Qatar boycott: Why you can still watch the World Cup with a clear conscience
Created: 11/21/2022 8:14 am
By: Max Mueller
Protest over: When the ball rolls, football is watched.
© Christoph Reichwein/Imago (montage)
The World Cup in Qatar has started.
But much more important than the question of who will be world champion is the answer to a dilemma: tune in or boycott?
We asked a protest researcher.
Cologne – to look or not to look?
The football World Cup started on Sunday and anyone who cares about the escalating turbo-commercialization of football, non-transparent award processes or at least trampled human rights can answer this question clearly: I don't pay them a minute's attention, hopefully the TV rating will drop drastically, sponsors are dropping out and this rampant madness in international football is slowing down a bit.
But it is - as always when a question seems to only have a yes or no answer - more complicated.
The position of the overwhelming majority is clear.
They think: Hosting a World Cup in Qatar is a big mistake.
Across clubs, fans expressed their anger on huge posters.
It would be best for the national team not to go to the emirate at all.
But what about you, the fans?
How does meaningful protest work?
World Cup in Qatar: "Good TV ratings would not subsequently legitimize the award"
Simply not watching the games is not very effective, says Jürgen Mittag of the
Münchner Merkur
by IPPEN.MEDIA.
For many years he has been researching at the German Sport University in Cologne how successful protests are in the context of sporting events.
For lunch one thing is certain: fan associations and above all the media have been involved to a considerable extent.
The Qatar World Cup has such a bad reputation that it is extremely unlikely that a major sporting event will be held again under such adverse circumstances.
A look at the next venues for the Summer Olympics – Paris 2024, Los Angeles 2028, Brisbane 2032 – shows that there are probably no calls for a boycott there.
The soccer World Cup 2026 will take place across borders in the USA, Canada and Mexico.
"There won't even come close to similar debates," says Mittag.
Basically, the essential point has arrived, also at Fifa.
“Everyone has to decide for themselves whether to watch the World Cup.
Anyone watching the World Cup live on TV doesn't have to have a guilty conscience.
Good TV ratings would not subsequently legitimize the award,” said Mittag.
These are not to be expected anyway, as can be seen from the
ARD Germany
trend.
In it, more than half of Germans (56 percent) stated that they did not watch any of the transmissions.
15 percent want to watch fewer games than at previous World Cups.
About IPPEN.MEDIA:
The IPPEN.MEDIA network is one of the largest online publishers in Germany.
At the locations in Berlin, Hamburg/Bremen, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart and Vienna, journalists from our central editorial office research and publish for more than 50 news offers.
These include brands such as Münchner Merkur, Frankfurter Rundschau and BuzzFeed Germany.
Our news, interviews, analyzes and comments reach more than 5 million people in Germany every day.
Boycott debate is not going on at all in most of the world
Protest researcher Mittag is more optimistic.
"Of course there will be less public viewing, some pubs don't show games," he says.
"But the past has taught us: when the ball is rolling, it's no longer about the political situation, we watch football." You shouldn't overestimate your own importance, says Mittag.
“A soccer World Cup is a global event.
However, the boycott debate is only being conducted in Northern and Western Europe, with some exceptions also in the USA.” In many other countries around the world, such as Japan, the humanitarian framework conditions of this World Cup are not an issue.
Quite different in Germany, where disclosure documentation follows an investigative report.
The statement by Khalid Salman, Qatar's World Cup ambassador, was recently shocking.
In the ZDF documentary "Geheimsache Qatar" he said that homosexuality was "mental damage".
Mittag: “Never before has there been such a comprehensive report on the grievances in the host country of a major event.
A few years ago it would have been unthinkable that several documentaries about critical conditions in the host country of a World Cup would be shown on prime time television.” There would have been enough occasions.
When the last World Cup kicked off in Moscow, Russia had already annexed Crimea in violation of international law.
When the Winter Olympics opened in Beijing in February, it had long been known how China was treating the Uyghurs.
A lot has improved in Qatar – but that's not enough
The truth is also that a lot has happened in Qatar in recent years.
“Significant improvements have been initiated since 2015.
This must not be ignored, but it should also not distract from the fact that many things are not going according to our humanitarian ideas," says Mittag.
The human rights organization Amnesty International agrees.
There have been some reforms on paper, according to a recently published statement.
Yet thousands of workers on World Cup-related and non-WM-related construction sites still face problems such as late or unpaid wages, unsafe working conditions, obstacles to changing jobs and access to legal assistance.
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So there are still reasons for protests, even after the World Cup.
Sport as a sounding board for social displeasure.
For Mittag it is more than a snapshot: “Football in Germany is subject to completely different moral standards.
The fact that FC Bayern cooperates closely with Qatar is scandalized.
That tens of thousands of tourists vacation in the Emirates is not even a side note.”
