Qatar has spent €220bn on the World Cup (that’s around 110 times the cost to NASA of sending the Artemis rocket to the moon).
Qatar has provided all-expenses trips for 1,600 social media influencers, and is paying football fans to attend the tournament. In return these fans must gush about the event and the host country, ‘like’ and re-share third-party posts about the World Cup and use the hashtags #IAMAFAN and #Roadto2022. Meanwhile Qatar’s Supreme Committee will monitor their posts and can demand that they delete content unsympathetic to Qatar.
Not just footballers, now even football fans can be bought. For the rich in capitalism, everything and everybody is for sale.