You are on page 1of 4

COMMENTARY

Economic & Political Weekly EPW july 20, 2013 vol xlviii no 29
17
Sporting Mega-Events
What the Protesting Brazilians Learnt
from Their BRICS Compatriots
Sharda Ugra
The legendary Pele got an earful
from the hundreds of thousands
of protestors on the streets of
Brazil who refused to heed his
appeal to forget the protests
and support the national football
team. Unthinkable as it is, does it
indicate that popular protests
have nally overcome their
inability to challenge the sporting
mega event, that the modern-day
circus is now seen for what it is:
a scam of massive proportions?
O
n the night Brazil beat current
world champions Spain to win
the Confederations Cup football
nal, Brazilian coach Luis Felipe Scolari
was asked a loaded question. About what
it was like playing football at a time
Brazil was shaken by street protests, some
violent, against institutional corruption
and lopsided public expenditure. Scolari
responded with fury. Not my area, he
said and, after asking the journalist if he
was English (which he was) barked, So
what happened before the Olympics over
there? Maybe you want to take a look at
your own country before saying theres
something wrong with mine.
The Confederations Cup victory aside,
June 2013 will go down as the winter of
Brazils discontent, sweeping along in
the heart of its anger, football and the
Rio Olympic Games of 2016, the two
events expected to pitch-fork the country
into global acclaim. These two Brazilian
sporting showpieces, the 2014 football
World Cup and the 2016 Olympics have,
however, turned into something else.
Putting Futebol in Its Place
A crowd of 5,000-odd that protested
near the Maracana Stadium on the night
of the Confederations Cup nal, was
drowned out by cheering fans and street
parties that followed the victory. The
days leading up to the nal, though, had
been different: 50,000 clashed with
police a few miles from the stadium in
Belo Horizonte where Brazil and Uruguay
were playing their semi-nal. In the cap-
ital Brasilia, there were peaceful yet
more symbolic protests on the day,
where the crowds kicked footballs over
a police cordon towards the Brazilian
parliament, the Congress.
Scolaris churlish reply about the
London Olympics and not my area was
his instant retort following his teams
emphatic and impressive win. Until that,
Brazils players had been far more sym-
pathetic to the protestors with its rising
star Neymar, saying in his Instagram
m icroblog, I want a Brazil that is fair
and safe and healthier and more honest.
Once the ush of the Confederations Cup
victory has died down (along with
Scolaris anger), the questions asked by
Brazilians throughout June are bound to
return. The rst protest had centred
around bus and metro fare hikes in Sao
Paulo, but in the space of three weeks,
the outcry around the country grew over
failing social services, rampant corrup-
tion and misplaced expenditure. The
crowds grew from tens of thousands to
those totalling a million-strong on 20
June in many cities, with the World Cup
and the Olympics turning into symbols
of everything wrong with the govern-
ment and the countrys elite.
Until now, most criticism in countries
that host football World Cups or the
Olympics have tended to emanate from
a relatively small fringe group, usually
social workers or environmentalists who
object strenuously to escalating costs and
tax burdens. In Brazil, however, what
the world saw was mass public protest
on a gigantic, unprecedented scale
against the two biggest and richest sport-
ing events on the planet. On a scale that
ttingly almost belonged to the dizzy
perch that the Olympics and the World
Cup football occupy in the hierarchy of
eventism and sporting gigantism.
That there has been a roar of outrage
around the football World Cup is reveal-
ing. It has come from a nation tied in to
the sport, which writer Alex Bellos
(2003) calls, the strongest symbol of
Brazilian identity. In Futebol: The
Brazilian Way of Life, Bellos argues, no
other country is branded by a single
sport...to the extent that Brazil is by foot-
ball. The June demonstrations proved
that Brazilians have put their beloved
football in its place. Firmly behind what
eventually matters more: education,
jobs, health services, security.
