One of the proposed stadiums for the 2034 World Cup is the King Salman Stadium in Riyadh with a capacity of 92,000 people. Photo: PR handout via Getty Images
In 2026, the sun will rise over the completed Aramco Stadium in Al Khobar, one of eleven stadium builds for the FIFA World Cup Saudi Arabia 2034. Aramco, the world’s largest oil and gas company, is owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its Public Investment Fund (PIF) and underpins the nation’s economy.
FIFA loves a World Cup party, and Saudi Arabia is not unique in undertaking a massive construction project as part of a World Cup bid. Russia’s bid book proposed 13 new stadiums for the 2018 World Cup, and Qatar built nine new stadiums for the 2022 edition.
But FIFA appears to have bent its own rules for Saudi Arabia.
For the 2030 World Cup, FIFA’s rules required bidders to have seven pre-existing stadiums to be able to host the World Cup. In new rules circulated by FIFA on 5 October 2023, this requirement was reduced to four pre-existing stadiums – an announcement that came on the same day FIFA expedited the bidding process for the 2034 tournament. This was a day after Saudi Arabia announced its intention to bid – a bid that was later confirmed to feature four existing stadiums.
The 2030 and 2034 hosting requirements reduced the number of required existing stadiums from seven to four, favouring Saudi Arabia.
The problem is, however, that the existing four stadiums in Saudi Arabia will all require refurbishment before 2034, and some of these will be major:
FIFA’s bid evaluation report for Saudi Arabia also states that the King Abdullah Sports City Stadium will ‘undergo refurbishment from 2030 with a view to reflecting the requirements for hosting the FIFA World Cup 2034’.
None of the three stadiums that FIFA classes as ‘under construction’ in its evaluation report for the bid were being built in October 2023. Construction of the Aramco Stadium began in July 2024; the Jeddah Central Stadium appears to still be in the design stage; and the 22,500 seat Prince Faisal Bin Fahad Stadium is scheduled to be demolished entirely and rebuilt – arguably making it a ‘new’ stadium.
NEOM Stadium will be positioned on the fourth and fifth tier of THE LINE, a planned 170km long and 500m high megacity. Photo: Screenshot from https://saudi2034.com.sa/cities/neom/
Nobody could accuse Saudi Arabia of lacking ambition for its 2034 tournament. Perhaps the most audacious of its plans involves NEOM Stadium.
NEOM is a planned megacity featuring five regions and scheduled to house 300,000 people by 2034 and nine million people by 2045. In October 2024, the first NEOM region, Sindalah, opened to the public.
The 46,010-seat NEOM Stadium will be positioned 350 metres above ground on the fourth and fifth tier of THE LINE, a planned 170km long city just 200 metres wide, but 500 metres high. THE LINE will also host FIFA officials at swish VIP hotels.
“NEOM Stadium will be the most unique stadium in the world,” reads Saudi Arabia’s bid book.
“With a pitch situated more than 350 meters above ground, stunning vistas and a roof created from the city itself, the stadium will be an experience like no other. The stadium will be run, like the rest of the city, entirely on renewable energy generated primarily from wind and solar sources.”
FIFA’s Blade Runner-style science fiction dream is already becoming a reality. But there are questions as to whether THE LINE – and the NEOM Stadium within it – are even feasible as a concept.
There is an additional danger that post-2034, white elephants will be left to rot in the Saudi sun, in a similar fashion to Qatar 2022. FIFA President Gianni Infantino famously described Qatar 2022 as the “best World Cup ever”. But despite promises that stadiums would either be used or dismantled and donated to other countries, many remain empty and unused.
FIFA’s evaluation of the Saudi bid says that many of Saudi Arabia’s stadiums will have a “multi-purpose function”, and some will host Saudi Pro League teams. However, it doesn’t examine whether they will be fully utilised beyond the 2034 World Cup.
Only four Saudi Pro League football teams average above 10,000 spectators per game, and in the 2023/4 season, the average attendance for the Saudi Pro League was just over 8,000 per game.
In the case of Jeddah’s Qiddiya Coast Stadium, FIFA says that the venue will “provide long-term value to the surrounding Qiddiya Coast development”. In other words, FIFA is praising the legacy of a World Cup venue because it will improve a state-driven construction project.
The sky above Riyadh was lit up by fireworks when it was announced in December 2024 that FIFA had awarded the World Cup 2034 to Saudi Arabia. Photo: Christophe Viseux / Getty Images
Stadium legacy is not the only area with parallels between Saudi Arabia’s 2034 World Cup and Qatar 2022 when it comes to claims about carbon neutrality.
Based on a 2021 Greenhouse Gas Accounting Report prepared by consultants South Pole ahead of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, FIFA claimed that the World Cup would be carbon neutral with estimated total greenhouse gas emissions of 3.63 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
However, in June 2023, FIFA was warned against making claims like these when the Swiss Commission for Fairness (SLK) upheld a complaint filed by five organisations in three countries that disputed FIFA’s promises of carbon neutrality at Qatar 2022.
