It was hardly a marquee moment in the history of world sport. Curious crowds on a Middle Eastern beach watched events that included horse riders slicing a lemon with a sword and a cousin of croquet called woodball.
Yet there was the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, looking on from the VIP seats and then presenting some medals at the Asian Beach Games in Oman earlier this month.
If Rogge seemed out of place, he wasn’t. The scene was just a sign of the times. Fans can expect more – perhaps many more – such courtesy calls to the Gulf by the stewards of international sport as the money-soaked region that once begged for attention from the IOC and others is now bursting with eager suitors.
They are emissaries along the new silk road of sport. In little more than a decade, the Gulf’s wealth and boundless ambitions have lured big-name events and A-list athletes, while the region’s leaders have developed a reputation as deep-pocket hosts – who are still hungry for more.
“We go to new lands,” FIFA President Seth Blatter said December 2 after announcing tiny Qatar’s surprise selection for the 2022 World Cup.
So new that fans in some places had to consult a map.
Searches for Qatar on Google instantly spiked. Announcers outside the Middle East tried to wrap their tongues around the correct pronunciation: KAT-tar or GUH-tur but definitely not Cutter.
Then critics got busy. A running theme, particularly in the runner-up bidder America, was a shrill retort: How does Qatar merit one of crown jewels of international sports?
Such comments just mean the questioner hasn’t been paying attention.
The sport migration to the Gulf has been going on for years – part of a new world landscape of sport in which economic clout has shifted from Europe and North America to markets where authorities see Rafael Nadal, Tiger Woods and roaring F-1 races as something more.
In the Gulf, it’s a way to matter beyond just being the world’s fuel pump.
“The old thinking in the Gulf was to try to stay out of sight,” said Patrick Nikolas Theros, a former US ambassador to Qatar and currently president of the US-Qatar business council. “Now they see sport as an effective way to make Qatar and other Gulf countries important and important to other people.”
The Gulf strategy to buy respectability takes other forms, such as bringing in annexes of top schools including New York University and Georgetown, and museums such as the planned Louvre and Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi and architect I.M. Pei’s Museum of Islamic Art in Doha.
But sport adds some of the Gulf’s favourite currencies: celebrity and splash.
The Gulf states – led by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – have elevated sport to something akin to a national cause. Their treasuries are thrown open to bankroll first-class facilities such as the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix circuit (complete with Ferrari theme park), Dubai’s airport-size Meydan horse racing complex and the array of air-conditioned stadiums planned for the World Cup.
Sport councils and federations – even the most modest – hire high-priced Western PR talent to champion their cause. The latest drive: Qatar’s quest for the 2015 men’s handball championship.
Dubai, meanwhile, is mulling a run at a far bigger prize – the 2020 Olympics. But if not Dubai, certainly another pitch for the games will come someday from the Gulf if momentum remains.
Even Rogge gave a personal nudge while in Oman, saying the IOC would welcome another Olympic bid from the Middle East after Qatar’s failed effort the 2016 games.
“The geography of sport is changing,” said Ahmad Mohammed Al Rahoomi, international spokesman for the Dubai Sports Council, during the SportAccord gathering in April that brought together officials from around the world. “When people used to think of this region it was only oil. Now they are starting to think of sports.”
In reality, one feeds off the other. The Gulf’s staggering oil and gas wealth powers the sport boom. And the more the events shift to the booming region, the more money that’s set aside to try to get more.
How’s this for an expected guest list: Nadal, Roger Federer and other top men’s tennis players in Abu Dhabi and Qatar’s capital Doha; Asia’s top soccer teams in Doha for a continentwide tournament; Lee Westwood and Phil Mickelson at the Abu Dhabi golf championship; European Tour golfers in Bahrain; rising Kenyan marathon star Eliud Kiptanui in Dubai.
That’s just the calendar for January.
A veteran sport marketer, Donal Kilalea, said the initial push to bring competitions to the region began with companies such as Emirates airline looking to raise their profile.
“They saw it as a way for branding,” said Kilalea, head of Promoseven in Dubai. “Later, the region’s leaders began to pay attention. Now, it has coalesced into a priority on all sides.”
But the parade also drags the region in some uncomfortable directions.
Opening to the sporting world also means open to Israel, which has no diplomatic ties with Gulf states and whose presence gives Arab security forces the jitters.
Last year, the UAE suffered a serious image blow when it denied a visa to Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer for the Dubai championships. This year, Peer was allowed to play, but was limited to her hotel and the courts. A special security squad also was assigned for Israel’s delegation at this month’s FINA short-course swimming championships in Dubai.
Being in the world spotlight also leaves deeper social issues exposed. Among them: Is local Gulf Arab culture being steamrolled in the quest for prestige?
It’s not a new question. The Gulf’s staggering growth is built on importing cheap labourers and expensive white-collar talent, creating lopsided demographics such as five foreigners for every local-born Emirati in Dubai.
But in Doha, the questions were being tossed around with new urgency even before the last bleat of the vuvuzelas to celebrate the World Cup selection. Some conservative Muslim clerics called it a sellout of Islamic values to invite the World Cup party, including the prospect of boozy “fan zones” in a capital once so sleepy that, a generation ago, the big nightspot was a Dairy Queen.
One cleric suggested Qataris consider an Islamic pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia to escape the Cup.
Then, too, there is the sensitive issue of who actually builds the sports palaces, including the $4 billion in new World Cup arenas. Gulf nations have been under considerable pressure from rights groups to improve conditions in the labour camps housing the mostly South Asian workers who have raised the towering cities of Dubai, Doha and elsewhere.
None of these messier questions, however, got in the way of Gulf leaders toasting Qatar.
At a summit of Gulf sheiks and monarchs in Abu Dhabi this month, a joint statement called the World Cup award a “source of pride” for the entire Muslim world.
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