FIBA Basketball World Cup 2027 in Qatar, is it viable in the face of the Israel-Iran war?

Aftermath of an Israeli strike on Tehran, Iran.

The next FIBA basketball World Cup is set to take place in Qatar from 27th August to 12th September in 2027.

With the tournament 17 months away, many people in the basketball world are concerned about the safety of Qatar if the ongoing Israel-Iran war does not reach a meaningful de-scalation before the tournament starts.

Safety

The conflict has already affected the qualifying stage of the tournament, the Indian national team played Qatar in their home stadium in Doha on the 27th February. Due to a rapid rise in geopolitical tensions in the middle east, all of Qatar's airports shut down due to dangers of missiles in the airspace. The team were stuck in the country for ten days before they were able to secure travel to Saudi Arabia by road where they were able to catch a flight home.

Following these events, FIBA announced it would be postponing all of the qualifiers in the Asian region for March and moving them to June as a 'respect to safety' (Iran vs Syria, Iraq vs Jordan, Lebanon vs India and Qatar vs Saudi Arabia). FIBA has not said what will happen if the conflict is not resolved by the time the fixtures have to be played in June. The options will be to either postpone the games further or to play the fixtures at neutral sites, as shown by how FIBA has handled Israel's matches in light of the Gaza war.

Capacity to host

As it stands currently, Qatar's confirmed sports stadiums have not been damaged by Iran's military action.

However, many of Qatar's key infrastructure has been damaged by Iranian strikes such as: LNG natural gas hub, Pearl gas-to-liquid factory, Ras Laffen refinery, Al Udeid air base and Meissaid power. On top of the fact many petro-chemical complexes have been evacuated due to fears of being hit by strikes and the economy is being hurt by the disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.

The capabilities of the energy facilities of Qatar is a huge concern on top of the enormous concern of safety for the World cup. According to Duke university "A professional sports stadium can use 5-10 MW of electricity during an event, the equivalent of 5,000 American homes."

Not to mention how that stat does not include how the stadiums will have highly strained air conditioning as Qatar summers can reach temperatures of 50C.

A game from the last FIBA World Cup in 2023. This is from a stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Will nations involved in the war be allowed to compete?

World sporting events have a history of banning nations that are perceived to have been the aggressors of war. In recent times, Russia were banned from the Olympics, (Russia athletes could still compete as Individual Neutral Athletes/AINs) UEFA European championships and the FIFA World Cup over their invasion of Ukraine.

Russian president Vladmir Putin, who ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Historically, Germany was banned from the Olympics and World Cup in the aftermath of both World war 1 and World war 2.

As it stands, none of the participants in the Israel-Iran war have been banned.

Given that Iran have refused to play World Cup games in the United States due to concerns over safety. It is possible they may do the same for the FIBA World cup because of their hostilities and conflict with Qatar.