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Comment by Gatsky | Hacker News Reader

I really would like to know how Qatar got the World Cup… it can’t have been legitimate, it’s just got so many obvious disadvantages… For example, it’s too hot to host it in summer as usual, so it’s in the northern hemisphere winter, which interrupts all the leagues.

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Bribes, some of which came out and are currently under investigation/prosecution.

Other reasons why it's a terrible idea: they have a small population, little football culture (in terms of absolute size), no infrastructure (all the stadia are newly built and some will be demolished afterwards; there aren't enough hotels); they have many laws incompatible with what usually happens at World Cups. There literally isn't a single positive thing to be said about Qatar hosting the World Cup.

Qatar has a pretty good airport with an extremely convenient location (more than 80% of the world population live within a 6 hour flight)

That makes it a great airport hub, but it doesn't have the infrastructure to host, feed, transport, place in a stadium the hundreds of thousands of fans that want to watch a World Cup.

A lot of fans will actually be staying in Dubai and flying over. I read that there will be dozens of flights per day between the two locations.

That sounds great for the airlines but terrible for the environment.

I’m sure you already know the answer.

It even has a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case

...there's this thing called 'the dollar'.

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