Hendren global group, deceit, fraud, and first world problems, how brics graduated to the sports big leagues and now regret it

http://qz.com/98428/deceit-fraud-and-first-world-problems-brics-graduated-to-the-sports-big-leagues-and-now-regret-it/

Hendren Global Group: Deceit, fraud, and first
world problems: How BRICS graduated to the
sports big leagues—and now regret it
Source
Somewhere between the first protest over transit fare
hikes in Sao Paulo and president Dilma Rousseff’s public
address three weeks later, football and the Olympic Games
found themselves swept into the heart of Brazilian anger.
The outcry had centered around failed social services,
corruption, and misplaced expenditure. As the crowds grew from
tens of thousand to a million-strong on June 20, Brazil’s two
biggest sporting show pieces—the 2014 World Cup football and
the 2016 Olympic Games—were turned into symbols of
everything wrong with the government and the country’s elite.

On the day of the Confederations Cup (a preparatory event for
2014) semi-final, between Brazil and Uruguay in Belo Horizonte,
50,000 clashed with police a few miles from the stadium. In Brasilia, a
peaceful yet more symbolic protest took place as the crowds kicked
footballs over a police cordon—and toward the Congress.
Until Brazil‟s winter of discontent, most criticism in countries
hosting football World Cups or the Olympics tended to emanate from a
relatively small fringe group protesting escalating costs and tax
burdens.
In Brazil, though, what the world saw was protest against the
world‟s two biggest sporting events on a gigantic, unprecedented scale.
On a scale that fittingly almost belonged to the dizzy perch that the
Olympics and the World Cup occupy in the hierarchy of “eventism.”

The roar of outrage against the World Cup has come from a nation
tied into the sport, which writer Alex Bellos calls, “the strongest symbol of
Brazilian identity.” In Futebol; The Brazilian Way of Life, Bellos writes,
“no other country is branded by a single sport … to the extent that Brazil
is by football.”
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.
Rousseff and FIFA president Sepp Blatter were booed during the
Confederations Cup opening. The world‟s most celebrated footballer Pele
was shouted down after his taped video message said, “Let‟s forget all of
this mayhem that‟s happening in Brazil, all of these protests, and let‟s
remember that the national team is our country, our blood.”

On social media, Reuters reported scathing responses: “Pele, your
ignorance is in proportion with your footballing genius.” “Go to the
hospitals, take a bus with no security, then I want to see if you keep
saying stupid things.”
This month‟s consequences will play themselves out for
Brazilians between now and kick-off 2014. The most beneficial fallout
on the rest of world, though, could be if June 2013 calls time on the
gargantuan size and cost of world sport‟s high-priced “mega-events”
particularly in developing nations and their growing economies.
It is no coincidence that in the last five years the “BRICS”
nations have either bid for or hosted mega sporting events.

• Brazil [B] will host the World Cup and the Olympics
• Russia [R] will host the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 World
Cup football
• India [I] staged the 2010 Commonwealth Games, bid for the 2014
Asian Games and, despite its weak footballing structures, is once
again bidding for the under-17 World Cup football.
• China [C] hosted the 2008 Olympics
• South Africa [S] the 2010 World Cup football.
In 2018, PyeongChang, Korea will stage the Winter Olympics.
The rivals to India and its under-17 World Cup are Uzbekistan, South
Africa and Ireland. The 2022 World Cup will be held in Qatar.

Perhaps the economic grind has led developed countries to arrive
at a more realistic appraisal of what hosting mega events really means. The
number of bids for the Olympics has been decreasing in the last 20 years.
In 1993, the five candidate cities for the 2000 Summer Olympics turned to
four in 2009 for the 2016 Games. For 2020, the list is down to three—
Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo.
In October 2012, a new coalition government in Netherlands
scrapped the country‟s bid for the 2028 Olympics in its policy blueprint
saying hosting the Games brought “financial risks. There is little support
for this in a time of crisis and austerity.”
In March this year, the Swiss canton of Graubünden voted against
allowing Davos and St. Moritz to bid for the 2020 Winter Olympics.
Switzerland is the home of the International Olympic Committee and its
own citizens didn‟t believe the claims that the winter Olympics would
“help tourism and boost the local economy.”

That is the classic “booster” claim that lures countries and cities
to bid for mega events. The booster offers civic add-ons like improvement
in airports, roads, public transport, sports facilities. What should be civic
and national administrative duties in the first place are turned into
privileges made available to mega event hosts. Tied in with this comes
the growing economy‟s desire to advertise its arrival among the “high
table” of nations with the creation of “world-class” host cities.
The storyline of mega events has turned into a tired, formulaic
script, which in real terms, has dire results on real people. The
development of either sport or the economy is peripheral, the mega event
becomes a private sector gravy train whose costs of operation are borne
by public funding.
Residents of New Delhi, the host city for the 2010
Commonwealth Games, can see patterns and predictive paths in Brazil
2014 and 2016.