“The SLK has advised FIFA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims in the future,’ reads an SLK statement. ‘Particularly the claim that the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar was climate- or carbon-neutral.”
Experts estimate that the Qatar 2022 carbon footprint could be as high as 10 million tonnes, which led the New Weather Institute to file a complaint with the SLK in November 2022.
The reason for the difference? Carbon Market Watch found that South Pole’s 2021 report only included 70 days of greenhouse gas emissions from stadium construction in the calculations.
A similar method appears to have been repeated in South Pole’s November 2024 post-Qatar 2022 World Cup report.
“The estimated life-cycle emissions are allocated to the Qatar 2022 emission inventory based on the stadiums’ operational period of 47 days for Qatar 2022 plus 32 days for the FIFA Arab Cup 2021,” it reads.
Qatar created a voluntary Global Carbon Council to purchase carbon credits to offset emissions from the World Cup. Many of the projects involved suffered from what is known as a ‘lack of additionality’. This means that they would have been built anyway without revenue from carbon credits and contain no new carbon savings.
Saudi Arabia has done almost exactly the same thing. Play the Game has exposed how Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the PIF, created its own Regional Voluntary Carbon Market Company (RVCMC) so that FIFA sponsor Aramco could purchase carbon credits as part of an attempt to convince the world that it is a carbon neutral fossil fuel company.
On 15 November 2024, the RVCMC held its third auction, beating its own record by auctioning 2.5 million metric tonnes of carbon credits to Saudi companies. The auction was held alongside the United Nations’ COP29 Climate Change conference in Baku. Twenty-three companies took part, including Aramco and the PIF.
Play the Game has uncovered significant issues with the ability of cookstove projects and renewable energy schemes from the first two auctions to deliver on promises of reducing carbon emissions. According to a report by Bloomberg, the RVCMC has now cut these projects.
Unfortunately, this time the RVCMC doesn’t appear to have published a breakdown of how many carbon credits were bought by which companies on its website. That makes it impossible to assess not only which companies bought how many credits but also whether the projects involved in the third auction suffer from the same lack of additionality issues as those involved in its first two auctions.
However, in this interview, Riham ElGizy, CEO of the RVCMC, explains that the RVCMC has apparently solved the issues around the lack of additionality. The interview is conducted by the PIF, which owns the RVCMC.
Football’s centrality to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is illustrated by this screenshot from their homepage.
NEOM is one of many Saudi Vision 2030 ‘giga-projects’, five of which are spearheaded by the PIF – including NEOM. According to an assessment of the project by the European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR), sustainability concerns have arisen regarding the carbon associated with building NEOM, which has been estimated to amount to 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
That’s only marginally less than the 1.9 billion tonnes of Co2 produced by Russia in 2022.
The ECDHR isn’t alone in its concerns about the environmental impact of Saudi Arabia’s plans. Construction of THE LINE is reportedly commandeering one-fifth of the world’s steel, and a 190 million US dollars concrete factory has been commissioned to produce the massive foundations required for THE LINE and other NEOM projects.
“The colossal NEOM project has come under fire for the huge quantities of raw materials that will need to be transported into the desert for its construction,” reads a report from Saudi Arabian human rights organisation ALQST.
“The carbon footprint embedded in the construction of the megacity is likely to offset the environmental benefits touted in NEOM’s publicity materials.”
Peak oil demand is still a decade away, according to recent research by Goldman Sachs. This neatly coincides with the 2034 date of Saudi Arabia’s World Cup.
“Aramco has ambitions to become the last person standing in a dying industry,” says Freddie Daley of the University of Sussex and the Cool Down Sport for Climate Action network.
It is well placed to achieve this. In 2017, it had 260.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent, more than the combined reserves of Exxom Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and Total. At the 2020 production rate, Aramco’s reserves could be burned until 2077.
PIF states that the Kingdom’s ‘giga-projects’ are designed to stimulate the economy and diversify away from oil. But, they also require continued fossil fuel production for the projects that will facilitate this diversion to be constructed. Saudi Arabia’s Finance Minister Mohammed Al Jadaan, who is also an Aramco and PIF board member, recently told reporters that NEOM will not be complete for 50 years.
“NEOM […] typifies a massive and persistent failure of the imagination driven by a capitalism — blinded by fossil-fuel ideology — and unable to come to terms with the necessity of confronting the climate crisis, growing global inequality and the persistence of war and genocide,” writes David Murakami Wood of the University of Ottowa on ‘The Conversation’.
“It’s about time for wealthy corporations and nation-states with the historic and contemporary responsibility for driving the climate crisis, like Saudi Arabia, to start taking this responsibility seriously. The world should be investing in making existing cities sustainable and just at a human scale — not pouring money into speculative, unsustainable and authoritarian urban mega-projects,” Wood continues.
Saudi Arabia’s bid book commits to working with FIFA to “develop and implement a robust Sustainability Strategy and support FIFA with the implementation of the Sustainable Event Management (SEM) system for the Competition, which will be aligned with ISO 20121 and cover all areas outlined in the FIFA Sustainable Tournament requirements.”
