As a big fan of football, and someone who loves Latin
American culture, I am naturally very excited about Brazil hosting the World
Cup. I am looking forward to see if Neymar can live up to his hype, some dogged
performances by Tiago Silva (possibly the best defender in the world) and
seeing if Hulk/Jo/Fred will be good enough to lead the line of a World Cup
winning team. I am also excited to see the Maracana stadium and the vibrant
culture of Brazil on my TV every day.
However, I have some niggling doubts about whether it is
right for a developing country like Brazil to host a mega event like the World
Cup (not forgetting the Olympics in two years’ time). Before I get accused of
being a European imperialist as I do not doubt that the World Cup will be a
great event and I will love the tournament all the more for being in the global
south. However, I do have doubts over whether
it will be the right thing for the people of Brazil, which is a country where
the richest 10% of Brazilians receiving 42.7% of the nation's income, while the
poorest 34% receive less than 1.2% despite the positive efforts to cut poverty
by the Workers Party (the current party of power).
My first doubts started to arise during last year’s Confederations
Cup (eventually won by Brazil) when thousands of people took to the streets in
protest, initially against a rise in bus fares, but it soon snow balled into a
protest about wider issues of money wasted and corruption around the World Cup. The legendary footballer turned politician
Romario has surprised many by becoming a leading figure of the burgeoning
protest movement. Romario has been a
surprisingly erudite and outspoken critique stating that, “I’m not against the World
Cup, I’m against the excessive costs… Fifa comes here, establishes a state
within our state, sovereignty above our sovereignty, and leaves with two or three
billion dollars in profit. And then what
happens to the white elephants they built?”
Those white elephants
described emphatically by Romario are of course the stadiums which will host
the upcoming World Cup. Question marks over completion, safety and the price of
them remain – there have been seven deaths at various grounds during construction,
whilst Sao Paulo’s and Curtiba’s arenas are yet to be finished. The cost of
building Brasilia’s World Cup stadium has nearly tripled to $900 million in
public funds, largely due to allegedly fraudulent billing, government auditors
say. The spike in costs has made it the world’s second-most expensive football
stadium, behind Wembley, even though the city has no major professional team
leaving the stadium impossible to fill once the World Cup has finished.
The arguments in favour of holding the World Cup in
Brazil are put into the public domain on a regular basis. The first and obvious
one is for footballing reasons. Brazil has
an outstanding footballing tradition and deserve the chance to host the World
Cup. Another one is the use of “Soft Power” by the Brazilian government of show
casing the country and showing to the world how far Brazil has become whist simultaneously
selling Brazil further to the world – creating business opportunities. Many
argue that the World Cup will bring a direct economic boost to the country through
job creation and infrastructure improvements created by the influx of tourists
and public spending around the championship.
Additionally some believe that the benefits of the World Cup go much
deeper than simple economics such as leaving a legacy to inspire the youth of Brazil,
much like the ‘Inspire a Generation’ campaign of London 2012. It can also be
pointed out that the Social Movements of Brazil are able to use the World Cup
to gain extra publicity to force social change which would not be possible
without the world’s gaze.
However, going of past experience World Cups rarely bring
the promised economic uplift promised by politicians. This is due to fans not
spending as much money as predicted around the ground, with many independent
vendors not being able to sell outside the ground unless they are an official
FIFA vendor such as Coca Cola (even Pepsi are prohibited). For example,
according to the journalist Simon Kuper, in the World Cup hosted by the USA in
1994 none of the cities which hosted a game saw an economic uplift compared to
non host cities. In Euro 96 the UK
government predicted it would generate 250,000 visitors but it fell well short
at 100,000 visitors. According to a Liverpool University study Liverpool (a
host city) generated a total of 30 jobs all of which were temporary.
After the World Cup 2002 most of Japan’s stadiums now lie
unused and in Poland (host of Euro 2012) they have also been left with unprofitable five star hotels which had to
be built for officials and teams. If you wanted to regenerate an area why don’t
you simply spend money on regeneration projects instead of sporting mega events?
There have
also been considerable problems which have been unique to Brazil. Tens of thousands of residents of Rio’s favelas
are being driven out to the city periphery in order to cater for the World Cup
and the Olympics in 2016. Advocates of
favela families have estimated a displacement of around 170,000 people (the
government claims 20,000). The Brazilian government has also launched the Favela ‘Pacification’ programme in order to claim
back these areas from drug lords and criminals which is a laudable aim. However,
in reality, this programme is designed to hide
the violence and drive the drug gangs away from the places that will be popular
during the major global events Rio is hosting. Critics have also claimed that
it doesn't seek to integrate marginalised people into society and it doesn't
work towards long-term solutions. In most cases pacification projects are
endless military occupations that fail to protect the people.
According to
Amnesty International the Brazilian government is one step away from passing a
new ‘terrorism’ Bill ahead of the tournament in June. If passed it could see
any civilian attending a protest – regardless of whether they have committed a
crime or not – imprisoned for peacefully demonstrating. The Brazilian police
who are in charge of maintaining this order are often not trained properly in
dealing with mass demonstrations and are often criticised as being unreformed
from the time of when Brazil was a military dictatorship, with Amnesty
International again claiming that 80% of Brazilians are afraid of being
tortured by their own police force on arrest.
If this was
not enough the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), and in particular its
President Jose Maria Marin, have been criticised for corruption. On January 25 2012, during the medal ceremony
of the Copa São Paulo de Futebol Júnior, he controversially pocketed one of the winner’s medals
that would be handed to Corinthian’s player Mateus. Marin was also a member of the party of the
old military dictatorship and he has been linked to the death of the journalist
Vladmir Herzog in 1975. Marin had
previously made several public speeches criticising Herzog.
The most
convincing argument for any country to host a World Cup is the evidence that
such events lead to increased happiness within the host nation, which was put
to me by Simon Kuper in his excellent book Soccernomics. Kuper claims that using the European Commission’s
happiness barometer shows there is a clear jump in happiness in countries which
host large sporting events. However, another important finding from his
research was that in general Europe is no happier now than it was fifty years
ago even though income has doubled. This highlights two key factors. Firstly, that extra happiness brought by
events is even more impressive. Secondly, it also highlights that there is only
a link between happiness and income for those who earn less than £11,000 a
year, which is very few people in the Global North showing that investing in
mega events in the developed world may be tangibly worth it for the wellbeing
of their populations. However, Brazil like South Africa before it, have large
swathes of their population which live on way less than £11,000 a year so
therefore the money spent on the World Cup would be much better spent improving
people’s happiness by spending more on education, health care and creating
sustainable jobs.
As someone who is deeply interested in the politics and
culture of the Global South, it is with a heavy heart that I say, for the
benefit of the people living there, that global mega events should not be held
in developing countries at the moment. This is unless they can be fully
subsidised by rich nations in the North, which is probably the least these
countries could do for the hardships they have inflicted on the South through
slavery and imperialism. What is your opinion?
