Specifically soccer-related infrastructure, i.e. stadiums. The United States could host four World Cups simultaneously without having to build any more stadiums. Qatar has to build almost everything from scratch.
The fact that all games of WC will be played in one city is the problem. All the fans in contact for a prolonged span...It won't end well.
They may have money to throw at the problem, but Nepalese migrants building the infrastructure to host the 2022 World Cup died at a rate of almost one per day. Look at the full report, it's astounding:
* Evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project.
* Some Nepalese men have alleged that they have not been paid for months and have had their salaries retained to stop them running away.
* Some workers on other sites say employers routinely confiscate passports and refuse to issue ID cards, in effect reducing them to the status of illegal aliens.
* Some labourers say they have been denied access to free drinking water in the desert heat.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/revealed-qatars...
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/16/sports/world-cup-98-fans-s...
The lack of humanity they displayed was an eye opener for me and helped me come to the realization that Soccer/Football has become the proxy for war in Europe. While that is, all things considered, an excellent development (I'll take hooliganism over world wars), it's also scary that people seem to have a deep-seeded, tribal need to fight and, when we do, we seem to lose all compassion for the opposition. Events like the World Cup seem to play on this need rather than trying to quash it.
Violence and the Euro 2004, in Portuguese.
Of course, almost every major soccer league in the world runs during the winter with a summer break, so moving the month-long World Cup to would have thrown a wrench into the scheduling of every league and match in the top leagues. It would be an absolute nightmare.
I have high hopes that the World Cup will be moved (it's been moved with as little as three years notice before), but if not it will be chaos.
None of the major professional leagues are happy about this. If the world cup remains in Qatar it's going to be a fiasco.
http://www.businessinsider.com/qatar-world-cup-disaster-2015...
Qatar would build them on less time and less money, I suppose.
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/11/405955547/b...
Besides the issues with building stadiums in states without a football tradition, Brazil is facing the problem that people just don't go to the stadium much. For example, the national league, which finished its third round last week, has had only 3 games with more than 20000 spectators so far.
That was already a big problem before the World Cup, and only became bigger after it since the cost of maintaining the stadiums is much higher now, and so are ticket prices.
That's quite low - only the bottom two Premiership teams averaged less than that for 2014-15. But presumably it'll pick up over the season?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_home_attendances_in_non... implies there's at least 3 clubs averaging >20k a season recently.
Do you have any sources for the claim? As far as I know, football is quite popular in middle east. Football clubs in that area have consistently been strong contenders in the AFC champions league. This means they have a healthy and competitive domestic league. Claiming they don't have soccer-related infrastructure is pretty ridiculous.
[0] " Local organizers are planning to build 9 new stadiums and expand 3 existing stadiums for this event." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar#Football
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_2022_FIFA_World_Cup_bid#P...