It won’t need to do much. FIFA has classified the tournament as having a low risk of breaching the organisation’s sustainability commitments. 
FIFA’s Bid Evaluation Report ranked Saudi Arabia at low risk of breaching sustainability commitments.
The United Nations doesn’t agree with FIFA’s assessment. In its evaluation of the bid, FIFA’s report praised Saudi Arabia’s support for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
However, as Play the Game has previously reported, both Saudi Arabia and Aramco failed to respond to letters of concern from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR). The letters warned Saudi Arabia and Aramco that their continued fossil fuel expansion risked breaching the Paris Agreement.
FIFA’s bid evaluation report recognised that “the extent of construction would have a material environmental impact,’ but added that Saudi Arabia was committed to working with FIFA on sustainable event management and ‘sustainable building certification,” which it identified as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Mostadam green building credentials.
The LEED system was developed by the US Green Building Council, and the Mostadam system was developed by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Housing. There are significant overlaps between the two. For example, a consultancy based in London offers green certification services using both systems specifically for construction projects in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
But most importantly, both systems only assess the green credentials of complete, permanent buildings – not the environmental impact of construction. Apart from that one sentence quoted above, any assessment of the environmental impact of stadium construction appears to be absent from FIFA’s bid evaluation report.
In addition to stadiums, two new airports and a high-speed train line are also planned for the 2034 World Cup. Thirty-eight new hotels will be built. This further adds to an already heavy carbon footprint.
Ricardo Simmonds and Roger Pielke Jr. argue in the Research Handbook on Major Sporting Events that sports organisations can be found at a climate crossroads where a sports organisation greenwash and fossil companies in turn sportswash by sponsoring the same sports organisation to improve their public image.
FIFA’s actions over appointing Saudi Arabia to host the 2034 World Cup fit this description. It has bent its own rules to allow Saudi Arabia to add a World Cup to an already massively polluting state construction project underpinned by abuse of migrant labour.
FIFA has not only allowed itself to become part of this but has taken active measures to ensure it is at the centre of the climate crossroads.
FIFA and Saudi Arabia have grown increasingly closer. Here FIFA president Giovanni Infantino is seen with President of the Saudi Football Federation Yasser Al-Meshal at football match in Jedda in December 2023. Photo Jose Breto /NurPhoto via Getty Images
In September, a report from the New Weather Institute into how fossil fuel companies are using sports to greenwash their operations estimated that Aramco has spent over $1.3 billion sponsoring sports. Research from Play the Game indicates that Aramco’s true level of sponsorship could be much higher, due to its 71 deals across sports.
Play the Game has mapped over 900 Saudi sponsorships and has outlined how Saudi Arabia has used fossil fuel money to secure power and influence within sport. This approach has allowed Saudi Arabia to secure the ultimate prestigious prize – the FIFA World Cup.
“It is ridiculous for FIFA to accept sponsorship from Saudi Aramco – the world’s single biggest corporate emitter of greenhouse gas – when the football governing body has committed itself to the goals of the Paris climate agreement,” said a spokesperson from ClientEarth, which filed the 2021 UN complaint against Aramco.
“If FIFA is serious about tackling climate change, it simply shouldn’t be partnering with the companies most responsible for global warming, companies that refuse to actually align their businesses with the Paris Agreement, or companies engaged in greenwashing their business.”
In a new report, the NGO FairSquare links FIFA’s actions in relation to bringing the World Cup to Saudi Arabia to the fact that it is ruled through the one-member-one-vote system which means that all member associations have the same voting power at FIFA congresses.
“Consequently, a significant proportion of the voting base for the FIFA presidency is financially dependent on the funds that the FIFA leadership controls,” reads FairSquare’s report.
“This structural flaw has always been latent, but the mutual dependence between the FIFA leadership and the member associations has increased over time as FIFA has grown wealthier and more member associations have joined the organisation,” says Nick McGeechan, director at FairSquare Research.
“There is no better example of the structural rot within FIFA than the manner in which FIFA has bent all its shiny new rules to ensure Saudi Arabia hosts the 2034 World Cup. As a result of FIFA’s sponsorship deal with Aramco and the revenue Saudi is pledging to deliver to FIFA, Saudi Arabian oil money is now one of the financial drivers of the patronage system at FIFA. It’s a grotesque quid pro quo whereby Saudi Arabia will sustain FIFA’s corrupt business model and FIFA will help Saudi Arabia to pollute the planet and accelerate climate change.”
It also works. From 2023-26, FIFA member associations will receive 2 billion US dollars in football development money stained by pollution, oil and exploitation. Welcome to Saudi Arabia 2034.
This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
Frederiksgade 78B, 2.
8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
+45 3266 1030
info@playthegame.org
Find employee
Read more about us
Privacy policy
Certificate of accessibility (Danish)
Cookie declaration
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
Newsletter