Brazils President Dilma Rousseff and
Federation Internationale de Football
Association (FIFA) president Sepp Blatter
were told so in uncertain terms during the
opening ceremony of the Confederations
This article was published last week in the Web
Exclusives section of the EPW website.
This article is the expanded and revised
version of what appeared on the Quartz.com
website, http://qz.com/98428/deceit-fraud-
and-rst-world-problems-brics-graduated-to-
the-sports-big-leagues-and-now-regret-it/
Sharda Ugra (Sharda.Ugra@espn.com) is
senior editor, ESPNcricinfo.com and has been a
sports journalist for almost 24 years.
COMMENTARY
july 20, 2013 vol xlviii no 29 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
18
Cup when they were booed by the
crowd; Rousseff deliberately stayed
away from the nal. The worlds most
celebrated footballer and the symbol of
Brazilian excellence, Pele was shouted
down after saying (Leahy 2013), Lets
forget all of this mayhem thats happen-
ing in Brazil, all of these protests, and
lets remember that the national team is
our country, our blood. Social media
was scathing: Pele, your ignorance is in
proportion with your footballing ge-
nius; Go to the hospitals, take a bus
with no security, then I want to see if you
keep saying stupid things. For Brazil-
ians to say that to Pele, under whom Bra-
zil won three of their ve World Cups, is
like Indians treating Sachin Tendulkar
with utter contempt.
Finding New Hosts
The consequences of June 2013 will play
themselves out for Brazilians between
now and the World Cup kick-off in 2014.
The most benecial fallout on the rest of
world, though, would be if these events
nally call time on the gargangtuan size
and cost of world sports high-priced
mega-events, particularly in their
newly-found homes: developing nations
and their growing economies.
Between the rst modern Olympics in
1896 and London 2012, of the 27 summer
Olympics, 23 have been held in the devel-
oped West including Australia. The only
exceptions have been Tokyo 1964, Mexico
1968, Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008. The
number of bids for the Olympics has been
decreasing over the last 20 years. In 1993,
the ve candidate cities for the 2000 Sum-
mer Olympics had turned to four in 2009
for the 2016 Games. For 2020, the list is
down to three Istanbul, Madrid and
T okyo. The decision will be taken this Sep-
tember and if the International Olympic
Committees preference for taking their
high-maintenance mega-event to new
territories is any clue, Istanbul could be
the favourite choice.
Unless Brazils warning signals have
hit home.
It is no coincidence that in the last ve
years the BRICS nations have either bid
for or hosted mega-sporting events.
Brazil will host the 2014 football World
Cup and the 2016 Olympics;
Russia will host the 2014 Winter Olym-
pics and the 2018 football World Cup;
India staged the 2010 Commonwealth
Games, bid for the 2014 Asian Games
and, despite its weak footballing struc-
tures, is once again bidding for the
under-17 World Cup football;
China hosted the 2008 Olympics;
South Africa hosted the 2010 World
Cup football.
In 2018, PyeongChang, Korea will
stage the Winter Olympics. The rivals to
India and its under-17 football World
Cup are Uzbekistan, South Africa and
Ireland. The 2022 World Cup will be
held in Qatar.
Years of economic grind have perhaps
left developed countries with a more
realistic, hard-nosed appraisal of what
hosting mega events really involve. In
October 2012, a new coalition government
in the Netherlands scrapped the coun-
trys bid for the 2028 Olympics, built on
the romantic idea of hosting the games
after a 100-year gap. The new govern-
ments policy blueprint however said
hosting the Games brought nancial
risks. There is little support for this in a
time of crisis and austerity.
In March this year, a state referendum
in the Swiss canton of Graubnden
rejected the proposal to have Davos
and St Moritz bid for the 2022 Winter
Olympics. The irony was lost on no one:
Switzerland is the home of the Inter-
national Olympic Committee (IOC), its
headquarters based in Lausanne. Some
of the IOCs own fellow citizens did
not believe the claims that the winter
Olympics would help tourism and boost
the local eco nomy.
