INSEAD GCC Leadership Series: Zaid Mosawy on Delivering the 2022 World Cup

Zaid Mosawy, an INSEAD 10D, joined us to discuss his experience as a key figure behind the delivery of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. 

We explore how his background in civil engineering, experience with the London Olympics, and INSEAD MBA positioned him to lead one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the region’s history. 

Zaid shares lessons from a decade of planning and executing the World Cup—from cultural diplomacy and labor reforms to navigating geopolitical crises and creating lasting legacy programs. 

We also look ahead to Saudi Arabia 2034 and discuss how mega-events can catalyze social, economic, and regional transformation.

Transcript

00:00:00 NICK LALL
Welcome to the INSEAD GCC Leadership Series, a new venture to come out of the INSEAD Emerging Markets Podcast. I'm your host, Nick Lall, as always. And I'm here today with Zaid Mosawy, who is not only a very accomplished guest, he is someone who has lived an extraordinary life. He's held pivotal roles at top organizations like Atkins, Booze & Company, and the Supreme Committee for Delivery at Legacy in Qatar, where he was instrumental in delivering the FIFA World Cup in 2022. I'm looking forward not only to learn from his experience, managing and building towards massive infrastructure and operational feats like the FIFA World Cup and London Olympics, but also into how hosting them can reshape cultures, economies, and entire regions. So I think before we get into all the exciting stories I'm sure you must have from launching the World Cup in Qatar and spending a whole decade on preparing for that, I'd love to learn more about who you were in your life before you got that opportunity and what had led up to it that made you the person to lead that. extraordinary undertaking.

00:00:59 ZAID MOSAWY
Well, great. Thanks very much for the intro, Nick. A great intro. I appreciate it. And thank you very much for inviting me onto this podcast. So yeah, my experience so far has been, as you said, quite diverse. I've done a number of different things and I always believe in a positive way of thinking. So if you think positively, good things happen. And I think... In Seattle's, probably MBAs, but definitely in Seattle's in general, we have this positive mental attitude and a belief that you can do things. And if you think about it, good things happen. So I've been very fortunate with having jobs that I love in my life from starting off as a chartered civil engineer, building my way through Atkins and working on the London Olympics to later deciding, OK, I want to. go and do the NBA INSEAD and as you know there's several steps to doing that it's not an easy journey but again if you believe in something and you really want something that you can make that happen in my case being British and British being What the British are, I only spoke one language, so I had to go to South America and learn Spanish in six months just to get into INSEAD. So it may be a bigger hurdle than most, but generally you see when people are accepted to INSEAD, there's a number of Americans or Australians or British people, you know, asking on the forums where I can learn a language in three to four months. And we've all experienced that. But again, it's just leafing yourself that has positivity. And good things happen and believing in yourself. And the World Cup's no different, really. I was on a golf course in London, just enjoying myself. Probably not playing great, but out the blue, I had a phone call from the Middle East. And somebody comes on the call and just says, hey, would you like to come for an interview for the World Cup in Qatar? And, you know, again, I didn't approach anybody. Somebody found me on LinkedIn. They liked my profile. And in particular, the best way to probably answer the question that you had is... why they found me or why they liked me. I went through a number of interviews with them when I was in Doha, but they asked me why I thought I was good for the job in the end. And, you know, I highlighted I'd become a chartered civil engineer. I'd been chartered within four years and worked on a number of different projects. They were building eight stadiums and they were developing their whole country's infrastructure from scratch. So having this civil engineering background was certainly something that they valued. Moving on to that, I then talked about the fact that I'd worked on the London Olympics. And as part of working on the London Olympics, I was there for five, six years. And again, I was dealing with multidisciplinary engineering teams, working on developing the Olympic Park, as it's called. And Atkins was in charge. of the north part and I was making sure that everybody was communicating with everyone. Engineers generally tend to put their heads down and focus on what's in front of them to do their designs and the communication with other teams tends to be quite different and difficult for them. I, on the other hand, like communicating and so I was put in a role to communicate with everybody and make sure that if somebody moved their stadium, everyone was aware of it because that would have implications with everything else that everyone else was doing. But certainly the Olympics had a big push because the Qataris really valued London 2012. They won the bid in 2010. They'd had a year to think things through. And at that time, London was the new benchmark. It was best practice. It was how to deliver a mega event. And so they were looking at people who were just coming off London or who was aware of how things were done in London. Then my INSEAD experience. They love the brand of INSEAD. They like people from INSEAD. And so, you know, I always say about INSEAD, there's three great things. One is the stuff that you learn, which... You know, it's probably the least important. Then there's the brand itself, which goes on your CV. And hopefully, you know, it worked for me. People found me on LinkedIn. And then finally, it's the people that you come across. And it's not only your own promotion, which are great and amazing people who have story after story. I mean, you guys doing this INSEAD Emerging Markets podcast, you've got thousands of people just in INSEAD to speak to have all got these unbelievable stories. So you've tapped into something quite unique, I think. And I'm sure you're going to have many, many interesting podcasts. has to come for sure but yeah from my side the the experience with insead and i'd worked for a top management consultancy firm booze in london and having that experience under my belt allowed me to go into the strategy team as part of the world cup in qatar with 10 years to go so it was quite a long period but it was an exciting period When I responded with that as my answer, they were still looking for more. So on top of that, I played England's choice football or soccer for you, Nick. So I had a really deep understanding of football itself. I'm from Manchester, Manchester United. you know some might say manchester city now but manchester united are the big brand of football and that's something that always excites me so to get an opportunity to come work on a football world cup in the middle east i'm half iraqi so there's a link there as well allowed so many different factors in my background to all come together which allowed it all to give me the best opportunity possible to work on such a unique and exciting project amazing yeah i definitely want to go into

