Image: a cover page of SPORT, Spanish daily sports newspaper. (Translation: Qatar Foundation will be the sponsor of Barcelona; HIGHEST-PAID IN THE WORLD)
So who’s this El Barça’s extravagant new sponsor that pours £125m (for five years) onto the jersey?
The Qatar Foundation, located in Doha, Qatar, is an independent, private, non-profit, chartered organization founded in 1995. According to their website (http://www.qf.org.qa), they claim that their vision is “to support centers of excellence which develop people’s abilities through investment in human capital, innovative technology, state of art facilities and partnerships with elite organizations, thus raising the competency of people and the quality of life.” They also believes that the nation Qatar’s greatest natural resource is “its people”, not oil, as stated in their mission statement.
£125m may be small potatoes for a billionaire Qatari who owns a petroleum production company; however, for most people, firms, and organizations, that is a huge $$. All of a sudden, why did the Qatar Foundation market themselves to the worldwide football fans and media? The reason, most likely, is to spread and promote the Qatari’s justification of and contribution to the 2022 FIFA World Cup that will be held in Qatar.
Soon after Russia was selected to be the host of 2018 FIFA World Cup, the oil-rich Middle-Eastern nation of Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup, beating out bids from the U.S. and Australia. The World Cup is voted by FIFA executive committee members. Allegations have been made that those resource-affluent countries paid bribes to voters. Qatar, of course, denied the claim and also FIFA doubtfully said there is no need for an investigation.
While the voting process remains in a blur, a tremendous amount of money that Qatar is going to spend on the event related infrastructure (hotels, stadiums, roads, etc.), which is estimated to be $64 billion, got me to re-consider the Qatar Foundation’s motto “Supporting Qatar on its journey from carbon economy to knowledge economy by unlocking human potential” and to find the paradox that the Qatari are making.
Qatar is building 9 new football stadiums. Here are the fascinating, first five stadiums. 
Qatar delegates argue that the stadiums will be zero-carbon emitting and climate controlled as the average daytime temperature is over 40 °C in June and July. And they claim that the stadiums will have a system that reduces solar radiation and warm winds, and provide “air-conditioning” so that players and fans won’t die from heatstroke… Although they say the stadiums won’t emit any carbon dioxide; however, all the money they spend has come from selling crude oil, and the whole project surely will contain a huge amount of carbon footprints, which is exactly what the Qatar Foundation tries to escape from.
The Societal Marketing Concept is what consumers expect and what organizations concentrate these days, as Jessica Li related it with Nike’s sustainable business plan that eliminates PVC in its products and as Alexandra Lam talked about Lexus that uses recyclable material to sustain the business.
(Barça fans were against the arrival of QF, the new sponsor.)
The dirty oil money can do whatever they want, but it bothers me as a football fan and a global citizen as the rich Qatari is being against the global society’s long-run interests. The Qatar Foundation professes itself to be a socially and environmentally responsible organization, but it supports the opposite.
Tags: FC Barcelona and Qatar Foundation · FIFA bribe · Qatar Foundation and Qatar World Cup · The Qatar Foundation1 Comment
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You seem so passionate about soccer, great post!