Play the Game Podcast

“Silence is sport’s worst enemy!”

That is the message from Qatar 2022 whistleblower Abdullah Ibhais, the former media manager for Qatar’s World Cup organising committee, who paid a heavy price for speaking out about the treatment of migrant workers ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

In the opening episode of the Play the Game Podcast, Stanis Elsborg speaks with Ibhais in an exclusive interview about the latest developments in his case.

After travelling to Norway to speak publicly about FIFA, Qatar, and the World Cup, Ibhais says he was stopped at the airport on his return to Jordan, questioned, and had his passport confiscated.

The episode also features Ibhais’ powerful presentation from Play the Game 2025, where he describes Qatar’s media strategy in the years leading up to the tournament — a strategy he sums up as: “Deflect, discredit, and deny.”

This is the story of an insider turned whistleblower – a story about prison, pressure, media control, FIFA, migrant workers, and the global politics behind Qatar 2022.

Host: Stanis Elsborg, head of Play the Game

Guest: Abdullah Ibhais, whistleblower, communications and advocacy consultant, Jordan

*This episode is produced by Play the Game*

Music: I Walk With Ghosts by Scott Buckley

Welcome to the Play the Game Podcast

Play the Game Podcast is a new podcast about the people, powers, and politics shaping sport.

The podcast brings you voices, stories, and debates that rarely get enough space in the world of sport.

For almost three decades, Play the Game has worked to create space for open, critical, and informed dialogue about international sport through conferences, analyses, and journalism.

Now, we are bringing that work to your headphones.

In the podcast, you will hear from investigative journalists, researchers, athletes, whistleblowers, sports leaders, decision-makers, and others who help uncover what is happening behind the scenes of international sport.

Episodes will include interviews, narrated articles, conference presentations, and critical debates on some of the biggest challenges facing sport today — from corruption, match-fixing, doping, and human rights to geopolitics, gambling, sustainability, athlete welfare, and abuse in sport.

Some episodes will give new life to important material from Play the Game’s conferences and website: presentations, articles, and conversations that deserve to travel further than the room where they were first heard. Others will open up new conversations about the questions that sport still struggles to answer.

Play the Game Podcast is for everyone who believes that sport deserves scrutiny, transparency, and open debate.

Subscribe now, and listen soon on all major podcast platforms.

For more information visit www.playthegame.org/podcast