00:05:54 NICK LALL
yeah i definitely want to go into how that experience was and why you decided to take it but i want to also go back to something that you said earlier which was the power positive thinking i think a lot of us from the mba background you know we try to be very analytical about everything and and maybe something like that might sound sort of woo -woo or whatever but as i've gotten older i've also definitely seen that your mindset really does shift your reality and what ends up happening is very correlated with the way that you approach the world and so i was curious if that's just an innate trait that you had that you're just always a pretty optimistic person or was it something that you cultivated over time you realized that you needed to

00:06:21 ZAID MOSAWY
correlated with

00:06:33 NICK LALL
think more positively and then that started impacting your life so yeah great question i think um everyone's different so some people just generally depends on their upbringing or depends on their natural personalities we've all done the entj you know your personality profiles etc and yeah people think in different ways and so some people have to actively try and be more positive and some people just are positive some people are a little bit

00:06:36 ZAID MOSAWY
yeah great question i think um everyone's different so some people just generally depends on their upbringing or depends on their natural personalities we've all done the entj you know your personality profiles etc and yeah people think in different ways and so some people have to actively try and be more positive and some people just are positive some people are a little bit too positive and they need to like sort of rein it in a little bit from time to time but from my own perspective I've generally always been a positive person I think that came through sport actually so circling back to sport in general it brings a lot of confidence with you I was thankfully naturally good at sport and in particular soccer as well and through that and have gained the confidence of working with people you know That brings a lot of confidence, which can then come in through into education and then later into your career as well. I think you see quite a few top sportsmen who are using those leadership skills that they've taken from the field, especially in team sports, and then bringing that through into their career at a later point. But from my side, working on something that you love and knowing when to change when you don't love it as much anymore. All of these things are important and you only live once at the end of the day. kind of like carpe diem seize the day and enjoy it yeah absolutely for me playing american football when i was younger it's still one of the experiences that i go back to whenever i think i'm going through something difficult and i remember overcoming the difficulties there it teaches you so much whether it's working with a team or just

00:07:55 NICK LALL
absolutely for me playing american football when i was younger it's still one of the experiences that i go back to whenever i think i'm going through something difficult and i remember overcoming the difficulties there it teaches you so much whether it's working with a team or just overcoming physical challenges, which are really mental challenges. And I think anything you do in your life after that just becomes easier when you do have that experience. Definitely. 100 % on board with that. Shifting over to your work in the World Cup, I know they recruited you 10 years before the actual event happened. I was wondering if you could talk about that whole process. I mean, probably when you joined, it was... Just an idea as a small group of people, and then it turned into a huge global event that really shifted a whole country's trajectory. So maybe just walking from the beginning until the event was actually hosted, I'd love to hear what it was to create something that large just from the small group that you started with.

00:08:48 ZAID MOSAWY
Yeah, I mean, it's a massive project. 13 years of my life to date and so i'll try and condense as much as i can for the purpose of this podcast but i mean literally from the interview i'll be honest with you going over to qatar it was already a really interesting country i mean the middle east is a really vibrant interesting place going there for me even though i'm Half Iraqi going there for the first time properly to consider living there and seeing the infrastructure that was already in place, the great hotels that they had in place, the new airport that was being developed, etc. It gave you a sense of, wow, something's really happening here. On top of that, they had something called the 2030 Vision, which is obviously still in play because we've got a few years to 2030 to go. But at that time, it just kind of been written and put together. And I really liked reading that. I read it as part of my brief.

