MUMBAI, India — In 2022, Qatar will be the first Arab nation to host the FIFA World Cup. The country beat eight other bidding nations — including the United States, Australia and Japan — to secure the rights to host said tournament.

Qatar placed its bid with aims of bridging the gap between the Arab world and the West. FIFA President Sepp Blatter endorsed the idea of a World Cup in the region.

"The Arabic world deserves a World Cup. They have 22 countries and have not had any opportunity to organize the tournament," said Blatter.

Qatar has had experience hosting large-scale sporting events such as the Asian Games in 2006 and the AFC Asian Cup in 2011. However, the latter had the lowest attendance on record since the Asian Cup was held in Lebanon in 2000.

Qatar's plans for the first five stadiums for the World Cup were showcased in March 2010. These stadiums will employ cooling technologies capable of reducing the average temperature by two degrees Celsius. This technology is planned to be solar powered and carbon neutral. The Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, which has been leading these World Cup preparations, has also promised to disassemble the top tiers of some of the stadiums after the tournament, donating the materials to countries with poor infrastructure.

Amidst such grand preparations, Qatar has faced allegations of bribery, and the bid was deemed illegitimate by many commentators.  Since then, FIFA has launched a full-scale internal inquiry into the matter, and there have been talks of a revote for the 2022 bid if these allegations are confirmed.

The approval of the Qatari bid over other bidding nations has generally been seen as a result of corruption after The Sunday Times published a series of cached documents leaked to them by an unknown whistleblower. The announcement of the winning bid in 2010 gave way to shock around the world.

Mohamed bin Hammam, a football official and former FIFA executive member for Qatar, reportedly paid bribes to FIFA officials in order to secure the country’s World Cup bid. He has been accused of using his connections with the Qatari royal family to arrange favors for certain individuals voting in the bid.

Bin Hammam was not part of the Qatari bid committee and has been banned for life from organized football by the FIFA Ethics Committee. Qatar officials have repeatedly denied allegations of corruption, stating that the 2022 bid was not swayed by deceit or illegalities.

"We say again that Mohamed bin Hammam played no official or unofficial role in Qatar's 2022 bid committee," said a representative for the committee.

Michael J. Garcia, a former U.S. attorney and chairman of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee, is examining the bidding processes for the next two World Cups given the allegations of financial payoffs behind Qatar's winning bid.

Garcia has spent a significant amount of time and money investigating allegations of bribery and corruption. He has interviewed officials from all nine bidding nations and has held a summit with a Qatari delegation to uncover more details of the alleged crimes. The conclusions of the investigation will advise Blatter on whether or not a revote is in order. The exact release date of the report is unknown, but several sources expect that it will be available in late July 2014.

The scandal has grown in recent weeks due to renewed claims by football officials and journalists that were published in British newspapers, particularly The Sunday Times.

In light of the possibility of a revote for the 2022 bid, the United States has begun an aggressive campaign to win the bid.

U.S. Senator Bob Casey has sent a letter to world football leaders, calling on FIFA to award the bid to the United States instead of Qatar in light of the corruption allegations and human rights violations. Although Blatter said in May 2014 that it was an error to award the bid to Qatar because of its extreme heat during the summer, other FIFA officials have stated that they do not plan on reviewing their decision.