How Qatar Bought the World Cup
[Applause] this is just a game right [Music] but it's not it's really not it's so much more than that I want to show you a story that feels unique to our time in history it's a story of how the organization that controls the sport that humans love most was hijacked tiny country that controls the resource that humans need most Qatar wealth from oil and natural gas resulting in this a World Cup held in the desert in a country built off fossil fuels and foreign labor with a citizen population the size of Honolulu Hawaii [Music] I want to show you how this happened how Qatar this tiny country beat out the U.S Australia Japan and South Korea by convincing 14 of the 22 most powerful men in football to vote for them to become the host of the 2022 World Cup the winner to organize the 222 FIFA World Cup is Qatar okay this is a big story and I'm excited to dive in but before we do I need to thank today's sponsor one of the most unique I've ever been a part of thank you established titles for sponsoring today's video so this is custom in Scotland that if you own land in Scotland you are officially considered a lord or lady or Laird and this company established titles allows you to purchase a bit of land and become a lord which is something I've been shy to tell you I have recently became I I may change my YouTube channel to Lord Johnny Harris and I expect anyone in the comments to address me as Lord thank you no but seriously established titles allows you to buy a plot of land in Scotland you buy this you get a plaque that says you're a lord you can literally put this as your prefix on your credit card or your plane tickets with every order established titles plants a tree they work with global Charities to focus on deforestation like that's what's really going on here yes this is a fun novel interesting way to say that you're a lord or to give a gift in fact I may gift this to my brother-in-law for Christmas and for the first 200 people who purchase a plot of land using the link in my description you will be next to my plot like we will all have land together in Scotland right now established titles is running a massive Black Friday sale you get an additional 10 off so go to the link in my description it's established house.com Johnny Harris clicking that link helps support this channel use the code Johnny Harris and you'll get an additional 10 off it's time to dive back in to this very deep but very important story [Music] here we go [Music] we've been deep in this trying to make a web trying to make a visual that will help us understand FIFA and why this world cup is being held where it's being held [Music] I want to show it to you and I've been really wrestling with how to boil this down and I think there's just three major things that we need to understand if we want to understand how Qatar bought the World Cup check this out okay there's three major things you have to understand to make sense of this story they are FIFA you have to understand the World Cup and you have to understand Qatar all right this is our list if you understand these three things independently you can put them together to determine what really happened here and how this tiny desert country ended up with the World Cup so let's start with FIFA FIFA was started by seven European nations in 1904. the original goal here
was to help organize matches for association football which is the football it's the thing we all know it's the game where two teams of 11 players try to kick a ball into a goal football was no means invented here at this time at this place people have been kicking a ball around for like a million years but it was here in Europe in the early 1900s when the modern Authority for football was born and born in pretty humble beginnings but FIFA quickly grew into a transnational quasi-political Authority that spans the whole globe fact we have a map for that [Music] so this is Fifa today it is massive it represents 211 countries or associations that all belong to this one giant sporting organization it's the most powerful easily the most powerful sporting organization in the world and it's got these six major regions or confederations and it was the leaders from these Regional confederations who in 2010 sat on FIFA's executive committee based here in Zurich in this bunker-like headquarters I was actually there just a few weeks ago actually I'm in Zurich this is where the FIFA headquarters the FIFA Museum are this is where the votes happened [Music] we include okay let's get back to this here we go the 24 most powerful men in football the ones who would go on to decide who would be the host of the 2022 World Cup here they are just hanging out on our diagram sorted by their confederations set bladder to the President right here at the top Swiss guy I'm gonna cross it off I'm going to cross it off the list FIFA we didn't go over all of it there's obviously way more to FIFA than what I just talked about the corruption the scandals all of it but for the purposes of this video which is trying to answer the question how did Qatar end up with the World Cup what we need to know is what we just talked about the executive committee the 24 most powerful men in football I'm going to cross it off the list next on our list the World Cup [Music] So eventually FIFA got big enough to where they could put on a big International Tournament and people would actually come they held it in Uruguay in 1930 13 teams participated and they called it the World Cup it quickly became the most prestigious tournament in football and eventually would become the most viewed sports event on the planet [Music] beating out even the Olympics if you consider that 1.1 billion people like a decent chunk of the entire global population were simultaneously watching in 2018 when France beat Croatia in the World Cup Final in Moscow 1.1 billion people at the same time all watching the same thing and I mean that's that's insane but it's also kind of amazing like what other thing brings that many people together it is an amazing thing what Global football has become and that is basically thanks to FIFA this was his stage [Music] spot has the power to inspire and unite people I mean you and me I'm immediately like actually almost crying like this is this is beautiful stuff look at this look at this guy look at this these moments of like amazing like performance and then the