When a bid is won, citizens are promised that the mega event
will involve not a single cent of public money. As cost overlays and
delays pile up, the national exchequer is leaned upon to restore national
“pride” and prevent the country‟s global reputation from being that of a
laggard.
In New Delhi, the Games Organizing Committee had been
expected to generate private sponsorship worth Rs1200 crores (roughly
$200 million at the time). Four months before the Games, a mere Rs342
crores ($62 million) was generated before the government asked leading
public sector firms like the oil companies to chip in. As New Delhi
prepared to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games, conscientious
objection around it pertained to escalating costs, the flouting of
environmental and labour laws and displacement of the marginalised.

These could have been refrains from Athens 2004 where hosting
the Games cost $11 billion, twice what had been budgeted, of which $7
billion was billed to taxpayers. 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 Kathimerini that it
could “fairly” be said that “the 2004 Olympic Games played their part” (in
Greece‟s 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.”
During the 2010 Commonwealth Games, he had informed thrilled
Indians that the country had “set a good foundation stone for the Olympics
bid.” Rogge said with a straight face: “a successful Commonwealth Games
can help India mount a serious bid for the Olympics.”
One of the most bandied about catch phrases by the mega-event
PR machine is the “legacy” left by the mega-event. The idea of legacy
itself is left rusting around host cities and countries.

Beijing 2008 were the most expensive games costing around
$40 billion, but the stadiums once called modern architectural marvels
are now struggling to keep themselves sustainable and relevant. Two
years later, South Africa spent $5.5 billion on staging the World Cup
and finds its new stadiums, particularly in rural Polokwane and
Nelspruit, far too large for towns without teams playing in the
country‟s top flight domestic league.
In the runup to London 2012, Reuters photographers produced
a slideshow called Ghosts of Olympics past to indicate the desolation of
sports venues that had not so long ago hosted the world‟s best athletes.
Debates of the sustainability of the 2010 projects were met
with negative reports after the Commonwealth Games. Its top three
officials went to jail under corruption charges and rather than create a
surge in Indian sport, India was suspended by the International
Olympic Committee in December 2012.

London 2012 was meant to be a green, sensible-new-millennium
kind of games. The general do-gooderness of the 2012 master plan even
prompted a BBC TV show called TwentyTwelve centered around the
Games “deliverance” team, including a “Head of Sustainability” with a
catch phrase: “Sustainability is not the same as legacy. It is not.”
Yet in April 2012, Britain‟s National Audit Office said that
public sector funding of London 2012 tripled while private sector
contributions had dwindled to 2% of the total bill, £11 billion. Its post
Games report (pdf) billed the public sector funding package at over £9.2
billion, with more than £500 million spent on security. The private firm
given the security contract threw up its hands months before the Games,
and „fessed up that they couldn‟t supply the personnel.
In these woeful examples lie echoes of what could well be
Brazil‟s future. The protests are merely an early response to what lies
ahead (without the BBC jokes). Brazil in fact ended up being the only

bidder for 2014 World Cup after Colombia backed out in 2007. Brazil‟s then-
sports minister Orlando Silva had promised that stadium construction and
renovation wouldn‟t cost the public.
Seven years later, Brazilians will have to pay more than 90%. With
the recent history of mega events in mind, that was an almost predictable
deceit.
Twelve stadiums are being either newly constructed or renovated for
2014. Brasilia, whose football team attracts no more than a few hundred fans,
will be given a 71,000-seater. Cuiaba and Manaus, which like Brasilia do not
have local clubs that feature in the top two tiers of the domestic league, will
suddenly have stadiums that can fit in 40,000 ghost spectators.
The stadium in Fortaleza, the fifth most unequal city in the world
according to the UN, will cost more than $220 million to be renovated and
more than 5,000 people have already been moved. A local resident told the
Guardian that people were asking, “Who is the World Cup for?” A political
scientist called it the “theatre of the authorities.”

In the developing world, the mega-event has been turned by the
organizers into “bread and circus” metaphor that Roman poet Juvenal
rued over almost 2,000 years ago. Except Brazil reminds us that even
bread is not so much of a given any more.
Analyzing mega-events, a business professor once said, ”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 doesn‟t matter though. Rajesh Chakrabarti of the
Indian School of Business in Hyderabad could have been talking about
Brazil 2014 and Rio 2016.

Hendren global group, deceit, fraud, and first world problems, how brics graduated to the sports big leagues and now regret it

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Hendren global group, deceit, fraud, and first world problems, how brics graduated to the sports big leagues and now regret it