A conceptualisation of recent changes in Sport Mega Events Host Selection: from the Renewed Policy to Prosumerism, with special focus on Qatar 2022

In this article, Qatar’s hosting of the FIFA Men’s football World Cup (2022WC) is not seen as a historical anomaly but as epitomising several wider trends associated with recent Sport Mega Events (SMEs) policy, as recent decades have seen several World Cups and Olympic Games hosted in ‘non-traditional’ host nations outside what has been defined as the Global North (e.g. Mignolo). The main text comprises three sections, of which the first situates Qatar and the 2022WC within the Renewed Policy of Sport Mega Events Allocation, and the second does likewise concerning the difficulties faced by SMEs in the 2010s and SME policy’s subsequent turn towards prosumerism. Finally, the third section identifies specific challenges faced by the Qatar 2022WC regarding these broader SMEs policy shifts and draws further upon the concept of the Global East.