The Big Owe
There lies the classic booster claim that
lures countries and cities to bid for mega
events. Along with promising upgraded
sporting infrastructure, the booster offers
civic add-ons like improvement in airports,
roads, public transport. What should be
civic and national administrative duties in
the rst place are turned into privileges
made available to mega event hosts.
Tied in with this comes the growing
economys desire to advertise its arrival
among the high table of nations with
the creation of world-class host cities.
A 2009 paper in the journal Economic
Affairs reveals the inaccuracy of more
than one ex ante impact study around
the hosting of either the Olympics or the
World Cup football. Jonathan Barclay
(2009) writes,
It is interesting to note that the growth in the
number of impact studies conducted has co-
incided with a surge in competition in the
bidding process for these eventsindeed it
is probably no coincidence that most of the
studies have been completed after the 1984
Los Angeles Olympics which was the rst to
make a substantial prot.
It is perhaps as noteworthy to recog-
nise that Los Angeles 84 was probably
the last Olympics to make a real nancial
prot. In fact Montreal 1976 required
more than a quarter of a century to pay
off its debt; the nickname of its centre-
piece Olympic stadium going from the
Big O to the Big Owe.
The storyline of mega events in the
new millennium has turned into a tired,
formulaic script, which in real terms,
has dire results on real people. The
development of either sport or the econ-
omy becomes peripheral, the mega-
event becomes a private sector gravy
train whose costs of operation are borne
by public funding. Residents of New
Delhi, host city for the 2010 Common-
wealth Games, can see patterns and pre-
dictive paths in Brazil 2014 and 2016.
When a bid is won, citizens are pro-
mised that the mega event will involve
not a single dollar/rupee/real of public
money. As cost overlays and delays pile
up, the national exchequer is leaned
upon to restore national pride and pre-
vent the countrys global reputation from
being that of a laggard. In New Delhi,
the Games Organising Committee had
been expected to generate private spon-
sorship worth Rs 1,200 crore (approxi-
mately $200 million at the time using an
exchange rate of Rs 55 = $1). Four months
before the Games, they had merely gen-
erated Rs 342 crore ($62 million) before
the government had asked leading public
sector rms like the oil companies to
chip in (Sobhana 2010).
This could have been a refrain from
Athens 2004 or even London 2012. Hosting
the 2004 Games cost Greece $11 billion,
twice the amount budgeted, of which
$7 billion were billed to taxpayers
COMMENTARY
Economic & Political Weekly EPW july 20, 2013 vol xlviii no 29
19
(Malkoutzis 2012). The collapse of the
Greek economy may not have been
directly related to the Games, but in
December 2011, even IOC chairman
Jacques Rogge told Greek newspaper
Kathi merini (Georgakopoulos and Spanea)
that it could fairly be said that the
2004 Olympic Games played their
part [in Greeces debt crisis]...If you
look at the external debt of Greece,
there would be up to two or three per
cent of that which could be attributed
to the Games.
Delhis Experience
Paying little attention to what the Olympic
footprint does to host economies, Rogge
had a year before informed thrilled
Indians during the Commonwealth Games
that India had set a good foundation
stone for the Olympics bid. With a
straight face, Rogge said, a successful
Commonwealth Games can help India
mount a serious bid for the Olympics.
Despite Londons aim to be a new mil-
lennium, sustainable, green Games, in
April 2012, Britains National Audit Of-
ce (2012) said that public sector fund-
ing of London 2012 had tripled while pri-
vate sector contributions had dwindled
to 2% of the total bill of 11 billion. Its
post Games report billed the public sec-
tor funding package at over 9.2 billion,
with more than 500 million spent on
security. Again, months before the
Games, the private rm given the secu-
rity contract threw up its hands and con-
fessed that it could not supply the per-
sonnel required.
As New Delhi prepared to host the
2010 Commonwealth Games, conscien-
tious objection around it, particularly
from Delhi-based non-governmental or-
ganisation (NGO) Hazards Centre, per-
tained to escalating costs, the outing of
environmental and labour laws and, like
in Beijing 2008, displacement of the
marginalised. These could have been
the refrains from previous mega-games.