00:09:15 NICK LALL
already in

00:09:38 ZAID MOSAWY
I thought to myself, why doesn't the UK have a 2030 vision? You know, and it might do, but it wasn't really obvious. And, you know, when you're looking at the Western democracy, it changes every four years. You get a different policy that comes into place. So it's really difficult to get a vision, maintain a vision and move towards it so that the citizens, the residents of that said country can feel part of that movement towards something in the long term. But Qatar put something down on paper, you know, to actually say this is the direction we want to go and the projects that we will be working on across all our ministries will be moving into those different pillars that they'd identified. So I found that quite... interesting having a strategic mindset myself and liking structure that they'd actually put that down and allowed you to understand ah that's why they've made this decision or oh that links to this particular goal rather than it just seeming uh you know what generally politics looks like which is a playground and everybody's sort of making random calls and you're not really too sure why so both the country itself and you know the the vision that it had and the aspirations and the fact that it had won the world cup itself really drove me to wanting to be part of this journey i was one of the first people to be hired after the bid so i joined a team of around about 70 people in 2012 by the time we got to 2022 we were over 4 000 so that team grew quite large so we're now back down to closer to around 300 people and so it's like a a huge startup, if you will. And we had 10 years to go through that startup and other people only have six years to go through that startup. But imagine your org structure constantly changing and fluctuating, different people being assigned different roles and responsibilities, having to understand whether somebody can actually do the role, but you don't have a year to assess them. You only have three or four months to assess them and then you either stick or you move on. There's lots of organizational change elements that come as part of these major events, whether it's the Olympics, whether it's the World Cup or other events in themselves as well, but working with major stakeholders in your country as well. Each World Cup is just really, really different. And, you know, each one will have different goals and responsibilities. And we worked the best we could to figure out what those goals were and work with our stakeholders to deliver that. I can go into a bit more detail if you want in terms of how the strategic thinking was, but there were so many different variables on that 10 -year or... 12 year journey that it now is that it's difficult to condense into one specific point but yeah it was great in terms of building up to something it was great in the fact that whenever i mentioned what my job was whoever i was speaking to you know it wasn't like i said i was a management consultant and then people switch off and yawn or it wasn't like i was uh you know attorney or something like when i mentioned i worked on the fifa world cup in qatar everyone leaned forward everybody had questions everybody was excited and that's another reason why i kind of loved my job i thought it was interesting but so other people did too definitely i think just following your curiosity and interest leads to good things a lot of times and also to your earlier point that's the reason i'm doing this podcast is kind of the reason i went to ncia and left the us just the

00:12:39 NICK LALL
too definitely i think just following your curiosity and interest leads to good things a lot of times and also to your earlier point that's the reason i'm doing this podcast is kind of the reason i went to ncia and left the us just the emerging market countries people are just much more optimistic they're concrete plans for the future whereas in the western world there's a lot of people fighting about politics and everything's changing every four years or i guess in the u .s at least it's four years and the uk may be a different timeline and and the middle east gcc countries i think embody that more than anywhere else where they really are building for the future and that is why it's such an exciting part of the world to be right now one thing that i am curious about is that There's also a lot of negative press in the West about that part of the world. I think when the World Cup in Qatar happened, there were stories that came out. Some of them may have been more true than others about different issues that were happening there in terms of the treatment of workers, etc. I was wondering how you dealt with those challenges presenting the World Cup to the rest of the world when there was that sort of negative impression of the region from the Western world.

00:13:46 ZAID MOSAWY
Yeah, I mean, so great question. And it's something that a lot of people spoke about. And it's more through communicating our side of the story than the media side. And I certainly... took on a different view of the media whilst I was working in Qatar. Again, these are my own personal views, but I found a lot of the stories seem to repeat themselves quite often. And I was wondering, why are these people writing these stories? And in the end, I just put it down to journalists getting paid to write stories at the end of the day. And so a lot of this press, which was built upon. Putting pressure on Qatar wasn't necessarily coming from the journalists themselves, but they were being lobbied to write stories about Qatar and themselves. But that's a sidetrack. I mean, when planning for a tournament, you really need to understand what your goals are. And part of that is your communication to you and how you're going to set up for that. And that's really key. For me, the way I think about it is that when the final whistle goes at the end of the World Cup, what are three to five things that people think about your tournament at the end of that? And having a... cool, clear strategy that links with higher authorities, whether it's a president or a royal family, and what their priorities were of what they want people to believe in. You know, all of that needs to come through 10 years of a long time working with people. But you need to be prepared for not only having these goals and these clear strategies and working towards them, but be aware that change or risk or different things are going to happen, which you may not have expected. When you're looking at the negative press from our side, we have negative press across a few different areas, but one of the main ones was workers' welfare, and that's the workers who are working to build the stadiums. We had negative press directly from the media, but we also had a lot of things said by specialised NGOs who work in this particular field. I was really fortunate to be part of this and see firsthand exactly what happened, but I work directly for the Secretary General, who's kind of like the CEO. of the world cup and he was representative and speaking to these different ngos on a regular basis and what started out as a negative story with the ngos which they do at all world cups they've been to south africa and they were lobbying for change there they were in russia lobbying for change there so it's it's not just that qatar was singled out it happens across all the different uh major tournaments that ngos see um having the spotlight puts on these countries as an opportunity to make positive change i think in a way a positive thing and we can talk about that a little later on on the podcast but you know we went from lots of negative things being said about us to by the end of it working as a partnership working with the ngos coming in and working alongside us on a day -by -day basis to improve workers conditions and everything from the whole life cycle of workers from when they are in their own country and how they get selected to come over to work overseas. That in itself is a toxic environment to making their way over, signing a contract, working in whichever country they may be working in to make sure that their living circumstances are as good as possible and the food and the housing is up to international best practice to finally when they're repatriating back home. You know, it's a full life cycle that we spent a lot of time and effort really understanding. and trying to improve across all the different areas. And by the end of it, the same people who in 2012 to 2015 were telling us, you know, it's a disgrace and there were so many issues with what's happening in Qatar. At the end of it, they were turning around saying Qatar's best practice. We ended up passing 11 new. labour laws in the country so it wasn't just something for the tournament but it's something that's dramatically changed the infrastructure and way Qatar's Ministry of Labour looks at workers welfare in the country and lots and lots of positive change working together. The main media story that came out of this was a particular British company, I think, a British newspaper. It's usually British media. They tend to be quite difficult in some cases. Again, my own personal view, it came up with a story that 6 ,000 people were going to die on this World Cup, which was far and away much higher than any other previous World Cup. And a lot of people had quoted that. And even by the time they came to the World Cup, they still had that number in their mind. And, you know, it was just a story that had been made up to generate. They'd taken all of the people who had been killed or who had died in Qatar over a period of a year from six different nations, and then extrapolated that over 12 years, regardless of whether they were working on the tournament or not, and said, okay, that's the number of people that have died on. the Qatar World Cup. We had six deaths, unfortunately, associated with the infrastructure build on the tunnel, which was far lower than a number of other mega events that had taken place. And we did research back all the way back to 2000 with Sydney. And I think it was only Sydney and London that had had less. So when you're building massive infrastructure projects, civil engineering as itself, they have a huge health and safety element and implications of that are because it's a dangerous, dangerous profession. Unfortunately, six people were unlucky to pass away on our tournament, but there was lots of positive change that can hopefully lead to positive outcomes for future people working in Qatar and in future host countries as well. Sure.

