Fifa World Cup: the 1.2 billion dollar question

Spending 1.2 billion dollars on staging the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is just no small matter. And not to forget the huge amount spent by South Africa and those who are flying into the continent to either take part or just to watch the games! Sports have become mega projects. The trend is the bigger the better! But who are the people paying for the event? Well, certainly not the players. Probably the largest group of people paying for the show is the sport fans followed by loosing gamblers. Staging the show for the first time in Africa does not bring much to the continent. If at all there are benefits, then it would have been Johannesburg’s stadiums. Some of them have been refurbished at great cost whilst new ones were added. And some savvy business people there have benefited as well; think of the few guys who had sold thousands of noisy vuvuzelas there.

Unfortunately for the poor of the world, they just get to watch a world event for four weeks. Of course they feel elated and excited but there is nothing added on the dinner table. For all you know, they might have to cough out a few more dollars for the electricity to run their tellies. But you will not be blamed for not noticing that the whole affair is nothing but a Fifa branding exercise! The exercise is a billion dollar job and there are not many entities in the world now that can afford to bankroll such an event. If you were to give that money to some third world countries, they might be turned into the second tier class. But luckily, the event only come once in four years, otherwise, we, the general non participating people might have to give some of our money to the course, albeit unwillingly.

Besides it being a branding exercise, the World Cup is a haven for punters and gaming syndicates. No body has an estimate of the amount of money going into gambling, but it is definitely huge by all accounts. You can now bet not only on the winning team, but you can also bet if the game were to go into penalty kicks! Even governments were eying to get hold of some of the profits. Some have suddenly tried legalizing sports gaming just so to grab at punter’s money! Still, when we think of all the benefits from the game, we could hardly count half our fingers. And to rub salt unto the wound, there is that cryptic octopus named Paul who predicted correctly the winner of all seven matches of the game including the final when Spain won over the Dutch! If a sea creature can correctly predict the outcome of the game, then why do we need to stage it with such cost? We could have staged it in small villages and ask Paul to predict the outcome. It would be easier for all of us, including the gaming syndicates!