reaction of these crowds but it must be noted that when you have this much attention on one event thirteen percent of the entire global population watching at one time it will quickly become less about the beauty of this game and more about I mean you know what I'm going to say more about money with so much attention corporations pay endless money to get their logos anywhere near this stuff here or here or here okay that's not that surprising what blows my mind is how far governments will go to also pay endless money to get anywhere near the World Cup not because they make money in return like the corporations they always end up losing tons of money but because there's a power in having the entire world focused on your country for a few weeks together you've given the American people an extraordinary opportunity to welcome the world to our shores as host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup I mean look at this look at this we plotted this actually we found this data every four years as a World Cup and this is how much each of these countries have spent on their World Cup these are again taxpayer money here is the government money being invested into hosting the World Cup throw this sucker onto a bar chart and you get something like this like it's getting out of hand like every year they spend more and more and more oh and spoiler alert wait till I show you this graph with Qatar in the mix Minds will be blown I can promise you that the point is that countries are willing to pay more and more to get the World Cup in their country a moment for them to put their best foot forward on a global stage this is what we like to call soft power okay I am crossing the World Cup off of our list not because I covered every angle of it but because for the purposes of this story this is what matters countries are more and more willing to pay unlimited amounts of money to try to get this event in their country because a billion people are going to watch it it makes them look good okay we're crossing It Off all right on to the last piece of our puzzle Qatar a country that should be pronounced but I'm not going to be that pretentious guy who shows up trying to like say it in the local pronunciation because it makes me sound cultured and cool I am that guy I'm trying to not be that guy so for now I'm just gonna say it like a Texas oilman says it Qatar okay thanks thank you I'm going to be really quick on this history of Qatar like we're not going into the full thing okay this is a very juicy history that I could easily do a whole video about I'm going to give you the spark notes which is that Qatar for most of its history was populated by nomadic tribes and fishing villages whose biggest industry was Pearl diving which is like a pretty gnarly thing to do like do you like tie a rock around your ankle and go under to find clams and then open the clams and see if there's pearls it was like hard work the British eventually swooped in because the Industrial Revolution was happening and they smelled oil over here Qatar becomes a British protectorate until 1971 when they became an independent country an Islamic constitutional monarchy Run by One family Dynasty so by the 70s the British were gone but crucially the oil was not and because of said oil Qatar quickly transitioned from a poor tribal Society to a globally connected energy Hub with unlimited money this accelerated in the 70s when Qatar won the fossil fuel Lottery and discovered that they just happened to be sitting on the largest known natural gas field on the planet this guy they share a bit of it with the territorial Waters of Iran but most of it's theirs oh and by the way all this fossil fuel and the revenue coming from it belongs to this teeny country which this is a very teeny country like we're talking about a country that fits inside of the soul of the boot of Italy look at this I mean it doesn't totally fit but it's tiny and we're talking about a few hundred thousand qataris here this isn't a big population and yet they're all getting in on this unbelievable amount of wealth like we can't fathom how rich this teeny little thumb shaped country is they could not spend their money fast enough they didn't have enough labor to build all the stuff that they had money for so they started to import labor from other countries 95 of the people who live and work here are not qataris they're expats from other places 95 meanwhile the Teeny population that are actually Qatari citizens live very good lives they're some of the richest people on the planet most of them work very cushy government jobs that pay really well they live in a welfare state where their needs are met because there is just unlimited money for everyone in this country okay that's Qatar so this is the moment where the three pieces of our puzzle come together because in the 90s Qatar starts to read the tea leaves they start to realize that the world is going to move away from fossil fuels the one thing that they have their gravy train is going to come to an end in a few decades it's time to prepare for the future said Guitar by investing their billions and billions hundreds of billions of extra dollars into anything and everything that is not fossil fuels diversify so they start to go nuts everything from Real Estate in Singapore and New York City to bind the St Petersburg airport in Russia to bind Miramax films and the Italian luxury brand Valentino like boy should I just make an entire video on Qatar investment Authority because that would be juicy in 2017 the BBC noted that Qatar owns more land in the UK than the queen does and as a part of this big diversifying Strategic investment effort Qatar focused on turning their country into a global hub for prestigious international events you see where I'm going with this lucky for them there is a shortcut to the most prestigious event in the world the World Cup oh and this event happens to be run by an organization that speaks a language that they're very familiar with the language of money and power and influence and here's where we are [Music] so we're back here to this web these Gatekeepers of International Football the people who voted on who was going to host the 2022 World Cup 14 of these guys voted Qatar and I want to know why Qatar a country that FIFA itself when they were evaluating all the bidders for the hosting decided was not super suited for this there's all