There is a peculiar sort of madness that descends on a nation when it decides to host a World Cup. It begins with a bid, a glossy brochure promising economic transformation, a spike in national pride, and the vague but intoxicating notion that we will finally be taken seriously. Then comes the stadium construction, the infrastructure bills, the whispered warnings from economists that are politely ignored. And now, with the UK Treasury stepping in to mutter about a ‘bidding bubble’, we are seeing the hangover arrive before the party has even started.
The World Cup, in case you haven’t noticed, has become the world’s most expensive game of Monopoly. The sums involved are no longer just large; they are surreal. When a country like Qatar splashes out £200 billion for a tournament that lasts barely a month, the whole idea of ‘value for money’ starts to look like a quaint Victorian concept. And yet the UK, bruised by a decade of austerity and a lingering cost-of-living crisis, is lining up to join the circus. The Treasury’s concern is that we are being swept up in a global fever, that the economics of the ‘craziest World Cup’ ever are actually a cautionary tale.
What is truly remarkable is how quickly we forget. The 2012 London Olympics were supposed to leave a legacy of regeneration and sporting fervour. Instead, we got a stadium that cost £700 million and now hosts concerts and athletics meets that barely cover maintenance. The 2018 World Cup in Russia? A geopolitical boondoggle that left a trail of overpriced stadia in cities that will never fill them. And yet, when football’s governing body comes calling, the bidding process triggers a collective amnesia. We tell ourselves that this time it’s different. This time, the intangible benefits of national pride will somehow balance the books.
On the streets, the reaction is more shrewd. In pubs and coffee shops, people are not asking about the economic multiplier effect. They are asking why their council tax is rising while the government promises to spend billions on a tournament that will enrich football’s already bloated elite. The class dimension is unmistakable. The people who will actually work in the stadium kiosks, drive the official taxis, and clean the VIP suites are the same people who cannot afford to attend a Premier League game. For them, the World Cup is not a moment of uplift; it is a gentrification project on a national scale.
The cultural shift is also profound. Football was once the beautiful game, a working-class pastime that belonged to the people. Now it is a global product, its biggest asset the television rights that are hoovered up by tech giants and broadcasters. The World Cup bid is not about giving the nation a chance to kick a ball in the park. It is about selling the nation to foreign investors, hotel chains, and sponsorship deals. The human cost is that we lose something intangible: the idea that the game belongs to us.
The Treasury’s warning is a rare moment of fiscal honesty. But honesty is not usually the currency of World Cup bids. What we need is a difficult conversation about what we want from our national institutions. Do we want a gleaming, expensive monument to corporate football that will leave us with a debt that our grandchildren will still be paying off? Or do we want to invest in grassroots sport, in the parks and pitches where children still play for the sheer joy of it? The Treasury may be worried about a bubble, but the real bubble is the one that has inflated our sense of what a World Cup can deliver.
The craziness, it turns out, is not just in the numbers. It is in the collective willingness to suspend disbelief, to believe that this time the economic miracle will happen. It won’t. And the Treasury knows it. The question is whether anyone is listening.
