It is fair to say that even the most avid sports fan would struggle to name a Qatari athlete or professional footballer. But despite being better known for more traditional sports such as falconry and camel racing, for the past two decades the small gas-rich state has quietly been investing in a new sporting heritage.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani sees sport as a central part of the emirate's transformation into a modern economy, along with the development of education, medicine, and science and technology centres. Over the past 10 years, the state has been investing in home-grown talent able to compete at a global level. It has also strived to position itself as a host of world-class international sporting events by building a sports infrastructure and attracting the best athletes with the lure of record prize funds.

The largest event held in Doha to date was the 15th Asian Games in December 2006, in which 8,000 athletes competed in 39 sports over a fortnight. The opening ceremony attracted an estimated global television audience of 1.5 billion viewers. Qatar spent $2.8bn staging the competition, which is second only to the Olympic Games as the world's largest multi-sport event.

Great expectations

Now ambitious Qatar has its sights firmly on hosting the big one. In 2007, Doha prepared a $48m bid to stage the 2016 Summer Olympics. The Olympic Village was to be a $1.94bn site for 18,000 athletes, with 70 per cent of the venues already built for the Asian Games.

However, despite gaining more International Olympic Committee votes than Brazil's Rio de Janeiro and joining the US' Chicago as third equal on technical merit, Doha did not make it through to become a candidate host city. Undeterred, it intends to try again for the 2020 games and is also bidding to stage the Fifa World Cup football tournament in 2022.

The Olympics Games have never been held in the Arabic-speaking world but hosting it would enable Qatar, "to use the power of peaceful sporting competition to create understanding that could unite the entire region with the rest of the world", to cite the words of Qatari business figure Hassan Ali Bin Ali, who was charged with chairing the 2016 bid committee.

Peace message aside, staging such a high-profile event would elevate Qatar's profile on the world stage as well as accelerating infrastructure development and helping to diversify the economy away from hydrocarbons.

International profile

"It is putting itself on the map," says Greg Sproule, managing director of sports, media and entertainment company IMG Middle East. "Its hosting of major sports events is also a significant endorsement of a country's emergence, its credibility, its infrastructure and of it being a destination in its own right."

International sporting events have long been praised for the regenerative impact they can have on a city's profile as a tourism destination. The Spanish city of Barcelona, which hosted the 1992 summer Olympic Games, is widely presented as the perfect model for how to organise a successful games, harness the games' legacy and also maintain the tourist and economic growth momentum afterwards.

The urban transformation instigated by the Barcelona Olympic Organising Committee had far-reaching and long-term economic and social benefits. The immediate impact of Barcelona being named Olympic host city was job creation, a construction boom and an upturn in the city's housing market.

Cement demand increased 250 per cent between 1986, when it was named host city, and 1992 when work on the Olympic site was completed. Between 1986 and 2001, Barcelona's hotel capacity increased three-fold and international visitors doubled.

The permanent legacy was Barcelona's heightened international profile and an improved business confidence in the city, reflected in the willingness of foreign companies to set up in the city after the games.

Doha hopes to see a similar impact by staging either the Olympics or Fifa World Cup. Its 2016 Olympic bid included plans for almost $10bn worth of investment in transport infrastructure, including road and rail networks, along with $996m to build new or improve existing sporting facilities.

Although much of this construction work is likely to go ahead at some point in the future regardless, having the deadline of a major sporting event would ensure the projects get under way sooner rather than later.

As happened with Barcelona, showcasing itself on the world stage would provide a boost to Qatar's efforts to increase the number of leisure visitors to the emirate. At present, business travellers account for about 95 per cent of arrivals into the country, but the Qatar Tourism & Exhibitions Authority wants tourism to account for 30 per cent of visitors to the emirate in the future.

Likewise, Doha sees sport as a platform from which to enhance its relations with other nations across the world. "If you are at the Olympic Games table being seriously considered you are able to mix in circles and have opportunities open that may not otherwise have been available beyond just the Olympics or world cups," says Sproule.

