The blackboard is saturated, almost unreadable by force. We wrote in chalk, erased by hand to go over it again, without ever finding an answer to the still insoluble equation four days before the start of the 2022 World Cup: should we boycott the World Cup in Qatar? No one has resolved to do so, at least not at the institutional level.
In France, the question never really crossed the mind of Noël Le Graët, convinced that human misery disappears “strokes of paint”. Didier Deschamps has been cautiously insisting for months that players are free to express themselves on the subject, which they have done very little so far. Long discreet, the players of the France team announced on Tuesday their intention to provide financial support to NGOs working “for the protection of human rights” and recalled their “attachment” to “refusal of all forms of discrimination”. Just enough to save honor.
Except immense surprise, a major action of the players of all edges is to be excluded. The World Cup, whether played in the Garden of Eden or on a workers’ cemetery, remains the high point of a career. The snub would be a sacrifice as much as a form of injustice – certainly much less compared to that of the fate of migrants – footballers being in no way responsible for the attribution of the World Cup to this or that country.
Voices are raised against the guilt of supporters
The same goes for the (TV) viewer. Why deprive yourself of the most beautiful sports festival when the people to blame are in Zurich and Doha? By what right do we impose a moral duty coupled with the deprivation of a major pleasure on citizens who, barely out of a trying pandemic, now also have to suffer from inflation and energy restrictions.
Author of Qatar, the World Cup of shame (Libertalia), journalist Nicolas Ksiss-Martov says he is “against making football fans feel guilty. On the other hand, it would have been necessary to challenge the politician. As citizens, we should have already asked our elected officials, our members of the assembly, who set up sometimes very well-organized commissions of inquiry, to take a close look at this because that is their role. After all, they did vote to send 200 French police officers to Qatar…”
Let us recognize all the same in our policies a certain constancy in the support for this controversial attribution of the 2022 World Cup to the small emirate since the secret lunch at the Elysee in 2010 in which Nicolas Sarkozy, Michel Platini and the Crown Prince of Qatar took part.
“I don’t want to be the preacher who tells people ‘no, but you don’t realize what’s going on over there’,” says Quentin Müller, co-author of Les Esclaves de l’homme. -oil. This would be an unteachable and particularly arrogant position. If people want to watch it, let them do it, but if they can keep in mind how it was made, at what price it was made, that would be good. »
A parallel with climate inaction
Not “focusing on football” contrary to Gianni Infantino’s wishes seems to be a minimum here. But, faced with the emergency, can we be satisfied with a symbolic contemplation? The question of the citizen boycott here seems to resonate with the debates on ecology. The inaction of the authorities and the irresponsibility of the richest are discouraging. However, are we exempt from any effort on the pretext that Elon Musk makes 10-minute journeys in a private jet, or that China and the United States snub COP 27, even if it means becoming actors in this suicide ourselves? collective? The same goes for the World Cup.
In both cases, the individual weight exists. On the individual carbon footprint, it should be reduced to 2 tons of CO2 per inhabitant with the objective of carbon neutrality. However, in 2020, it was 8.2 tonnes of CO2/French on average (INSEE). The possibility of action is therefore concrete and real. On the awarding of a World Cup, however, it is more of a ripple effect.
Boycott of the CDM > Drop in audiences > Fewer advertisers for broadcasters > Disgruntled broadcasters lower TV rights during the next negotiations with FIFA > FIFA thinks twice before giving the World Cup to anyone who
Explanation a bit more in-depth from Pierre Rondeau, specialist in football economics.
“FIFA will not lose money as things stand if there is a popular boycott, since the TV rights for the 2022 World Cup have already been sold. Its brand image will be tarnished, which will subsequently have possible consequences. The losses will initially be for current broadcasters who paid to broadcast the 2022 World Cup. But if there is a drop in audiences in Qatar, this will prompt broadcasters to renegotiate the amount of TV rights downwards. for subsequent World Cups. »
Why would a viewer boycott be a disaster for FIFA?
Since 2002, TV rights have been the main source of income for world football. Thus, the structure of the budget allocated to the CDM 2018 in Russia was composed of:
- Ticketing: 13%
- TV rights 55% ($3 billion in 2018)
- Commercial revenue: 31%
- Other: 1%
Kssis-Martov: “If there were 50% fewer spectators – which won’t happen – FIFA would have to come to terms with the facts to maintain its income. In theory, not watching the World Cup would put FIFA under water. But it would be too quickly to forget that Gianni Infantino hides a joker in his sleeve. Pierre Rondeau. “All this will be counterbalanced by the fact that the next 2026 World Cup will be at 48 nations. So there will be more games overall. This could prompt Fifa to request or urge that the price not drop despite popular devaluation following a functional or effective boycott of the World Cup. In other words, the unit price would drop, but not the total. »
Even if the joker will only be worth this time if we side with FIFA, the vaguely enlightened football fan understood that it was the end of innocence. From now on, every major competition risks placing him in front of an impossible choice. The climate emergency easily suggests that the 2026 version will be singled out for its disastrous carbon footprint (count close to 5,000 terminals from northern Canada to southern Mexico, hello plane trips) and 2030 does not have many reasonable options: between the joint candidacy between Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Paraguay and Ukraine came to be grafted to that of the Iberian Peninsula, we left for a good laugh.
The example of the revolt against the Super League
Another argument in favor of disengaged pessimism is the very European-centric dimension of the struggle. “In Africa, Cameroon, Senegal, Morocco, all these countries are waiting for it impatiently,” adds Nicolas Kssis-Martov. In South America, questions around the World Cup only exist a little in Chile (which is not qualified) with the new left which is positioning itself. There is a side “you piss off giving us lessons with your stories of migrants while you let us die at sea”, which is understandable moreover”. The problem is that the African and Asian TV markets combined weigh barely less than the European market in terms of revenue (32%). “That’s the whole point of a global problem,” says Rondeau. Individual action on a global phenomenon makes our voices very small. »
A glimmer of hope in the form of an exception that confirms the rule: the weight of groups of supporters. Luc Arrondel, research director at the CNRS and specialist in football economics: “what could have an impact are the movements of the supporters as we have seen around the Superleague, where many of them had gone out in the street. This is proof that if you do not take the supporters into account at all, you expose yourself to their discontent. Here again, Qatar anticipated the blow by forming its own colonies of supporters. As if cynicism was always one step ahead.