Glance around the arenas being used for this European Championship and you would be forgiven for thinking it was 2022 all over again.

The dugouts at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, the biggest venue being used in Germany, proclaim ‘Qatar Airways’ on a board placed underneath the coaches’ seats. Perimeter advertising does the same. And take a stroll through the fan parks in Berlin and Munich and you could well stumble across a ‘Doha Club’, which — according to Visit Qatar, the tourism body that set them up — gives fans the chance to visit a “modern beach club” in the heart of the city. Qatar Airways is UEFA’s official carrier for Euro 2024.

It is approaching two years since Qatar hosted the World Cup but the Gulf state has not given up on football. The above is simply what is visible in Germany itself: in a separate deal, United Kingdom broadcaster ITV has promoted Visit Qatar as a first point in its advertising breaks, giving the country more coverage.

Yet only last summer, Germany’s biggest club Bayern Munich ended a five-year association with Qatar Airways after it drew criticism for benefiting financially from a country that has criminalised the LGBTQ+ community and has long been criticised for mistreatment of migrant workers.

Public outcry about human rights violations in Qatar also dominated the build-up to the World Cup and were augmented during the competition, most visibly by Germany, whose players covered their mouths when they were photographed before the team’s opening group game with Japan in protest against FIFA’s banning of the “One Love” armband.

In that context, the optics of Germany’s most famous football stadiums being plastered with Qatari advertising are potentially uncomfortable for the hosts and the Qataris.

The drive to attract visitors to Qatar — ideally on its flag carrier fleet — is stitched into a colossal infrastructure project at Hamad International Airport in Doha, which is in the process of having a new terminal and two new runways built, under a blueprint that was revealed in 2019.

Two years ago, Saudi Arabia announced plans to build the biggest airport in the world in its capital city of Riyadh at a cost of $29billion (£22.9bn) by 2030, four years before the country is expected to host the men’s World Cup. Inside five months of its launch as a business in March 2023, Riyadh Air — owned by the same Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia that is in control of Premier League club Newcastle United — was announced as the official shirt sponsor of Atletico Madrid in a deal worth €40million (£33.8m; $42.7m) a year.

Qatar sponsorship adorns Berlin’s Olympic Stadium (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)

Not to be outdone, Dubai — which has, for the last decade, boasted the world’s busiest airport for international travel — responded in April by announcing plans a $35billion plan to double its airport’s size through a new terminal that will have the world’s largest capacity, according to ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

“The importance of the development in Doha has increased since moves made by other nations in the region,” says Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy based in Paris, who suggests the race to take control of the skies above the Middle East helps explain why Qatar Airways was announced as UEFA’s official carrier for this summer’s Euros.

Not that UEFA seemed especially keen for people to know about the contract. The partnership was announced just seven hours before the start of the tournament this month, and you have to search hard to find evidence of it on the website of European football’s governing body. 

Though the emblem of Visit Qatar features as a hyperlink amid a list of 13 global partners, a statement about the latest progress in the relationship has not been posted by the competition’s organiser since last Friday.

This was unlike the publicity before Euro 2020. Then, four months before a ball was even kicked, UEFA announced on its website it was not only “proud” but “delighted” to reveal Qatar Airways as a sponsor.

UEFA said the “partnership is a de-facto extension and renewal” from a deal that was initially brokered four years ago, and was “announced by simply activating the sponsorship inventory, now with the Visit Qatar brand”, which became visible for the first time in the summer of 2023 at the Nations League finals.

Qatar Airways made more noise about the tie-up on its website where, on a devoted page, it suggested the continuation was an example of its commitment to “bring thousands of fans to Germany for this prestigious event” before the company’s expansion into Hamburg next month, which will be added as a destination in its operations.

According to Chadwick, Qatar needs to continue convincing the rest of the world that it is a legitimate member of a global community.

Nick McGeehan, previously a Gulf researcher with Human Rights Watch, describes Qatar’s investment in football as a “nation branding exercise”. He suggests Qatar Airways has learned from its competitor, Emirates, which sponsors Real Madrid, AC Milan, Arsenal and Benfica.

“The Qataris know the sponsorship model works,” he said. “It’s a very effective way of putting yourself in the spotlight in a positive way, without the scrutiny actually hosting a tournament brings.”

Since the World Cup, Qatar has been relatively low key in its interactions with football, certainly by comparison to neighbours Saudi Arabia, which relaunched its domestic competition — the Saudi Pro League — with a surge of high-profile recruits from some of the biggest clubs in Europe.

Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo, Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino and Jordan Henderson were all part of the first wave of arrivals that alerted a previously forgotten competition to a new audience. Things have not run entirely smoothly since then, with criticism of the competition’s attendance figures, infrastructure and playing standards, but nobody is disputing its ambition.

Cristiano Ronaldo is the highest-profile import to the Saudi Premier League (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)

Qatar lost all three matches at the World Cup it hosted, scoring one goal. Yet it won the Asian Cup this year, when it again acted as hosts, and its ambitions have not been blunted. 

Qatar has more influence over European football than Saudi Arabia due to Paris Saint Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi’s position as chairman of Qatar Sports Investments and the European Club Association (ECA). He also sits on UEFA’s ExCo committee.

Yet it is Chadwick’s assessment that hosting events is more important to Qatar than the actual influence over football, mainly due to its relatively small population of three million, only 10 per cent of whom are Qataris. Saudi Arabia’s connection to football, meanwhile, runs much deeper on a cultural level, with a broader base of its 40million population interested in the game.

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“The World Cup was always intended to be a driver of national development,” Chadwick says. “Qatar now has a fantastic airport, highways, shopping malls, and lots of hotels because of the World Cup. It has now locked itself into a long-term strategy to bid for events to use the structure it has created, positioning itself as an event host.”

The next obvious target is the Olympics. Qatar has failed in bids to host the 2016 and 2020 Summer Games, but it now believes it is better placed to compete for future editions. In May, it launched its bid to host in 2036.

Doha failed in its bid to host the 2016 Olympics (AFP via Getty Images)

When Nasser Al Khori, the director of Qatar’s supreme committee who is in charge of the country’s World Cup’s legacy, was asked by The Athletic in February about the possibility of the Olympics coming to the country, he suggested, “There are many more in the pipeline we are looking to host as well.” 

Aside from the Asian Cup, Qatar hosted Web Summit — one of the world’s biggest tech conferences — this year. It is the first time the conference had been held in the Middle East. It already has involvement in Formula One and it plans to get closer to basketball and martial arts, as well as rugby. “The World Cup is just a milestone,” Al Khori insisted.

Given Qatar Airways’ contract with UEFA and its men’s competitions runs to 2030, it will be interesting to see how its regional rivals react when Qatar’s branding appears at the English grounds of Abu Dhabi (Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium) and Saudi Arabian (Newcastle’s St James’ Park) owners when the United Kingdom and Ireland hosts the European Championship in 2028.

Either way, the weaponisation of football for political ends by the Gulf’s superpowers shows no sign of slowing down. 

Additional reporting: Adam Leventhal

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)