00:19:00 NICK LALL
I mean, it's probably not the only reason that you took the job, but I think that is really cool about these major events is that you can affect huge social change or cultural change. whether it's just in Qatar globally in terms of the way workers' welfare is handled for events or just in general in a lot of these countries where there are a lot of migrant workers, it always has been an issue. And if you bring a spotlight to it and are able to implement new best practices, I think that's a huge major impact that you can make on the world. That is really cool that you're able to be part of that. I was wondering if there are any other major... social or cultural shifts in Qatar that you think happened as a result of this World Cup? And just maybe you should just speak a little bit more to how these sort of events can shift a society and a culture in a country that hosts them.

00:19:42 NICK LALL
you should just speak a little bit more to how these sort of events can shift a society and a culture in a country that hosts them.

00:19:51 ZAID MOSAWY
Yeah, I mean, so I think sport in general has a huge opportunity, not even an opportunity. It's been doing it for years and years, thousands of years, really. improving the way that people live an example being sports diplomacy it's a term that's been used in the past but the olympics itself when it was on You know, thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, whenever the Olympics took place, whatever wars were happening or battles were happening at that time, got paused and people went and competed against each other and through that communicated with each other. And those communications brought a closeness and a camaraderie, which allowed people to understand each cultures, allowed people to understand people's different way of thinking. And that's not changed to this day. There's been other instances more recently of sports diplomacy. that happened north and south korea as part of their winter olympics back in the 70s i think there was ping pong diplomacy where the americans sent a team of ping pong players over to china to improve relationships there dennis rodman's been in north korea i think doing different things himself so again trying to make it i'm trying to americanize some of this but um It really shows. And what we noticed on the World Cup is this was the first time that the World Cup had been hosted in Qatar. We were the smallest tournament ever. We were awarded 10 years before the World Cup was supposed to take place for the first time. The first time it'd been moved to a November, December World Cup. And we had Arab teams reaching the semifinals. We had huge, huge, crazy games in the group stages where Saudi Arabia beat Argentina. So it was an opportunity where... came together and people got to experience not just Qatar but the Middle East as a whole and understand what that culture is and experience firsthand the quite a generous culture that the Middle East is you know it's quite a welcoming culture you come in and you're greeted with smiles you're greeted with good food and people want to really help you and be there for you and unfortunately again the media paints the Middle East in a very different way and so people have perceptions based on this but once you've been there and lived it, then you can really start to understand the culture a lot more. And we managed to do that as part of the World Cup. So a big social element was not just the local positive change from a cultural side of things, but it was the international change for people understanding the region better as a whole as well. And then we paved the way, obviously, for other events to take place in the future. And we can talk about Saudi 2034 later on, but even Morocco, they've won with Spain and Portugal. 2030 as well. So there is quite a positive shift that came from Qatar being the guinea pigs, if you will, to lead the way, to push the frontier, to take on all that criticism and bring out the positives because of it. And that's brought about a lot of positive change for the region. And hopefully we're looking forward to some really interesting tournaments coming up in the future with Morocco and Saudi as well. Some other changes that we mentioned as well, some other big things to talk about. I could talk about things all day, to be honest, so it depends how much time you have. Obviously, the skills and the capabilities in the country, they improve as well. So you go from a country that hadn't delivered anything on the scale before to now they've delivered a World Cup. So any mega event that comes along in the future, we've got people in the country that can deliver huge events. They built eight stadiums in eight, nine years. So we've got huge experience now in the construction market, making sure that the local skills got upgraded. and the local companies' skill sets have improved because of that. So there's a confidence that's just come with all of the work that's happened in Qatar as well for everybody being part of this. Everyone's just feeling happier with the infrastructure that was built here. So around $200 billion was spent on infrastructure that would have taken place anyway, such as the metro being developed, such as the airport being developed. But the World Cup Act had a catalyst here to make sure that things moved along faster so people got to experience. these mega projects finishing on time to high standards and being able to use them a little sooner. But I'd say the final thing which I really love, which moves us on to a slightly different topic, but I think you'll have stuff to talk about here, was in relation to when we... Started talking to the UN a little bit about sport again, and it's about sport making a difference, and I'm going to keep coming back to that, whether it's the Olympics, the World Cup, or even just, you know, a regular paddle game or whatever you want to do. But we spoke with the UN in respect to their refugee program, and we were quite keen on the fact that obviously they do great work. They have different pillars, and shelter's a pillar, food's a pillar, water's a pillar, you know, and so they're always around to make sure. that things are done the right way so when we were looking at issues in syria and if these in afghanistan in the region there's quite a lot a lot of refugees that were flowing out of these countries because of these issues and we were lobbying in a way or having a conversation with the un about them including sport as part of you know one of their pillars that they need to include um health is obviously another one because you found that these refugee camps they had the shelter they had the food they had the drink but they were in them for some time and there was no way for people to enjoy themselves in any way or to you know do activity that brings people together so we asked that we could go and build some football pitches in some of the refugee camps that had been set up which then obviously had the additional benefits that come with doing exercise and playing soccer in these sorts of environments so I think that They saw the positives of that. They never actually came to being included as a distinct pillar itself, but there was something really positive from that. We ended up building a program called Generation Amazing, which was from the bid, which went around building football pitches around the world in deprived communities, which not only did they build football pitch, but then you train the local. talent and leaders to then give you know football sessions so that they can focus on a slightly different career and bring the community together which might normally be bored and turn to crime of some sorts but instead their community is built around a football pitch instead so lots of side stories that we were working on during this 10 year period but there's a lot of positive things that can be done from such a unique experience I'm sure and it's really cool that you're part of that as well I mean

