 The biggest sporting extravaganza is unfolding in one of the richest countries in the world. Qatar is supposed to have spent 300 billion dollars on the World Cup. That is nearly 60% of India's annual budget to host just one single event. Why has Qatar done it? Because football is now a global religion. 3.6 billion people were supposed to have watched the 2018 World Cup on TV and digital channels. That is nearly half the world's population at that time. This time FIFA expects that the World Cup will be watched by 5 billion people. That is more than 60% of the world's population. This massive popularity of football makes it the richest sport in the world. Football matches, the teams, the industry as a whole is expected to generate 600 billion dollars in revenue this year. Cabela took cricket, which many of us consider to be a huge money spinner. The entire cricket industry is expected to generate just 6 billion dollars. A lot of money, but when you compare to football's monetary worth, it is 100 times that of cricket. Which is why out of the top 5 highest paid athletes in the world, 3 are football players. Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar. Between the 3 of them, they expect it to earn 340 million dollars this year. Football sells millions of products across the world and it can build mega brands. And that is exactly what Qatar is looking to do. It has built its fortune on oil and gas. Now it wants to reposition itself as the world increasingly turns away from fossil fuels. Qatar wants to become a household name and build a brand for the future. But football wasn't always such a money spinning game. It started off as a working class sport, the people's game. Often played and watched by workers on Saturday afternoons when they got off early from work. Football historians say workers and sailors took football from England to other parts of Europe and to Latin America. And gradually, as football clubs developed across the world, players emerged as idols to be worshipped by loyal fans. Who would turn up in stadiums in their club colours. Football games began gradually to be shown on national TV, reaching those who couldn't make it to the grounds. And football players gradually began to make good money. But the real big money in football only came after FIFA started selling TV rights to private channel. In fact, Italia 90, the World Cup of 1990, was the last time that public broadcasters in Italy had the rights to telecast the games live. Two years later, the top English teams got lucrative TV deals to leave the country's footballing and form the Premier League. This was to set off a TV rights revolution across the world which turned football into a money generating machine. Football matches of top clubs began to be broadcast across the world. And someone sitting in New Delhi, far away, could become a loyal fan of Manchester United, feel the highs when it won matches and get depressed if they lost. Football merchandise became big business. Fans spent their time and money to get hold of jerseys of their favourite players. This is a gigantic global business. Good players sign up with big clubs to get TV contracts for the matches they play. TV channels broadcast these matches across the world and rake in millions of dollars in advertising revenue. Advertisers go one step forward and sign up top football stars to endorse their brands and build these stars into even bigger brands who now get even more money from the big clubs who in turn get bigger TV contracts and so on and on. Football today is so intertwined with big money that big private investors and even some Gulf nations now own big stakes in football clubs. From being a working class game, football today is a game that is controlled by billionaires. And the numbers are simply staggering. Here are the top three teams in this world cup in terms of the net worth of their players. England is worth $1.3 billion, Brazil $1.2 billion, France over $1 billion. This massive concentration of money has made football a less competitive game. A few top teams now dominate all championships and only a few lucky players can hope to shine. It's a far cry from what football once was, a people's game. What do you think? Has the influx of big money made football a better game? Or has it made it a game only meant for the stars? That's the show today. Keep watching NewsClick, like our channel, subscribe to it as well. Do like this video which means you're to press that like button and share it with your friends.