The Cost of the Cup: Built on Exploitation

While the world is often warned about a surge of trafficking victims that never fully manifest at large sporting events, a different harm was already underway in plain sight — in the labor camps, construction sites, and cleared neighborhoods that have historically made the World Cup tournaments possible.In Qatar, migrant workers recruited under false promises built the stadiums for 2022. In Russia, the same pattern is visible behind different fencing. In Brazil, whole communities were displaced to clear the way. In each situation, a labor system was devleoped to make exploitation easy to overlook.In part two of The Cost of the Cup, host Preston Goff follows the thread Part One left hanging — from the myth that captured everyone's attention to the harm that never needed to hide, because few were actually looking. This episode traces that pattern across three World Cups, and asks what it means for the tournaments still to come.