00:26:10 NICK LALL
and it's really cool that you're part of that as well I mean We talked about the benefits of sport already, but being able to give people an outlet, it's great for their mental health, it's great for building their communities. And especially if you're bringing high profile people that always just, whether or not the actual content of what the person says, I think it all just means a lot to people from whatever community they're from to have someone like that come in and show that they care. So that is really cool that you were able to do that. You mentioned briefly that this also... kind of led the groundwork for places like morocco or saudi arabia i was wondering if you have any predictions for given what's happened in qatar how do you think the 2034 world cup will impact society culture and saudi going forward so super cool question obviously saudi have only just been confirmed as the 2034 hosts and also to be honest the spain portugal and morocco i mean just briefly talking about that before we move on to saudi we assessed

00:26:54 ZAID MOSAWY
super cool question obviously saudi have only just been confirmed as the 2034 hosts and also to be honest the spain portugal and morocco i mean just briefly talking about that before we move on to saudi we assessed the morocco bid when it was up against the united bid so morocco was the only bidder to go up against the united states canada and and morocco and two very different bits and we got the opportunity to look at both documents because people were being more transparent with the work that they were doing. And I think it was the fifth time Morocco had bid. So it's a massive footballing nation that were really keen on hosting this tournament. And the main thing stood out that, you know, the infrastructure just wasn't quite there yet. But one of our recommendations that came from the review and we went and spoke with the team in charge of the Morocco bid was that, you know, potentially they could team up with Spain and Portugal because then you get the European bids as part of the FIFA decision making because you get bids from different confederations and you have to pick up the votes from different... confederation so you get the african vote you get the european vote and being able to combine morocco with portugal i think it's going to be a really really exciting world cup each world cup's really really different and it's up to the organizers to understand what's important to them but like i said for morocco in itself i can't wait to see how that turns out that for saudi arabia some people might think oh it's quite similar to catar's i mean we've certainly started things off but i hope that saudi arabia can take things on as well. They've started really strongly. The country's clearly opening up in general. They've established the Saudi Premier League. So that's something that's a huge investment from their side. They've also gone big on women's football. So they're starting to develop women's football in Saudi Arabia already. And that's 10 years to go. So I'm really excited to see where that gets to in 10 years' time, to see how things change from where we are now to, again, through sport, social change coming, which, you know, it doesn't have to be... pushed on people, but it's just naturally absorbed through sport. I set up a community football league in Qatar. There wasn't a grassroots league in Qatar at the time. And it started off with independent teams like a team from morocco playing a team against um scotland a team against spain and these were just residents who were living there by the end of the third year you had spanish people playing with scottish people playing with you know uh people from africa playing with everyone it was the better players playing with the better players and the worst players with and which is is what it should be and what started off as quite a segregated communities league so separate communities we became one community league and i think that saudi arabia certainly on the football side they're a huge footballing nation and a much bigger population than qatar so i think there's a big opportunity for social change through football and sport They've already been lobbied already about their workers' welfare, exactly as Qatar was doing. And, you know, people talk about sports washing when it comes to Saudi Arabia as well. I really don't like that term because at the end of the day, if the US does it or if the UK does it, it's fine. But for some reason, if an emerging country is doing something which is breaking the natural trend, then it's looked down on. Whereas actually, if you bid for a World Cup or if you bid for an Olympics, you're putting the spotlight on yourselves. So you're doing kind of the opposite of what these people are saying is happening. And you're ready for that and you're ready for change and you're ready to move along. And I'm sure that the Saudis will work together with the different NGOs just as we did and make the relevant changes as required. And I think all I can see is positivity from that happening as well. Finally, just in terms of the tournament, it's going to be a biggest tournament because there's 48 teams now in the next three versions of the World Cup. So a lot more people come into the region again to understand the region once again. If you've had a look at the stadiums online for Saudi Arabia, they just look insane. They look like they're from the future, like one's 250 metres in the air or something like that in one of the structures. Just really exciting, again, project to come from. And even comes from your question, Nick. I mean, you've got the United World Cup that's happening in two years' time. You've not mentioned that. You've got Morocco and Spain and Portugal. And that's kind of OK, but not really that bothered. But people are already talking about the Saudi bid and what that impact can have. And that's why I think it's really positive that... We look on these chances as opportunities for people to understand each other and change a region, if you will. For everyone to understand each other, basically, that little bit more.