The Geneva-based Centre on Housing
Rights and Evictions (COHRE) report
(2007) says nearly 7,00,000 people in
Seoul were evicted from 48,000 dwell-
ings due to the Games redevelopment
projects. The predicted gure from the
same study for Beijing 2008 was expected
to be more than 1.5 million people evicted.
Five years later, the Chinese government
continues to deny gures from indepen-
dent authorities and it may never be
known exactly how many people were
relocated due to the Games.
Along with the classic tourism,
eco nomy and employment boosters,
the other most-bandied about catch
phrases by the mega event public relations
machine is the mega events legacy,
which usually means the creation of new
stadiums (which become mandatory
requirements of cities and countries
awar ded mega events) and their post-
mega event use. The London Olympics
build-up prompted a BBC TV comedy show
called TwentyTwelve centred around a
ctional Deliverance team appointed
for the Games. Amongst them was an
earnest Head of Sustainability whose
fervent catch phrase was, Sustainability
is not the same as legacy. It is not. Once
the buzz of hosting a mega event is gone,
the tangible benets of both sustainability
and legacy show up to be extremely ten-
uous. Often the idea of legacy itself is
left rusting around host cities and coun-
tries. In a 1999 impact assessment and
project appraisal of the 1994 Winter
Olym pics in Lillehammer, France, Jon
Tiegland (1999) noted that 40% of hotels
set up to meet the Games demand in the
region went bankrupt in ve years.
Beijing 2008 the most expensive
Olympics costing around $40 billion
created stadiums praised for the archi-
tectural adventurism but which are now
struggling to keep themselves revenue-
relevant. Two years later, South Africa
spent $5.5 billion on staging the football
World Cup and nds its new stadia,
particularly in rural Polokwane and
Nelspruit, far too large for towns whose
own football teams do not play in the
countrys top ight domestic league.
Debates of the sustainability of the
several 2010 Commonwealth Games
projects, for example (Hazards Centre
2010), were met with negative reports
after the Games (The Hindu 2010). The
Games top three ofcials spent close to
10 months in jail under corruption
charges and rather than create a surge
in Indian sport, India was suspended by
the International Olympic Committee in
December 2012 and remains so at the
time of writing.
The Future in Brazil
In these many woeful examples lie echoes
of what could well be Brazils future.
The protests are merely an early res-
ponse to what lies ahead. It is often
forgotten that in 2007, Brazil ended up
being the only bidder for 2014 World
Cup after Colombia backed out. Brazils
then sports minister Orlando Silva had
promised that stadium construction and
renovation would not cost the public.
Seven years later, Brazilians will have to
pay more than 90% of the estimated
cost of 9 billion. With the recent history
of mega events in mind, that was an al-
most predictable deceit.
Twelve stadiums are being either newly
constructed or renovated for 2014. Bra-
silia, whose football team attracts no
more than a few hundreds fans, will be
given a 71,000-seater stadium. Cuiaba
and Manaus, like Brasilia, do not have
local clubs that feature in the top two
tiers of the countrys domestic league,
but will suddenly have stadiums that
can t in 40,000 ghost spectators. The
stadium in Fortaleza, ranked fth on a
UN list of the worlds most unequal cities
(UNHABITAT 2010), will cost more than
$220 million to be renovated and more
than 5,000 people have already been
moved in connection with World Cup
construction. A local resident told The
Guardian that people were asking, Who
is the world cup for? A political scientist
called the tournament the theatre of
the authorities.
