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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30402 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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CNBC is reporting that

Although the final official figures have not been released, it is estimated that the Qatar World Cup will cost around 220 billion to 300 billion dollars. This will also make it the most expensive World Cup ever.

Notably

At this year’s World Cup in Qatar, it’s noteworthy that seven of the eight stadiums have been constructed recently. Only one was renovated. Lusail Stadium alone, located north of Doha, cost $45 billion. Additionally, about 20,000 new hotel rooms have been constructed, as well as new driveways.

The USA's GDP is $20 trillion, so a cost of $220 billion is about 1% of the USA's GDP, which should immediately raise some red flags. Now that something smells fishy, we can look up Qatar's GDP and realize that CNBC is claiming that Qatar has spent at least 120% of their GDP on the World Cup.

Unsurprisingly, we can count on Reuters to set the record straight.

Gas-rich Qatar, in an attempt to emulate the dramatic transformation of Gulf rivals Dubai and Abu Dhabi, has spent at least $229 billion on infrastructure in the 11 years since winning the bid to host the World Cup.

Some Googling also gets us news.sky.com being more explicit

Qatar maintains that, while much of the infrastructure included in the $200bn figure will be used during the tournament, its construction would have taken place regardless of whether the cup was being held there, so it should not be viewed as the total cost.

I think it's fair to say that reporting all infrastructure spending in the last decade as "spending on the World Cup infrastructure" is pants-on-fire misleading, particularly when comparing it to the costs other countries paid.

The New York Times does it with a bit more plausible deniability.

For the country of three million people, the monthlong tournament is the culmination of 12 years of preparation and more than $200 billion in infrastructure spending, subsumed into a grand nation-building project for a state the size of Connecticut surrounded by more powerful neighbors.

Although their tweet is more suspect

Qatar opened its long-awaited World Cup with a 2-0 loss to Ecuador on Sunday, a disappointing start to an event that had required more than a decade of planning; $200 billion in investments; and countless uncomfortable questions about human rights.

But what about that $45 billion stadium (which, incidentally, is greater than Qatar's annual government spending)?

That also seems implausible. No source is cited but, for comparison, Yankee Stadium has 12,000 seats (vs Lusail's 9,000) and cost $2.3 billion (or 5% the alleged cost of Lusail). Also sportingnews.com, while also guilty of running that $220 billion number, helpfully lists the costs of each of the new stadiums and claims Lusail Stadium cost $767 million.

Rough order-of-magnitude verification of numbers is a valuable skill. If I tell you the deepest part of the ocean is 500 miles deep you should really be able to know that I'm wrong (the USA is ~2500 miles wide). You should know if the government spends $1 billion or $50 million on something. Reporting that a country spent $200 billion on a sporting event instantly raise a red flag.

Go play Wits & Wagers.

Yankee Stadium has 12,000 seats

As perhaps an example of your larger point, this seemed implausibly low to me (it's about 20% smaller than the smallest full-time[1] arena in the NHL, a league with a much smaller following than MLB), so I did a quick Google and turned up a figure of 54,251, about 4.5 times your number. Where are you getting 12,000 from?

[1] I'm excluding the university arena the Arizona Coyotes are temporarily housed in, as that's not meant to be a permanent arrangement.

I’m almost positive that was added in there as bait. I’m pretty sure there are HS football stadiums in Texas that seat 12,000.

Might be a few elementary school stadiums that large too.

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