Even a year after the World Cup, Stadium 974 still has something playful about it. This is mainly due to the 974 red, yellow, blue, gray and green shipping containers that are installed in the arena – and look a bit like Lego.
And like a good Lego set, the stadium was supposed to be dismantled after the seven World Cup games and rebuilt somewhere else. That was the promise of the World Cup organizers and FIFA President Gianni Infantino: “It is part of the legacy of the World Cup, of the sustainability of the World Cup. Thinking about the environment and not just building white elephants that will not be used again . This stadium will be reused.”
Unused football stadiums as investment ruins
For a white elephant, Stadium 974 is quite colorful. But it still seems to be an investment ruin. Because even a year after the end of the World Cup, the World Cup arena is still in the old port of Doha. The low-rise buildings where security checks took place during the World Cup are deserted. Luggage scanners can be seen through the windows – wrapped in plastic film. They won’t be needed here any time soon.
The stadium will serve as a training facility for the Asian Cup in January. Otherwise it is empty. As a result, Stadium 974 could do exactly the opposite of what was planned, says sustainability expert Gilles Dufrasne, who analyzed the World Cup’s sustainability promises for an NGO called Carbon Market Watch. He says:
All we have is the promise from the organizers that the stadium will actually be moved and reused – which is essentially the condition for the stadium to be sustainable to any degree. Because building this stadium caused more CO2 than building a normal stadium. So if they don’t move it at all, then not only is it not a green arena, it’s dirtier than your average stadium.
Gilles Dufrasne, sustainability expert at “Carbon Market Watch”
Stadium 974 is the most obvious sign that organizers are struggling to keep their promises. For example, almost all other World Cup stadiums should be downsized after the tournament. There is no everyday need for arenas with 40,000 or more seats in Qatar. Most Qatari league games take place in smaller stadiums – and even they are not full. Around 4,000 fans attended the league’s top game last weekend (December 9, 2023), many of them with one of the 2,000 free tickets that were distributed.
However, there has so far been no significant renovation work at any of the World Cup stadiums. At least there is a good reason for this: most of them will be used as venues for the Asian Cup in January. Qatar has stepped in to host China. For example, the opening game and the final will take place in the Lusail Stadium – where Lionel Messi lifted the World Cup trophy a year ago.
Does Qatar permanently need large football arenas?
A month before the start of the tournament, workers set up large white tents in the parking lot in front of the stadium. The shining gold building stands in the middle of a black asphalt desert – and the residential area right next to it looks pretty desolate. Garbage on the street corners, yellowed World Cup advertising. And construction is still going on, the concrete frame of a mall stands within sight of the stadium. The Lusail was actually supposed to be the center of the district of the same name. So far that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Despite the Asian Cup, the question still remains: Does the country really need so many large arenas in the long term?
However, the organizing committee ignores the DLF’s questions about the continued use of the stadiums. Only the Qatar Foundation, which owns the Education City Stadium, responded to Deutschlandfunk’s query: There are plans that after the Asian Cup the stadium will be transformed into a place where girls and women can do sports, including a sports academy.
The mindset with which the organizers in Qatar approached the construction of the World Cup stadiums is shown by a statement by the then Luisal manager during a tour of the stadium shortly before the World Cup: “The environment and the climate do not dictate the rights of the population anywhere in the world “To grow and advance. This is not to downplay the importance of sustainability. There have been massive efforts to achieve this, both environmentally and economically. It is this country’s right to continue to grow and develop.”
FIFA is still working on the sustainability report
And despite all of these ambitious goals, FIFA and the Qatari organizers have also promised that the World Cup will be climate-neutral. For sustainability expert Gilles Dufrasne, a goal that could only be missed: “If you’re honest, it’s not realistic to say that you can organize such an event in a way that is completely neutral for the climate. What “What FIFA promised is practically impossible to achieve. But the actual implementation is also very problematic in this case.”
FIFA wants to compensate for the CO2 emissions caused by the World Cup by financing projects that save CO2. However, these projects are often solar parks or wind turbines – according to common expert opinion, they are not suitable projects for CO2 compensation. In his analysis, Dufrasne also comes to the conclusion that FIFA underestimated the CO2 footprint in its preliminary calculation.
Even a year later, it is still not clear how large the tournament’s carbon footprint is. In response to Deutschlandfunk’s request, FIFA said it was still working on the sustainability report.
Sustainability expert: “FIFA has learned nothing”
For Dufrasne, one thing is already clear with a view to the next World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the USA: climate protection is a secondary consideration for FIFA when awarding World Cup tournaments.
He predicts: “There are good reasons to believe that the next World Cup will be even worse because there will be a lot more flights because the teams and fans have to travel back and forth between three different countries. As far as the impact on the climate is concerned FIFA learned nothing.”