Newsweek: How FIFA Botched the World Cup (quotes BigSoccer)

Hardly surprising.
I have a feeling that when this tournament is over, there will be stories of incredible greed and avarice by the maFIFA, at the expense of South Africans.

 

You mean the South African Premier Leauge, with it's average attendances of over 7,500 won't find much use for a 95,000 seat stadium?

 

Have to agree that this is not exactly news...FIFA has been corrupt for years, and price-gouging takes place at virtually all major international sporting events (just ask anyone who tried to go to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, for example).

The bigger issue for South Africa is going to be the fallout from spending so much money building/improving stadiums that will soon become white elephants. Been to South Korea or Japan lately?

Very few countries have a robust enough domestic soccer leagues to need eight 40,000+ seat stadia...Germany, Italy, England, France, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and the USA (which uses them also for football) are pretty much it. Holding the World Cup elsewhere pretty much guarantees the the stadia will be under-utilized once the World Cup is over.

This is why it will be a joke if anybody other than the USA gets the 2022 World Cup...

 

If half the foreign visitors decided not to go then wouldn't the stadiums be a lot more empty??

 

Holy Greedus, Batman!

Yet another Newsweak article on just how corrupt the world really is!

Yet... the oxey-MORON points out the independent room sellers hiked their prices even MORE. And of course they blamed FIFA for it.

Now answer me this, you offended babes-in-woods... just WHAT did you expect from the beginning?

Scroll up and see the truth. Only First World countries can afford, and have the expertise, to put on an event this big. I doubt that Korea and Japan got hit too bad from hosting it, and China certainly could write off the cost of their Olympics as PR. Even Brazil would have fiscal problems hosting.

And as to the 'corruption'... yep. There was no doubt some insider skimming. But nowhere near as much as if somehow it was possible to make FIFA a Quasi-Governmental org.

Like if it was run by the UN. The UN makes Blatter look like a playground lunch-money grifter.

So just suck it up and if you worry about third world fiscal sanity, insist that the Cup only be played where existing facilities can handle it.

 

Even those nations wouldn't really need them. Germany is the only one of those nations that has a league that averages more than 37,000 per game. Italy, France, Argentina and Brazil actually have smaller average attendances than the Mexican League.

 

Newsweek is a leftist rag that is completely ignored by 99% of the American public. I'd advise you to do the same. Over the last decade or two they went froma respectable magazine to below the National Enquirer in journalistic intergrity. I wouldn't trust them with a cup of spit.

 

When did FIFA transition into being a business enterprise?

 

The problem is FIFA's block-booking through MATCH allowed them to corner the market, while charging booking fees far in excess of fees charged by a normal booking agent. It wouldn't have been so bad if the booking website had been any good, but it was all but unusable to anyone except those with extreme patience. Instant online booking/confirmation has been with us for years, so going back to applying for details of individual hotels by email conjures up images of Fred Flintstone running the site.

You do also wonder if the advice FIFA gave to B&B places, advising them to charge $300 a night, was deliberate misinformation to get people to book through match instead of isung guesthouses.

That's the point though. People didn't keep buying. They cancelled in their thousands instead.

the only way round that is to allow smaller stadiums. Around half of the stadiums could have been 10,000 seats smaller and still got the crowds in.

 

What a nonsense post. Even the most popular news outlets are still ignored by 99% of people. Fox News is the most popular and still is only watched by 1% of the population. 99% of people ignore all "news" in this country, which is kind of a shame.

And what stupid world do you live in that Newsweek is leftist? Are you a child when it comes to political understanding?

 

It's only "right of centre" if your Leader is Commandant Castro

 

I think Australia, which could build the stadiums to be used for rugby or Australian Rules football as well, could be added to that list. That's what concerns me about the 2022 bid.

 

Be that as it may, this isn't an article about American politics. I didn't see anything in this article that could be characterized as being politically slanted.

 

If FIFA didn't gouge the prices, the locals - if they had any sense- would have done it. That's common practice everywhere int he world for an event or tourist season, etc. The man griping to that woman about his hotel price is kinda humorous, but what did he expect?


The rest is just typical shady FIFA and local government bringing us the World Cup from SA. It's not my problem if your government spent too much money building stadia that will never be used, that's SA's problem.


Great World Cup though, from what I can see from my couch.

 

a lot of the locals are facing up to empty rooms, as the expected wave of tourists just haven't shown up.

There's nothing wrong with raising prices. The problem was more the amount prices were raised. For some reason a lot of guesthouse owners really did expect people to pay $300 a night for rooms that would never justify the price. I don't think I paid more than $80 a night in Germany.

Hindered by the lack of online booking, hotels had no real way of gauging availability of the state of the market. I've heard horror stories of guesthouse owners facing ruin after expensively upgrading accommodation, and not having had a single booking.

The "budget" airlines were also accused of price-fixing, and were very dishonest in the way the made flights available, implying that availability much far more limited than it really was.