these parameters that countries should have to be a good host Qatar didn't really have a lot of them in fact they had the opposite hot weather no widespread football infrastructure and perhaps most strikingly not a huge tradition of football or even a significant local population to spread football to in their place they have a couple hundred thousand people the World Cup is supposed to bring football to new regions and spread it throughout a country how are they going to do that in a hot Desert Oasis with like 300 000 people so let's do this we're done with our list let's move on to the next part of this video which is probably the part we put the most effort into and I want you to stick with me here because the point isn't to go into every single detail of how some of this corruption went down no one's going to remember every little detail that's not the point the point is to give you a sampling of the mechanics of how influence and power works not just in FIFA but in the International System generally how powerful people get what they want we'll never know for certain because this vote was secret but we know Qatar got 14 of these guys and I think I have a pretty good idea of how for most of them we're going to start with this guy this is Muhammad binham he's one of the executive committee members and he's from Qatar okay we can safely assume that he probably voted for his own country but more importantly it was him a big wig International football guy who helped pull the strings on everyone else on this web starting with this guy [Music] Jack Warner he's an executive committee member from Trinidad and Tobago leaked emails and bank records obtained by the Sunday Times revealed that before the vote binham deposited 450 thousand dollars directly into Warner's account and later even more totaling 1.6 million
dollars just like literally like he just paid him like that this is the simplest version just like I will pay you money to give to so you do what I want you to it's just like so straightforward no wonder a month after the vote in an email Warner called his Qatari colleague Ben hamam quote the only brother I have in football okay one guy down who else next we have the three executive committee members from the South American Confederation the U.S department of justice has gotten involved with these guys they recently released an unsealed indictment against all three of them alleging that these three were quote offered and received bribes in exchange for their votes I mean it's pretty unsatisfying we don't have the evidence that the doj is using for this case but they're building a case oh and by the way two of these guys just died in like the past couple of years next up we've got these three guys from the Africa Confederation a year before the vote the African Confederation was having their annual meeting in Angola which by the way was paid for by the Qatar bid team the people who were like trying to convince people to vote for the World Cup they paid for the whole thing okay I get it trying to like Lobby for your team that's fine but here's where it gets Shady while they were at this meeting the Qatar bid team met with these three executive committee members and according to a former employee who was in the room translating the qataris offered 1.5 million dollars each to these guys in exchange for their promise that they would vote for Qatar a year later this employee turned whistleblower actually went back on her statement saying that she actually lied about it and that there were no bribes kind of fishy what's your incentive to lie but then the FBI showed up at her front door and she admitted that she was pressured to say that she had lied about it and that actually the bribes happened I don't know man we don't like I I side with the Whistleblower you can decide how you feel and now her life is basically ruined she said in an interview that quote I will always look over my shoulder for the rest of my life oh okay and while we're talking about this one of those three guys that apparently got 1.5 million dollars was later filmed by undercover reporters negotiating an 800 000 bribe in exchange for his vote like Smoking Gun evidence same thing happened to this guy the executive committee member from the Oceania region and they actually got disqualified from voting so these two guys didn't actually vote so we're now down to 22 exco members let's keep going Okay so we've gone over the instances where there was direct money given in exchange for the promise to vote the next phase of the story are more subtle versions of influence less overt less smoking gunnish like this guy from Thailand he's the executive committee member from Thailand four months before the vote Thailand and Qatar were renegotiating an energy deal Thailand was trying to get a better price for their natural gas something Qatar has a lot of but for some reason this guy a FIFA executive committee voting member was at the meeting wait what why is this football guy in the room while there's these big gas negotiations going on yes I'm being koi we know where this is going I mean you got to read these leaked emails they're so juicy you've got a FIFA guy emailing a guitar gas guy from Qatar petroleum they're talking about the development of their two football associations from their different countries and then saying that they're going to liaise with the CEO of the gas company to follow up about a liquid natural gas sale I mean it's just so clear what's going on here favorable terms of the deal in exchange for hey dude make sure to vote for our country oh and who was this meeting between the gas guy and the FIFA guy arranged by you guessed it this guy Muhammad bin hamam the executive committee member from Qatar who's pulling all these strings oh by the way just a little side note here going through these leaked emails I couldn't help but notice that the FIFA guy's email was Sour Piggy at redacted sour Piggy sour Boogie sour Boogie's doing a lot of corruption ladies okay oh okay okay okay and then there's a few just like sort of circumstantial ones that give you a flavor of how this works like this guy who sold his family's land to Qatar a year after the vote for 27 million pounds which was like way over asking price and this executive committee member whose son was given a job at a private Qatari Hospital shortly after the World Cup vote both of these guys of course