Hello welcome and thanks for downloading the More or Less podcast with me Paul Cumbly.

Here with your weekly guide to the numbers in the news.

Now most of you will know that the football world cup in Qatar is finally upon us.

In the build up there has been lots of coverage of all field issues including the human cost

of migrant worker deaths during the pre-tornement construction boom in the Gulf states and in fact

we've had a non football question from our loyal listener Sam Tuniklif.

Dear More or Less I came across this figure for the cost of the Qatar World Cup on a reputable

internet forum but the value of $220 billion is just unbelievable.

I know Qatar is hot and energy prices have shot up but air conditioning surely doesn't

cost that much.

Could you please investigate?

Many thanks your loyal listener.

An excellent question Sam and to add a little context the most expensive world cups previous

to this one were the 2014 tournament in Brazil and the 2018 competition in Russia which

analysts estimate came in at around 27 billion US dollars combined.

So yes the figure in question is colossal in comparison.

In not going down to find the answer to this one we discovered that pinpointing an exact

figure for Qatar is well it's less than straightforward.

In February of 2017 then finance minister Ali El-Ahmadi announced the Gulf state plan to

spend almost $500 million a week in the years leading up to the tournament so roughly by

our calculations that's a hundred billion plus.

But to date neither Qatar officials nor football's governing body FIFA have confirmed how

...