The Legacy of the 2022 FIFA World Cup on Soccer Consumption in Qatar
The 3 Percent Bump That Bypass Domestic Leagues
A 3 percent increase in consumer spending swept through German host cities during the UEFA EURO 2024 tournament, driven almost entirely by international visitors. That short-term financial pulse, captured using anonymized daily card-spending data by researchers Florian Dorn, Marie-Theres Gasser, Kevin Kloiber, Simon Krause, and Carla Krolage via ScienceDirect, concentrated heavily in the group stage, on match days, in city centers, and in tourist-facing sectors, while domestic spending exhibited spatial displacement rather than aggregate crowding out.
Measuring the Two-Year Legacy in Qatar
Yet the long-term translation of such mega-events into sustained local habits remains far more fractured. A quantitative study examined the legacy of hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup on domestic soccer consumption in Qatar, focusing on long-term cognitive and behavioral outcomes two years post-event. Although economic growth and infrastructure upgrades are commonly used to justify major sporting tournaments, researchers have spent less empirical time analyzing how these events permanently impact local sports fandom, especially within smaller host countries.
Inside the Qatari Consumer Engagement Survey
To analyze these changes following the tournament, the study examined whether fan involvement with the World Cup—measured through stadium attendance, watching broadcasts, money spent on the event, and joining pre-match festivities—could forecast later attitudes, social expectations, and personal control regarding soccer consumption across local, regional, and worldwide tiers. The study also examined the moderating roles of sport identification and national identity, employing an online survey administered to Qatari citizens who engaged with the tournament. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, reliability assessment, multiple regression, and moderation procedures.
Global Alignment Over Domestic Growth
The resulting data laid bare a stark divide between international spectacle and domestic traction. The analysis revealed that actual tournament attendance, television viewership, and spending had minimal and erratic direct impacts on how people thought about regional and domestic leagues. Conversely, participatory involvement via media consumption and pre-game events showed steadier, positive links to subsequent attitudes, social norms, and feelings of behavioral control. Because these impacts appeared strongest on a global scale, the findings indicate that tournament involvement connects more naturally with prominent international competitions than with domestic matches. Across all types of consumption mindsets, sports fandom proved to be a powerful direct predictor, whereas national identity played only a selective moderating role.
Methodological Pitfalls in Mega-Event Tracking
These divergent outcomes sit against a backdrop of wider academic scrutiny. Broader empirical trends highlight ongoing methodological complexities in evaluating event-attributed changes. Research assessed 233 articles published between 1997 and 2016, noting that economic and social consequences remained the most frequently considered outcomes. Most studies considered structural changes without further specification, while host city residents received the most research attention. The mapping shows persistent challenges regarding unclear definitions, biased selection of relevant stakeholder groups, short legacy timeframes, and low-level evidence for cause-effect relationships in the legacy production process.