World Cup: Festival of football, carnival of cash

OUR TV screens, newspapers and advertising hoardings are full of the
World Cup. One of the world’s biggest sporting occasions is only days
away. I can’t wait. The opportunity to see some of the world’s best
players for a month is a mouth-watering prospect.

Chris Newby

This tournament is being shown in 189 countries and is likely to
attract an audience of five billion. Three million fans are expected to
arrive in Germany.

Clearly with such a global audience major companies are lining up to
make the most of the opportunities, spending $16 billion on advertising.
No wonder companies are prepared to pay this when, for example, Adidas
expect to sell $1.5 billion of footballing merchandise this year.

The impact of the World Cup on New York when USA hosted the event in
1994 was an extra $452 in revenue. But it’s more than just the money to
be made by those companies directly involved in the World Cup.

Electrical retailer Curry’s is selling flat-screen TV’s at the rate
of one every 15 seconds and has seen sales of these increase by 92% year
on year. With these companies set to make a fortune, Mastercard have got
exclusive rights inside all the World Cup stadia.

What about the fans? About 100,000 England fans are expected to head
to Germany yet only 8% of the stadia’s capacities at the three group
games are being made available to the fans (about 4,000 to 5,000 for
each game).

Of the three million tickets available, a million have been given to
the sponsors. Whilst officially the cheapest prices start at e35,
tickets for the group games are already swapping hands at over $1,000.
Tickets for the final are already being sold for around $3,000.

England’s opening group game with Paraguay underlines the disparities
in the world game. The press are full of stories of the £100,000 plus a
week wages that players in the premiership get. In Paraguay, players in
the top division get paid £105 a month or less. In the four English
professional leagues there are big disparities in wages with players in
league one and two being paid around the average wage in the UK.

The World Cup underlines how football is dominated by big business
whether it’s through the super-exploitation of workers who produce the
boots and kits for companies like Adidas and Nike or the sponsorship
deals agreed with Coca Cola.

The enormous amount of money in football should be used for the
benefit of everyone who plays and watches football through affordable
ticket prices for spectators, It should also be used to vastly improve
the quality of facilities at every level.

For every one Ronaldhino, how many potential Ronaldinhos are there
who never get the chance to develop their talents because of lack of
facilities. Taking football out of the hands of big business, would see
the World Cup develop as a real celebration of world football.