00:31:34 NICK LALL
Yeah, absolutely. I think it definitely gives people the opportunity to do that, putting the country in the spotlight. Whether it's through the media or all the people who visit, it just allows the country to be a new place and it also puts it in a new... way of understanding it for the rest of the world I guess getting to the event itself I'm sure that must have not been easy I was wondering if you have any stories about challenges or different unexpected things that might have happened that you had to overcome when you were actually hosting the event there in Qatar yeah I mean so it's a world cup so lots of cool things are happening all the time I mean

00:32:03 ZAID MOSAWY
I mean so it's a world cup so lots of cool things are happening all the time I mean Just on the build up to the World Cup itself, by the time that the start of the World Cup happened and the tournament was starting, I was expecting aliens to land and, you know, take over the world, you know, because we pretty much had everything else that could possibly happen. You know, we had this 10 year lead up in terms of, you know, initially when we got awarded the bid, there was lots of negative media criticism and we could have been better pushing out more positive stories. But, you know, we were dealing and firefighting with that. Then shortly after that, we had a blockade on Qatar. So, you know, some of the neighboring countries stopped imports and exports. That made it really difficult in terms of logistics for building the stadiums and also keeping things on track. Then, you know, our favorite topic, which comes along, which is COVID, you know, what? And fortunately, it was just long enough after COVID that it didn't impact our World Cup. You know, I'm really sorry on Tokyo's... um olympics which they put a lot of effort into and they had to postpone it and eventually when they held it you know not many people could travel to visit the actual event itself but you you're impacted by that as well and you can think 10 years beforehand about you know what issues are going to be in the region and you would have never picked out you know you know some of these things from scratch in terms of the tournament itself you need to be ready for lots of change as well we we did numerous test events and you can get ready as much as you possibly can through the test event but nevertheless things still happen on the day so a couple of cool stories just on my side i was in charge of the guest management for secretary general he had around about 400 guests coming over the period who were all Quite interesting and diverse people, some CEOs in finance in different areas, VCs, PE, funds, etc. Other people, celebrities, other people, just friends of his. So a real combination of different cool people who were coming across the tournament. The one cool story that comes to mind is that after the initial game, which was held the day before, the first game was England versus Iran. And I just had this premonition beforehand that I hadn't received any tickets yet. And I had maybe 30 guests that were going to be going to this game in particular. And sure enough, I woke up in the morning and, you know, we're supposed to have apps for these sorts of things. And, you know, it was all on the FIFA system. Everything was supposed to be fine. But sure enough, on the day, the system had gone down and FIFA were fighting with this. We arrived at the stadium. two hours before and i'm on the bus with my guests on the way there so you have these coaches and different coaches all arriving at the same time to different entrances and i just remember looking at my guys and just said guys we need to walk quickly to the entrance because we need to be first because there aren't any tickets yet and you know they've been asking me can they hold their ticket clearly they want to hold their own ticket i'm like don't worry we'll have it all under control And sure enough, it gets to the gate and they just said, sorry, there's a problem at the moment. Only the guests can come through. And my guests were the guests of the secretary general. At that point, I pulled rank on the FIFA team who were in front of me. I explained that. We're the host nation. We've done all the work to do this event. Yeah. And you're not going to stop our guests from entering. And I ushered my guests through the gates without any tickets. I picked up a block of blank tickets, which they were getting ready to hand out and got my guys through into hospitality, which was a cool story in itself. And then as I'm leaving and I've got my guests through, one of my friends starts shouting at me and across the stadium, he sees me and he's in a different part. And I sort of... jog over to him and he's in charge of David Beckham's party so his team and he said we've not got tickets we can't get in with them so David Beckham and his entourage can't get in to the stadium to watch an England game yeah yeah so as you can imagine all sorts of chaos so I had to run back to where I picked up the stack of the blank tickets at which point there's a melee going on everybody's fighting over you know these initial tickets to try and get theirs I've snuck in I've played my importance card, grabbed some tickets, came out, ran across, give my friend the ticket so that David Beckham and his team can get in on time to watch the start of the game. So that's just these sort of things come up from time to time. Obviously, that was only the first day after that it was fixed. But there was some sort of glitch in the system, which you just have to be aware of. And then again, with respect to tickets on the final, it's three hours before kickoff. And, you know. there's vips changing on different lists all the time i've got a list of about 50 people that i've managed to get into one place i've given their tickets i'm getting them ready to get on the bus and then out of nowhere a vvip turns up he's actually an important person in America. And they just said, where are tickets? We need two, not just VIP, but there's a VVIP level, which is, you know, like that's the crème de la crème. So we need two of those. We need two VIP. We need four passes for our security guards. We need XYZ123. So, you know, I'm speaking with my team that are in the background saying, you know, where did these people come from? You know, what's the list? And, you know, everyone starts scrambling so the next thing i'm calming the the guests down because they've flown in from the us just to watch this game and they're saying you know what are we going to do watch it on television in the hotel just like guys you are my priority you know you are going to be my number one i'm going to look after you i get the other 50 guys on the bus and they're all off i then managed to get tickets printed from two different printing places in Qatar for the guests. And then I'm still two tickets short and I had to give them my category one tickets, which I had for my mother and my wife to the guests so that they could enter as well. But I was in the car with these VVIPs and they saw me going from one building to another building, running in, getting tickets. And they actually said that it was probably a cooler experience that they've ever seen because instead of just being the tickets and driving in, being part of seeing the background of how the tickets were gotten. And then even just seeing the final itself and being there for that. At the end of the day, it was a really positive experience. And apparently if I ever need anything in Miami in the future, I can just give somebody a call and I'll be treated nicely. So yeah, I've got that card to use in the future as well. But yeah, just the tournament itself, for us, it was 28 days. For others, it'll be 34 days. Maybe with the 48 -team tournament, it may even be longer. But that experience every day, going out, going game to game. I mean, maybe we'll talk about the compact nature of our World Cup versus other tournaments later. But I just thought it was a crazy experience and one that everybody should be a part of and enjoy, really.

