why it turns your town into a police state. We will also talk about what we can do to sway FIFA and the Olympics to host in more sustainable areas that already have the right infrastructure.