Morocco makes 2030 World Cup a focus for investment

By Alice Morrison

August 25, 2024

economic benefits Morocco World Cup, Morocco economy — An architectural impression of Morocco's new stadium. The country hopes the World Cup will boost investment and tourism

Building largest stadium in world
$1.2bn economic impact aim
Target of 26m tourists

The artist’s impression shows a massive polygonal structure, with an aluminium lattice roof draped in floating cream sheets.

This is the Grand Stade Hassan II de Casablanca at Benslimane, north of Morocco’s commercial capital.

The successful design was unveiled earlier this week by the winning architects, the Casablanca-based Oualalou + Choi and the arena specialist Populous, which has offices in Kansas City, London and Brisbane.

Populous is also designing stadia in Saudi Arabia.

Newsletter
Get the Best of AGBI delivered straight to your inbox every week

When complete, the Benslimane arena should be the largest stadium in the world with a capacity of more than 115,000 spectators. It will have cost an estimated MAD5 billion ($520 million).

Since Morocco won a three-way bid with Spain and Portugal to host part of the soccer World Cup in 2030, it has announced an investment package valued at MAD42 billion ($4.4 billion), according to Zaid Belbagi of Hardcastle Advisory in London, who has advised the Moroccan government.

The hope is that hosting the Cup will deliver a $1.2 billion economic uplift, primarily driven by increased tourism and infrastructure development, to the country of nearly 38 million people.

As well as building the Grande Stade, Morocco will upgrade six other football stadiums at a total cost of around MAD20.5 billion ($2.1 billion).

This is a fraction of the $200 billion which Qatar devoted to its World Cup, but at $152 billion, Morocco’s GDP is less than two thirds that of its predecessor as an Arab host. The North African country is also sharing the tournament with Spain and Portugal.

In committing to the Grand Stade Morocco’s eyes are firmly on the ultimate prize of hosting the World Cup final in 2030. In Qatar 2022, 1.5 billion people watched the decider between Argentina and France at the Lusail stadium outside Doha. Argentina won that one, but Morocco had reached the semi-finals.

To deliver economic benefits, Morocco is planning a tourism bonanza on the back of the Cup. Qatar received around 1.4 million international tourists during the 2022 tournament. Last year Morocco attracted 10 times that number and is aiming for 15 million this year.

Moving towards 2030, Morocco intends to increase its hotel capacity by up to 150,000 new beds and to attract 26 million tourists. It also wants to increase non-European visitors.

But do the figures add up? In April last year the International Monetary Fund (IMF) extended a two-year assistance programme via a flexible credit line of $5 billion, requiring Moroccan policy makers to implement structural reforms.

The IMF referred to Morocco's "very strong fundamentals", but noted that this was the fifth package rolled over since 2011.

Subsequently the IMF approved a $1.3 billion 18-month loan to bolster Morocco's defence against climate-related disasters.

According to calculations by Casablanca brokerage Valoris Securities, each match should bring in around $25 million to $37.5 million. Morocco as a whole will enjoy a windfall of $1.2 billion into its economy directly through the tournament.

Moreover research by Anasse Bari, a professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, found that during the last World Cup in Qatar Morocco created "a compelling narrative for itself that captured global attention".

Online searches on non-sports topics related to Morocco increased five-fold, Bari found.

Oulalou + Choi — Green spaces and gardens will be created in the area surrounding the stadium

“Hosting the World Cup in Morocco would lead to significant financial and economic gains, primarily through a major increase in tourism,” Bari says.

Others are less sanguine. When Morocco won the bid François Conradie, political economist with Oxford Economics Africa, expressed concern over Morocco’s government finances, pointing to gross debt at 91 percent of GDP in 2022.

Conradie says that debt-fuelled spending will at some point necessitate austerity measures that will batter household demand, "which is already just barely holding up".

“We fear that, as a number of host countries to major events have found, the party in the form of the influx of tourist spending will not make the long-term debt hangover worth it,” Conradie says.

Morocco is aiming to avoid that by increasing the private investment share from its current one third to two thirds, by adopting more business-friendly reforms.

Anas Guennoun, managing partner of West Capital Partners, says that Morocco's macro-economic key performance indicators, such as public debt, inflation and budget deficit are under control while foreign exchange reserves are solid.

He points to the performance of the Moroccan dirham, which he said has remained relatively stable against the euro and the US dollar for over three decades.

Get in early, Guennoun argues: “Currently, the entry cost in the market for foreign investors is still relatively affordable. But it is expected to increase significantly in the coming years given the development and growth prospects.”