Similar goals

Of course, Qatar is far from being the sole Gulf state with sporting ambitions. Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain have all invested in world-class sporting facilities and host major events.

"They have all recognised that encouraging sports growth is a way to modernise attitudes," says Stewart Mison, managing partner of London-headquartered sports consultancy Futures Sport + Entertainment. "But over and above that, in its own right it is a very strong marketing platform."

The sporting strategy being pursued by Dubai is markedly different to that of Qatar. Dubai has successfully turned itself into a sporting destination by leveraging the appetite of the emirate's expatriate population for spectator sports and their ability to draw in international visitors to fill arenas.

It has also used sport to feed into the image of the city as a luxury destination where the rich and famous hang out, by offering attractive appearance fees to athletes and having them endorse real estate developments.

There is a danger, however, that the region could become saturated with sporting events and some could lose their prestige. "Those that are best run are the ones that will succeed," says Sproule. "Best run from a general spectator perspective and from a corporate perspective on how can brands tell their story in the most compelling way through sports.

"The events that are run that meet those objectives specifically over the long term are the ones that are going to survive," says Sproule. "The cream will rise to the top."

The Gulf states have shown themselves to be more than willing to use their hydrocarbons revenues to bring sporting events to their country and Qatar is no exception. The Commercial Bank Qatar Masters golf tournament has been held since 1998 but initially struggled to attract top players.

This hurdle was overcome as appearance fees increased. The prize money for the 2009 tournament totalled $2.5m, compared with $750,000 for the 2001 tournament, with just $416,660 going to the winner.

Qatar paid the World Tennis Association $42m over three years to host the Sony Ericsson Women's tennis competition from 2008 to 2010. The first ATP Qatar Open for men was held in January 1993 with a prize fund of $1m. This year, the prize fund stood at $1.049m, $183,000 of which was for the winner.

The country holds about 28 sporting events each year. Since 2004, Qatar has played host to an annual motorcycling event, the Qatar MotoGP. This is now staged as a night event under floodlights. It also hosts an annual athletics event, Qatar Super Grand Prix.

Following the example of UAE-based airline Emirates, which has successfully raised its profile through its association with sporting events overseas, Qatar is also putting its name to international competitions outside its borders. Last year, the Qatar Racing & Equestrian Club signed a five-year deal with France Galop and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe to sponsor the prestigious horse race at Longchamp in France. In so doing, it doubled the prize fund of the race to e4m ($5.67m). The event attracts about 70,000 spectators and more than 1 billion viewers worldwide.

Hosting the Olympic Games is seen as a natural progression for Qatar. Seoul, which hosted the Asian Games in 1986, went on to stage the Summer Olympics two years later, having used the Asian Games as a test event.

But the main obstacle in the way of Doha achieving its Olympic dream is its inhospitable summer weather. One of the reasons given for the failure of the 2016 bid was that Doha's proposed dates were outside August - the month recommended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Qatar had proposed staging the event from mid to late October, with the Paralympic Games to be held in November. Previous olympiads in Sydney, Seoul, Mexico and Tokyo were held outside of August, and the 1956 Melbourne Olympics ended in December, but nonetheless Doha's proposed dates were rejected by the IOC.

Qatar is in the process of building a $20m below-ground level, open-air, air-conditioned 10,000-seater sports stadium, which could improve its chances of winning the IOC's approval.

As host of the Pan-Arab Games and the Asia Football Cup in 2011, it has had several opportunities to demonstrate its event-management capabilities. But it might have to exercise a great deal of patience before it secures the Olympics.

"The danger is, how many times the bridesmaid and never the bride?" says Mison. "Sometimes you have to cut your cloth accordingly and say, 'Let's go back to what we are good at and what our country can do and let's be very selective with the events we take on'. Sport, like everything else, is political. It's finding how you weave through that politics and where you need the vote and supports from."

In the interim, investments such as the new 50-bed Qatar Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine Hospital will demonstrate the country's commitment to developing a complete sporting infrastructure. But, most of all, pressing ahead with infrastructure projects such as the new airport and its rail network will improve Qatar's chances of eventually hosting the Olympic Games.