Opinion: Let’s call out the Qatar World Cup for what it really is

Editor’s Note: Roger Bennett is the founder of the Men In Blazers Media Network and co-author of Gods of Soccer. Tommy Vietor is a former spokesperson for President Barack Obama, cofounder of Crooked Media and host of the foreign policy podcast Pod Save the World. Together they collaborated on a podcast series called World Corrupt, examining the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. Read more opinion on CNN.

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This November, billions of people around the world will tune in to the World Cup – one of the greatest sporting spectacles in human history. It’s an event that has brought wars to a standstill, canonized sporting saints and sinners, and united the planet in savoring every exclamation point goal, last-ditch tackle and intricately choreographed celebratory knee-slide.

There’s just one problem: This year, it’s happening in Qatar.

In Qatar, journalists are thrown in jail for investigating migrant worker conditions. LGBTQ+ people are treated as criminals. Women need to ask men permission to marry, travel and study abroad in many cases.

And Qatari labor practices have been compared to modern slavery – a reported 6,500 South Asian migrant workers have died in Qatar since the country was awarded the World Cup in 2010. Experts say it is likely a lot of these deaths are related to construction of buildings for the tournament.

6,500 deaths – at least. The total death toll is almost certainly higher, as this figure does not include many countries sending workers to Qatar, including the Philippines and African nations.

(Qatar argues that the mortality rate for its migrant worker community is within the expected range for the size and demographics of the population.)

In recent years, Qatari authorities have introduced “several promising labor reform initiatives,” according to Human Rights Watch. But “significant gaps remain,” it said, including “widespread wage abuses” and failure to “investigate the causes of deaths of thousands of migrant workers.”

Let’s not pretend that the Qataris won their Cup bid through merit alone. After all, Qatar – a peninsula smaller than Connecticut and with heat so extreme that it’s a potential health risk to play soccer there during the summer months – is the last place it would make sense to host a giant international sporting tournament.

How, then, did Qatar get chosen? Well, as an endless stream of investigative journalism alleges, it won the bid through a process that was rigged from top to bottom. (Qatar strongly denies the allegations).

Shortly after France’s supporting vote, for instance, Qatar Sports Investments purchased the Paris Saint-Germain Football Club; around the same time, another Qatari firm bought a…