With quick vote and little fanfare, Saudi Arabia on track to get 2034 World Cup

ZURICH — Under its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has unleashed a spending spree on global sports, turning the kingdom into a contender for the biggest events.

On Wednesday, soccer’s governing body is expected to confirm Saudi Arabia has secured the biggest prize of all: the men’s World Cup in 2034.

No other competition on the planet attracts as many eyeballs as the century-old quadrennial, a national team competition that thrusts host nations into center stage in a way only the Summer Olympics can match.

But human rights groups have objected to the Saudis’ bid, saying the country’s human rights record raises risks for the thousands of migrant workers from some of the poorest parts of the earth who will be brought in to build the infrastructure — stadiums, airports, roads and hotels, and even a new city — to stage the tournament.

Other critics, including fan groups, say FIFA — the soccer global body that almost collapsed a decade ago after many of its top leaders were indicted on corruption charges by the U.S. Department of Justice — has rigged the vote for the Saudis by changing the rules for bidding.

Under FIFA’s rules, the organization’s 211 member nations are supposed to select one tournament host during a single vote, and usually there are multiple contenders. This year, though, FIFA’s members will vote at the same time for two tournaments — the World Cup in 2030 and 2034. And they will have to vote in a package deal, essentially approving the bids for both tournaments or for neither.

What’s more, the only contender for the 2030 event is, for the first time, a group of six countries from three continents — Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. So any nation that votes against the Saudi bid would also be voting against those countries hosting the 2030 event.

FIFA said recently that the rule changes “followed a comprehensive consultation process across all confederations” but has not explained why the bids for the two tournaments were combined. This week, FIFA published an evaluation of the Saudi bid, saying the country was on the path toward reforming its labor system, with changes that will reduce risk to workers engaged in the building work required for the World Cup

The announcement about the tournaments will be made in Zurich, after the formal vote by the national soccer federations from FIFA’s member nations.

But in contrast to previous years, when the announcements were made with great fanfare, Saudi Arabia will be awarded its prize in an unusually low-profile way: a rubber-stamp vote in a virtual meeting that may create a moment more procedural than celebratory.

Also, the international news media will be absent. FIFA has not announced any plans for a news conference after the decisive meeting about its most prestigious event and most important moneymaker.

Hosting the World Cup forms part of an ambitious plan by Crown Prince Mohammed to reorient the country, in part by diversifying its economy. Sports and entertainment have been at the center of this plan over the past decade as the prince brought the world’s top sports and sporting talent to Saudi Arabia, at eye-popping cost.

“We’ve hosted more than 85 global events, and we’ve delivered on the highest level,” Saudi Arabia’s sports minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal, told the BBC in a podcast published earlier this month. “We want to attract the world through sports. Hopefully, by 2034, people will have an extraordinary World Cup.”

He dismissed as “shallow” claims made by advocacy groups that Saudi’s sudden and enormous focus on sports was a way to distract the world from its human rights record. Similar accusations — known as sportswashing — were made against Saudi Arabia’s neighbor Qatar, which was host to the 2022 World Cup.

Human rights groups point to a recent report commissioned by FIFA about the treatment of migrant workers who built stadiums and other sites in Qatar for that event. Many of those workers were injured and even killed because of the dangerous working conditions.

The report, which took FIFA a year to publish, said the sports body should compensate those hurt and the families of workers killed, as well as workers who were victims of wage theft and unscrupulous middlemen involved in the recruitment process.

Michael Page, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division, said the scale of risk posed by Saudi Arabia hosting the tournament was even higher. “There are about 13.4 million migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, compared to 2 million in Qatar,” Page said on a call with journalists, in which he was joined by other opponents of the award.

“Many work in remote, harsh conditions that could exacerbate the human cost of hosting the tournament,” he said.