Today was the third and final day of the World Government Summit 2023. It was held in Dubai and the theme this year was “Shaping Future Governments”. Many great leaders and experts were present and gave memorable speeches, including Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter and Founder, CEO and Chief Engineer of SpaceX.

Speaking in today’s session of ‘Hosting Major Events: An Arab Success Story,’ was Najeeb Mohamed Al-Ali, Executive Director of Expo 2020 Dubai and Nasser Al-Khater, CEO of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

Expo 2020 Dubai and FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 are events that are going to be very hard to replicate in the future, Al-Khater said

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Nasser Al-Khater said that the western criticism only pushed Qatar to host the best World Cup

The speakers discussed the topics in Arabic but here’s what Al-Khater had to say about the criticisms Qatar faced before the World Cup commenced.

There’s no doubt Qatar was being scrutinised online by western media even once the tournament started. Many were trying to boycott the event but as it turns out, it had over 1.4 million attendees.

“We heard criticism… the Western media, we saw a lot of criticism and some western entities wanting Qatar to fail… but they did not get what they wanted and it was a huge success.”

(For Arabic speakers, listen from 1:52:53)

 

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The World Cup may have been hosted in Qatar but it made “every Arab” feel like its being hosted in their own country and it has to lead by example, he added

The negative criticism that came out from the west, only spurred Qatar on to host the best World Cup to date. Al-Khater also added that, unlike the past tournaments that were hosted in large countries, Qatar made it easy for fans to go from one stadium to the next because of how close they were in proximity to each other. That made the month-long tournament feel very community-based.