like everyone else on this list denies any connection that this was influenced but now we're at the most significant moment in all of this the thing that really tipped the scales for the vote and it has to do with this confederation the most powerful the European Confederation specifically this guy Michelle platini a former French football player turned FIFA guy he was the president of this confederation which inevitably meant that he has sway over these other dudes just one week before the vote like crunch time platini got an invitation that he couldn't refuse a luncheon with the French president at his Palace platini later said that before this meeting he was planning on voting for the U.S to host the World Cup in 2022 but he goes to this luncheon and who else is there no no big deal just these two guys the most powerful dudes in Qatar one of them the prime minister of Qatar and the other the current Emir of Qatar from like the old Dynasty family it's important to remember the context here like what's happening this is 2010 the world has just been rattled by a Global Financial meltdown and the president of France Sarkozy is stressed and he's in the room with the leaders of Qatar who are not nearly in the same financial trouble see the section before about unlimited amounts of money thanks to fossil fuels and it's clear that these qataris want something something that the Frenchman in the room can deliver them a vote for their country to host the World Cup something they really want according to sources close to this meeting Sarkozy flat out told platini to vote for Qatar why well we'll never know but it's clear that he wanted a few things from Qatar in this same meeting Sarkozy told the qataris that he wanted Qatar to buy the French football team Paris Saint German which happens to be sarkozy's favorite football team and at the time was in financial ruin after this meeting a few important things happen number one Qatar did end up buying that football team for 60 million pounds just like Sarkozy wanted they turned it around and soon it became a star-studded team with merch that's worn by the world's most popular celebrities and then we suddenly see an uptick in big trade deals between Qatar and France Qatar Airways buys 50 giant planes from Airbus the giant French airplane maker I mean if you look at what one of these planes cost in 2010 times it by 50 we're looking at 18 billion dollars a massive deal and in the end platini in this room with his President telling him to do what the qataris want we need them right now and it worked Michelle platini flipped his vote from the USA to Qatar he admitted it later that's not even speculation the president of the executive committee said blatter was pissed about this and later said that this was the defining moment for Qatar winning they have influenced Michelle platini at that time to vote for Qatar because remember patini then went back to his European Confederation with eight executive committee members eight votes and he almost certainly influenced others to join him one book I read claims that he took four votes with him but we'll never know and then on a cold day in December of 2010 the day of the vote came the 22 FIFA World Cup so on that fateful day in the winter of 2010 in Zurich all the guests arrive because it was Voting day [Music] I think we had an absolutely fantastic Beast well we got a great bit so we just got to go in there and give it everything that we've got these 22 Men cast their votes in multiple rounds until a majority Victor emerged at least 11 of them voted from Qatar since round one and finally 14 votes were delivered to Qatar a majority and almost double what the USA got [Music] how it went down that's how it went down like look we'll never know exactly what happened a lot of this stuff we know because it leaked out and we were able to put it all together but the fact is every one of these men has been involved in some corruption investigation I mean it's no surprise that this stuff happened and probably so much more FIFA is corrupt to the core Qatar didn't make this happen Qatar just saw an organization that spoke their language the language of unlimited money and they used that to get what they wanted to prepare for the future to diversify to get the world to look at them [Music] so no this isn't just a game the reason why all of this matters is because football can be a beautiful thing no matter what language someone speaks whether politics or their God or whatever they have this universal language this game a global culture full of screaming and cheering and crying and pride and identity it's ridiculous yet so beautiful so uniquely human and in a very real way football is a mirror to the world what's acceptable here in this most revered sport is what's acceptable everywhere so by using money and influence to get the bid for the World Cup Qatar showed us just how power Works in our world they showed us who really matters and who doesn't and validated an old idea that the rules of fair play don't really matter if you have enough money foreign hey thanks for watching and for sticking around till the end of the video this is just the first of two videos we made on this topic the next video publishes soon and it's kind of the next chapter of the story of what happens after guitar gets hold of the World Cup and they have to build all this infrastructure and it's a very long intense Journey that I go on to report that story and I kind of tell the story of that reporting experience so that will be out soon um I want to tell you about a couple ways that you can support our journalism here we do these deep Dives they take a lot of effort and we need support not just from sponsors but more and more from the community we have a community called The Newsroom which is over on patreon and it is a place where you can get a an extra video every month it is a behind the scenes Vlog of everything that happens in uh this studio behind the scenes um the fun the wild the Deep Dives um the animation the editing the the team the whole universe that exists behind the camera I'm just one Cog of a very big machine that we're building here you also get access to my scripts to um interviews that I do with experts that are just like the full length interview I have influence on thumbnails and titles and even story 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2022-11-24 14:29