00:38:57 NICK LALL
Definitely. All those stories clearly show your... positive leadership traits, whether it's planning for the event in the future, in the moment when things actually need to get done, having that optimistic, getting things done nature clearly has served you very well in life. And to your last point, yeah, I would love to talk more about the compact nature of Qatar and how that may have differentiated it from other World Cups that were either in much larger countries or... spread across different countries what were the benefits of that how do you see that affecting world cubs going forward in the future what do you think the sporting world has learned from having to vent in a compact country like that

00:39:33 ZAID MOSAWY
Yeah. So, I mean, it was one of our things that we highlighted from the start. I mean, ours was the smallest World Cup on record since 2030 when it was hosted in Uruguay. You know, our tournament to get to any stadium was just a car ride away. So we talk about sustainability these days, which we've not even touched on really here. You know, there were no internal flights for games. People came on the day. They stayed in one hotel. And from a fan perspective, you know, they could stay in one hotel. They can go from... One game, if they fancy going to another game a few hours later and they can get tickets, they can go to another game. All the stadiums were full all of the time because you've got what FIFA called a football playground of, you know, people being able to just get to wherever they need to within an hour of going from one stadium to the other stadium, whether it's by taxi or by coach or by metro. And it was a really sustainable way to do a World Cup. I mean, the United... It is very, very different. It's spread over Canada, the US and Mexico. Very, very different. There's lots of positives associated with that. But the flights between all of these different places certainly create a problem from a sustainable perspective, which is one of the negatives about such a tournament being held in that way. But also it makes it difficult for fans to move around and the cost elements associated with that. One of the intricacies, which people don't really notice, but we notice for other World Cups as well, is that... Depending on where you finish in your group, it dictates what city you're going to next. So if you come top, you go to City A, which is over on the East Coast. If you come second, you're on City Y, which is in Mexico. And you can't buy both sets of tickets and both sets of accommodation and be ready for all of that. So our World Cup meant that you didn't have to think that far ahead and it wasn't incurring all of these additional costs on the fans. And no matter where you came, you had a plan and you could think things through. Now, that was just the fans themselves. The players finished the game. Within one hour, they're back in the hotel. They're in the sauna. They're relaxing. Their legs are freshening up. So whereas normally, most of the World Cups, they have to fly back to wherever they're going. They're on these tight seats on the plane. They don't have a real chance to properly relax their legs. And this showed in the stats as part of the World Cup itself. I mean, we had the most goals ever in a tournament. So we had 172 goals in our crazy tournament, which at the end of the day, I mean, Again, it's America. So you guys are thinking when it comes to basketball, 172 points, you know, that's what we get in a game. You know, why do I need 172 goals across the tournament? But, you know, it's just crazy, crazy amounts of goals because people could recover a lot faster and they weren't having to fly from place to place as well. They were relaxed. They could be with their families. And again, it's a month period for them as well. So that all culminated in the final where... I mean, voted best final of all time. Gianni Infantino told us it was the best group stage of all time. Then he told us it was the best World Cup of all time. And then finally, there was like votes after votes of people saying which was the best World Cup of all time. And Qatar's coming out top across the world. So it was an amazing way to finish the tournament that you'd worked for. And that's something that you can't plan. You know, you can put everything in place to allow that to happen. But when something like that happens, again, positive thinking, you know, hopefully comes with positive. positive endings as well. And that certainly shone through. I myself, again, a quick side story, probably shouldn't mention it. Friends have told me not to mention this before, but you know, it got to the extra time for the World Cup. And I'd arranged a restaurant for my boss's guests to be at. And when it went to a time, they were calling me up. They were going to release the table. They were going to do X and Y. So when the goal went in and they went to 3 -2 to Argentina, the next time I thought, OK, that's it. So I left the stadium because I had to go and prepare for my boss and make sure the restaurant was all fixed and they weren't going to take our table away. At which point, you know. The rest is history. And I miss probably one of the most nail -biting finals ever. But c 'est la vie. The rest of it was very, very good. I did go to see some good games.

