Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup and there are 12 billion reasons why

• Qatar set to host the 2022 World Cup despite the build-up being controversial
• The Gulf state has investments in football currently worth nearly £12billion 
• PSG are among best known of Qatar’s multitude of investments in world football 

Have you ever wondered why Qatar are still hosting the 2022 World Cup?

Why, after all the allegations of slavery, covert support for terrorism and corruption, why, after a regional blockade and continued investigations into bribes and suspicious payments, why, when a winter tournament was never actually put to the vote in the bidding process, the country’s hold has remained so firm?

It turns out football has its reasons: 12 billion, 605 million, 970 thousand of them, to be precise. Give or take, that is the figure in euros Qatar has spent wheedling its way into football. Want to see what it looks like numerically? €12,605,970,000. In sterling at the current rate: £11,323,834,940. In US dollars: $14,933,655,200.

And that doesn’t include the 2022 World Cup stadiums, infrastructure or bidding process. This is just the spend of Qatar and its various arms and businesses in terms of football investment.

Paris Saint-Germain, on and off the field. Media rights across the globe. Sponsorships. The Aspire Academy in Doha.

It is an investment programme that takes in every major league, most major clubs, some leading players and each major confederation, plus governing body FIFA and the International Olympic Committee.

Its tentacles reach from the Indonesian Super League to Leicester City and Wolverhampton Wanderers via the Juventus Academy, Tunisia and Lionel Messi. Qatar has, in effect, bought the game.

There is barely an influential voice or presence that is not compromised by a financial arrangement with the Gulf state. Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Monaco, Valencia, they are all in business with Qatar one way or another. Qatar Airways, the Commercial Bank of Qatar, Hamad International Airport, beIN Sports, Burrda clothing, Ooredoo telecommunications.

Media rights agreements alone account for deals worth £8bn and include leagues in England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, the United States and Argentina.

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PSG are among the best known of Qatar’s multitude of investments in world football

Qatari broadcasters might not be showing the Premier League here, but they have the rights to broadcast it in the Middle East and North Africa, Thailand, New Zealand and Indonesia — just as they take Ligue 1 to the United States, the Bundesliga to Australia, Serie A to Hong Kong and La Liga to the entire Asia-Pacific region.

Having bought the acquiescence of the clubs, now consider the extent to which the confederations are compromised by Qatar’s largesse. Media rights deals include every World Cup from 2010 to 2022, CONCACAF and CONMEBOL qualifiers and the European Championship.

There is an agreement in place with the Confederation of African Football that lasts until 2028. A similar arrangement with the Asian Football Confederation runs from 2013 to this year and, when it is up for renewal, beIN Sports has the right to match any rival bid and win again.

What are these deals worth? The one with CAF, acquired through a third party, was reported at $1bn — the Asia deal $100m. Is it any wonder that, no matter how disturbing the allegations, no one can lay a glove on Qatar’s World Cup?

Indeed, even if the confederations had not been royally squared off, Qatar’s business with FIFA and the IOC still amounts to £1.94bn in media rights and sponsorships. So plenty of incentive to see the good in their partners, no matter what those troublemakers at Amnesty say about migrant workers.

PSG may be the flagship of Qatar’s investment in football but, taken as a whole, the club are not the half of it — not even one tenth, in fact.

PSG’s transfer spending, roughly £1bn, is astronomical by comparison to that of their rivals — but the Qatar project is far greater than the ambitions of one club.

Close to double PSG’s transfer expenditure has gone out in various Qatar-linked sponsorships. Spending on training facilities, ground improvement and management contracts works out at £461m, which was less than beIN spent on the rights to Ligue 1 in France.

If Qatar merely owned PSG they would be significant, but not influential. The numbers show they are thinking far bigger than the eye-catching recruitment of Neymar or a proper tilt at the Champions League. They have addressed where the power in modern sport truly lies; they have followed the money.

And by doing this, the World Cup will stay theirs. Hosting contracts are devilishly hard to break anyway — FIFA made it so, because they were always concerned the winning bidders might renege once the costs started spiralling. It never occurred to football’s rulers that they might be the ones looking to break free — so these strict ties also work in Qatar’s favour.

Yet there really isn’t the will to split. Too many compromises have already been made, too many palms greased, too many elaborate webs spun. Football has been bought so comprehensively that its new friends could quite possibly get away with murder; some might argue, looking at the discarded charge sheet, that they already have.