The World Cup Under Scrutiny

Hey everyone! We are three University of Virginia students who hope to create a repository for World Cup 2022 fans who are curious about sportswashing, which is the use of major sports tournaments (such as the World Cup or the Olympics) to garner legitimacy for a country’s regime and to improve a country's global reputation. This year, the World Cup is being held in Qatar, a state in the Middle East about the size of Connecticut, which was rumored to have utilized their vast amounts of oil money to bribe FIFA (the international governing body of soccer) for the rights to the bid. Click on the tabs above to learn more about our explorations of the topic of sportswashing throughout history and profile Qatar’s use of the tool for World Cup 2022.