00:43:38 NICK LALL
Sure. I mean, it shows your commitment to success no matter what. It absolutely was one of the best World Cubs ever. So whether it was the compact nature or positive thinking or whatever else, it worked out really well. And that is a really good point with fans in mind, with sustainability in mind, with players in mind. We have the college football playoff for the first time in the U .S. happening right now. And I've heard people talking, if my team wins, then I have to spend thousands of dollars. But just because you don't know, I might have to fly somewhere and get hotels and everything at the last minute. And so you are in a much more compact country. You don't have to deal with all of that. I think just... As we wrap up here, I have maybe a couple more questions. One would be, are there any other lessons you think the sporting event industry in general has taken away from the Qatar World Cup? And how do you see them impacting the future of the industry? So the industry is at whole.

00:44:29 ZAID MOSAWY
the industry is at whole. The sport has been changing massively over the last 10, 15 years. Sponsorship rights, marketing rights have been going through the roof. Team valuations have been going through the roof. A lot more people are getting involved in being owned. owners of the different teams as well. New sports have been arriving. You know, Paddle is, you know, or what do you guys have something called? Pickleball. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got Paddle over here and, you know, these sorts of different sports events are popping up and people are trying different ways to see how you can change. sport as a general to generate revenues because at the end of the day people love watching sport if you watch drive to survive the background stories of you know these sports what's happening in the background people are really excited about as well and there's just so many mediums i think that for the longest time no one's really touched upon and now through both entertainment and sport it's coming together as one so that it's something that people play and enjoy and go to see also then it becomes an entertainment package which is being built out across many different levels one for the enjoyment of the fan but also commercialization is driving a lot of this when it comes to mega events such as the world cup and the the olympics the olympics is pushing a lot more for a sustainable olympics so i know that la has done an amazing job they're making sure that they don't build anything for their la olympics and they're going to try and make it the most sustainable ever which is great and i know that for fifa they're pushing again Each of the different bids are for different reasons. So for the US, Canada and Mexico, less than Mexico, it's about... pushing the sport out to other untapped markets so that more and more people play. That'll link into the MLS. Having Messi in the MLS is obviously driving more people to attend and watch, and women's football as well. You guys have been the world champions for so many years as well, and that's just starting to catch on across the globe. So in the last two, three years, women's soccer has been growing immensely as well. So there's a lot of change happening in sport. Being part of that ecosystem is a really exciting place to be. Being somebody that enjoys sport as well, it's just a sweet spot and a lovely way for your career to be headed, even though sometimes you don't plan these things. They just happen that way.

00:46:56 ZAID MOSAWY
Yeah, so I think that's probably it for now from my side. But I'd say that the Middle East, they'll continue to keep developing. They've seen the positivity that came from Qatar. even against all the odds and all the naysayers and all of the media such a positive story that came away from it there was a positive economic impact there's a positive social impact a human impact and even from an environmental side of things lots of positive things were done in relation to the tournament which reflects well on the region and just hoping that other emerging countries are given the same opportunity and it doesn't just go to first world countries that show an event you know everyone turns up watches it and then everyone goes home and there's no real strong legacy that comes from that afterwards amazing super fascinating discussion and i think that you probably changed a lot of people's minds gave people new perspectives that they may not have heard before and really enjoyed talking to you so thank you so much for your time zai my pleasure and i'd say just just from my side signing off if you've not been to uh

00:47:43 NICK LALL
super fascinating discussion and i think that you probably changed a lot of people's minds gave people new perspectives that they may not have heard before and really enjoyed talking to you so thank you so much for your time zai my

00:47:54 ZAID MOSAWY
pleasure and i'd say just just from my side signing off if you've not been to uh world cup before get yourself an opportunity to go along and if it's not a world cup you know go along to something that excites you because getting that buzz that comes from these experiences are special times and something that you'll always remember um certainly our guests remembered being able to go to four games in one day you know the buzz and the excitement of not knowing where to go, what to do. It's a unique opportunity and I'm looking forward to seeing what the United World Cup looks like, seeing what happens in Morocco and Spain and Portugal and really excited to see what's happening in Saudi and how they move forward. And maybe we can have another talk in 10 years and see whether this podcast could lead into us predicting how things would go in Saudi in 2034. Or I'll just see you guys in 2034 and we can go and watch the games together.

00:48:50 NICK LALL
that sounds like a better plan i'm looking forward all right thanks so much talk to you soon

00:48:56 NICK LALL
thanks so much talk to you soon