Let us dispense with the usual pieties. The World Cup, that quadrennial orgy of sport and nationalism, has now achieved something truly remarkable: it has become, by all sober economic assessments, the most financially unhinged spectacle in human history. British analysts, a breed not prone to hyperbole, have used the word ‘crazy.’ I would go further. This is not merely crazy. This is the fiscal equivalent of a Roman emperor appointing his horse to the Senate. It is a glorious, terrifying, and utterly predictable sign of civilisational decadence.
Consider the figures. The host nation, in its quest for soft power and global attention, has spent sums that would make a Victorian railway magnate blanche. We are talking tens of billions, perhaps even exceeding the GDP of small countries. The stadiums rise from the desert like modern pyramids, but these pyramids do not house the dead. They house corporate sponsors and VIPs, while the workers who built them exist in a state of indentured labour that would shame a 19th-century mill owner. The cost overruns are staggering. The environmental footprint is catastrophic. And for what? A month of football.
But the sheer scale of expenditure is only part of the story. The real insanity lies in the inflationary pressure. When you inject such massive amounts of capital into a small, non-diversified economy, you create distortions that linger long after the final whistle. Housing prices skyrocket. Basic goods become luxuries. The local population, already grappling with a harsh climate and political repression, now faces the additional insult of being priced out of their own cities by foreign fans with cash to burn. It is the economic logic of the circus: the show must go on, even if the tent catches fire.
The British analysts are right to sound the alarm, but their warnings are doomed to be ignored. Why? Because the World Cup is not an economic event. It is a religious one. It feeds a primal hunger for spectacle, for shared experience, for the reaffirmation of group identity. The hosts understand this perfectly. They are not building infrastructure. They are building a narrative. They are purchasing a seat at the table of global prestige. The fact that the bill will come due in the form of inflation, debt, and social unrest is a problem for future generations. And as we all know, future generations have no lobbyists.
This pattern is not new. We have seen it before in the Olympics, in the grand expositions of the 19th century, in the vanity projects of autocrats throughout history. The difference is the scale. The globalised world has created a monster: an event so colossal that its financial excesses are simply accepted as the cost of doing business. The word ‘crazy’ is apt. But it is a particular kind of craziness, the craziness of a civilisation that has forgotten the value of restraint. We mock the Victorians for their prudishness, but they understood something we do not: that extravagance must be balanced by thrift, that glory must be tempered by humility. We have abandoned both.
What is the solution? There is none, at least not within the current framework. The World Cup will go on, each iteration more expensive than the last, until the bubble bursts. And when it does, the economists will wring their hands, the politicians will point fingers, and the world will move on to the next spectacle. That is the tragedy of our age. We have become spectators of our own decline, cheering as the ship goes down because the band is playing such a catchy tune.
So yes, the World Cup economics are crazy. But the real craziness is that we are surprised. We built this system. We feed it with our attention and our money. We applaud the excess and then complain about the hangover. The Romans did the same, right up until the barbarians arrived. The Victorians, at least, had the decency to reform. We prefer to gorge. Enjoy the matches. The inflation is just the price of admission.
