“Local people” work at the shops, hotels and restaurants in the venue cities. And in the airports. And bars. And rental car agencies. You get the idea.
Trust me, stadium concessions are probably the smallest part of the benefit of hosting a World Cup.
The trick is for national governments to make sure that all the money they spend to upgrade facilities - roads, mass transit, stadia, shopping malls, and so on - doesn’t go to waste after the Cup. The same holds true for the Olympics, for that matter.
There’s no point in upgrading a stadium to hold 80,000 people if it wasn’t selling out 40,000 seats before. No point in spending half a billion dollars on a rail system that normally carries 500 passengers a day. On the other hand, roads and bridges can always use an upgrade, regardless of traffic. Buildings that house World Cup facilities can be designed for easy conversion into schools, offices, police stations, or whatever.
Well that, and all that you said, **is **the sort of thing I wonder. As in, to what extent will there be long-lasting benefits as opposed to some expensive white elephants. It’s ***not ***that I think that’s a issue peculiar to South Africa: I have the same concerns about similar big glittery things, hoping that they do leave some benefit when all the temporary show and spending is over, for instance with the 2012 Olympic Games in London and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. I just wonder to what extent locals benefit from all the fuss.
But then, I’m neither a sporty type nor an economist, merely a wonderer. If I could package vague wonderings and sell them, then I COULD visit South Africa.
Hell no. SA is the self-proclaimed “rape capital of the world.” The odds of getting raped are 1 in 2. Not attempted rape or assault, actually raped. Also, if you get raped there, there’s an 80% chance you’ll get raped twice in your lifetime.
GL with major sporting events but SA’s going to have to clean up their act before I ever set foot in that country.
It’s on my list in about the same spot as it was before the World Cup. I would like to go - I’ve seen some gorgeous photos, and I have some distant relatives there I’d like to meet. But it’s hard to justify anytime soon, given how far away it is, that it’s difficult for me to take more than a week off at a time, how expensive it would be to get there, and how many other places I haven’t seen yet are more accessible.
Dunno about the one in two thing, but there was a big study out a while ago that said a quarter of South African men admitted to committing at least one rape.
