From this Sunday until the final on December 18, the 2022 World Cup will take place in the desert emirate of Qatar.

32 teams play for the most important title in international football.

But the focus is not only on sport.

How much does the World Cup in Qatar cost?

Michael Wittershagen

Responsible for sports in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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Qatar is silent about the actual costs of this World Cup, but one thing is certain: This World Cup is the most expensive in the history of football.

Even more: The current tournament probably costs more than all previous 21 world championships together.

According to various reports and experts, this year's World Cup may have swallowed up more than 200 billion dollars (currently around 193 billion euros).

By way of comparison, the 2014 World Cup in Brazil cost around $15 billion, while the 2018 tournament in Russia cost around $11.6 billion.

In 2006, Germany even managed with the equivalent of only around 4.3 billion dollars.

The World Cup in Qatar will not be held in twelve stadiums as has been the case up to now, but only in eight.

Much of the money has gone into infrastructure in Qatar: a new electric metro system, the renovation and expansion of Doha Airport, dozens of new hotels, new roads and amusement parks.

All of this is part of the Qatar National Vision 2030 project.

According to the Doha News, the World Cup stadiums themselves only cost around 6.5 billion dollars.

Six arenas were built specifically for the tournament and two were remodeled.

What will happen to the stadiums after the World Cup?

Eight stadiums with a total capacity of around 400,000 spectators within a radius of just 55 kilometers - what was built in the desert for this World Cup is completely oversized for the needs of everyday Qatari league football.

And so, with the construction of the stadiums, dismantling was planned immediately.

The Al-Bayt Stadium, in which the opening game between Qatar and Ecuador will be played this Sunday (5:00 p.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker for the soccer World Cup, on ZDF and on MagentaTV) as well as the Germany-Spain game and in which 60,000 people will be partly converted into a hotel after the World Cup.

A shopping center and a sports medicine facility are also planned there.

The Lusail Stadium, where 80,000 spectators are expected to watch the final, will offer space for apartments and a community center after the tournament.

Qatar is particularly proud of Stadium 974, which was built ten kilometers east of Doha.

The number 974 not only stands for Qatar's international dialing code, but also for 974 shipping containers which, together with modular steel elements, form the framework of this stadium.

The advantage: this arena can be completely dismantled after the World Cup.

There has never been a stadium like this in the history of the World Cup.

The tourism agency Visit Qatar even sees it as "a blueprint for future hosts of larger tournaments".

Originally, Qatar had announced that it would give the stadium away to another country, but there was no official interested party.

Now the individual components are to be used for the construction of new sports facilities in Qatar or abroad.

After the World Cup, leisure and green areas are to be built on the approximately 450,000 square meter stadium site not far from Doha.