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The cost of the World Cup

Philippe MEDA

25 Nov 2022 — 1 min read

Photo by Rhett Lewis / Unsplash

Qatar has spent $220bn to build an entire city and its various infrastructure to host the Mondial World Cup.

The more realistic cost is estimated at a whopping $300bn by Bloomberg.

This has nothing to do with innovation. But let me help with some random points of reference:

$100bn - Promised Loss and Damage fund for helping developing countries fight climate change during the various COP (which never materialized)
$52bn - Recent U.S. Chip and Science Act voted to reboot the national chipmaking industry
$42bn - Annual French energy sector in 2019 (2% of the country's GDP)
$26.25bn - Apple's R&D budget in 2022
<$18bn - European Space Agency's budget for the next three years
<$5bn- Moderna's cumulated R&D budget since 2016
$1.14bn - Total cost of improving bike infrastructures in the Netherlands up to 2030

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