Mark’s words on LinkedIn – the world cup in Qatar
The world cup in Qatar is quickly turning into the #pr equivalent of Pandora’s Box.
Hosting such a major event is a significant soft power exercise itself, but one that totally backfired for Qatar. From allegations, including by the US DoJ, of ‘buying’ votes during the tender to host the tournament – a subsect of a wider corruption scandal currently engulfing football’s governing body, FIFA, we then lurched to the grizzly alleged affair of stadiums built in unsafe conditions effectively using slave labour, with a death toll allegedly in the 1000s.
As the tournament itself appears on the horizon, Qatar’s ugly, regressive social policy – particularly its medieval LGBT rights- has had an unforgiving spotlight shone on it. Many are considering boycotting the tournament as we continue to embrace new ways of holding public institutions and figures to account.
Any complicity with Qatar is now seen as toxic. I’ve previously argued that public relations nous is one of Gareth Southgate’s most valuable qualities as England manager but even the class prefect managed to enrage human rights groups by claiming baselessly that the reportedly maltreated Qatar workforce were “united” behind the tournament.
Even those criticising Qatar’s human rights record find themselves in glass houses. Southgate’s former England teammate Gary Neville – reinvented as a progressive voice of reason to the extent that he has been tipped as a Labour MP- fell afoul of the nation’s harshest conscience Ian Hislop on an episode of Have I Got News for You, for criticising Qatar while still taking their bloodstained dime as a pundit.
BrewDog – no strangers to virtue signalling out of one side of their mouth while brutally profiteering out the other- then announced a campaign to donate profits from their Lost Lager to human rights charities as part of its ‘Anti-Sponsorship’ of the world cup, backed out by a series of snarky billboards. The only problem is that people are increasingly wise to brand ‘woke washing’ and particularly alert to Brewdog’s shenanigans after their greenwashing scandal.
Plenty of people pointed out that the beer barons were still showing the world cup at major fan zones – so their charitable donations (if they materialise) will be dwarfed by their profits- as well as the irony of them criticising working conditions in Qatar amid accusations that they themselves were running a “toxic and misogynistic work culture”.
Put simply: Qatar’s World Cup boondoggle has turned noxious, and anyone in its orbit risks infection.