Global opinion on boycotting the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup April 2021

The 2022 FIFA World Cup is scheduled to take place in Qatar in November 2022. The decision for Qatar to host this tournament has been received a considerable backlash amongst members of the professional football community as well as the public and has spawned an ongoing discussion for countries involved in the tournament to boycott the event.

Criticism

Criticism from a variety of media sources, football professionals, and human rights organizations focused on issues such as the apparent corruption within the FIFA bidding process, Qatar's short football history, the extremely high estimated economic cost of the event, the inconvenient local climate, and Qatar's questionable human rights record particularly with regards to the construction of much of the infrastructure required for the event.

Public opinion

During an April 2021 survey, it was found that just over 70 percent of respondents agreed when asked whether their country should boycott the tournament. The support for the boycott of the 2022 fifa world cup exhibits limited geographical variation. With 12 percent of respondents from the United States and 11 percent of respondents from the United Kingdom indicating that they strongly supported calls to boycott the World Cup. Some difference exists within the share of respondents that do not support a boycott with only 29 percent of American respondents indicating as such compared to 41 percent of respondents from the UK. Allthough its fair to say that a significant share of the population support the boycotting of the 2022 Qatar Fifa world cup an even greater share of respondents agreed that the World Cup in 2022 should be removed from Qatar and held in a different country.