In the developing world, the mega
event has been turned by the organisers
into the bread and circus metaphor
that the Roman poet Juvenal rued over
almost 2000 years ago. Except Brazil
reminds us that these days, bread is not
so much of a given any more. Speaking
of mega events, a business professor had
once said (Knowledge@Wharton 2010)
One must balance the questions of
improving the daily livelihood of the
common man with the so-called national
prestige that only the pampered urban
elite care about. Only his name tells us
the event he was referring to. It does not
matter though, Rajesh Chakrabarti,
COMMENTARY
july 20, 2013 vol xlviii no 29 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
20
Indian School of Business, Hyderabad
could have been talking about Brazil
2014 and Rio 2016.
References
Barclay, Jonathan (2009): Predicting the Costs and
Benets of Mega-Sporting Events: Misjudement
of Olympic Proportions, Economic Affairs,
Vol 29, Issue 2, available at http://www.iea.
org.uk/sites/default/les/publications/les/
upldeconomicAffairs340pdfSummary.pdf, ac-
cessed on 6 July 2013.
Bellos, Alex (2003): Futebol: The Brazilian Way of
Life (London: Bloomsbury Publishing).
Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions (2007):
Mega-Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights:
Opportunities for the Olympic Movement and
Others, Geneva, Switzerland, http://tenant.
net/alerts/mega-events/Report_ Fair_ Play _
FINAL.pdf, accessed on 6 July 2013.
Knowledgem@Wharton (2010): Economic Gains:
Will the Commonwealth Games in Delhi
Deliver What They Promised?, 21 October,
http://knowledge. wharton.upenn.edu/india/
article.cfm?articleid=4537, accessed on 6 July
2013.
Georgakopoulos, George and Spyridoula Spanea
(2011): Rogge: Athens 2004 Weighed on Debt,
ekathimerini, 26 December, http://www.
ekathimerini.com/ 4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite5_1_
26/12/2011_419986, accessed on 6 July 2013.
Hazards Centre (2010): 2010 Commonwealth Games
Delhi: How Much Does National Prestige Cost?,
http://www.hazardscentre.com/hazards_ publi-
cations/pdf/sustainability_planning/ 2010_ com-
monwealth.pdf, accessed on 6 July 2013.
Leahy, Joe (2013): Pel Tells Brazilians to Forget
Protests Sweeping the Country, Financial Times,
London, 20 June, http://www.ft.com/ intl/
cms/s/0/0b1106ee-d963-11e2-a6cf-00144fea-
b7de.html#axzz2YKY7BYiO, accessed on 6 July.
Malkoutzis, Nick (2012): How the 2004 Olympics
Triggered Greeces Decline, Bloomberg
Business Week, 13 August, http://www.busi-
nessweek. com/articles/2012-08-02/how-the-
2004-olympics-triggered-greeces-decline, ac-
cessed on 6 July 2013.
National Audit Ofce, United Kingdom (2012): The
London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic
Games: Post-Games Review, Report by the
Comptroller and Auditor General, HC 794, Ses-
sion 2012-13, 5 December, http://www. nao.
org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/1213794
es.pdf, accessed on 6 July 2013.
Sobhana, K (2010): Few Sponsors for Common-
wealth, PSUs Told to Cough up Cash, Indian
Express, 14 July, http://www.indianexpress.
com/news/few-sponsors-for-commonwealth-
psus-told-to-cough-up-cash/646109/0, accessed
on 6 July 2013.
The Hindu (2010): Question Mark over Cost of
Commonwealth Games, 16 October, http://
www.hindu.com/2010/10/16/stories/2010101
662290400.htm, accessed on 6 July 2013.
Tiegland, Jon (1999): Mega Events and Impacts on
Tourism; the Predictions and Realities of the
Lillehammer Olympics, Impact Assessment
and Project Appraisal, Vol 17, No 4, December,
pp 305-17. http://www.tandfonline. com/ doi/
pdf/10.3152/147154699781767738, accessed on
6 July 2013.
UNHABITAT (2011): State of the Worlds Cities:
2010-11, United Nations Human Settlement
Programme, Nairobi, Kenya, http://www.un-
habitat. org/documents/SOWC10/R8.pdf, ac-
cessed on 6 July 2013.

You might also like