What Legacy?

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Out of all the sporting events hosted around the World Qatar will have something to show for what they hosted.

This is what we always here when a country "wins" the right to host a World Cup or The Olympics or another event of similar magnitude. I do think this is the normal type of spin justifying what has been spent letting the tax payers know where their money has gone. The bottomless pit called a "Legacy" justifying the bigger picture justifying the wastage as do we really need those extra stadiums as obviously we don't in most places?


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Brazil 2014 the so called National Stadium is now used as a parking lot for buses- cost $900 million. the cost to maintain the stadium is a staggering $132K per month. This is never going to recoup the cost and is cheaper to tear it down.

When they hosted the Football World Cup in South Africa they built new stadiums next door to others that would have proves quite capable of hosting the half a dozen games without any objections or complaints. This on the surface makes no financial sense whatsoever and after the World Cup has been and gone then what?

I grew up living in a neighborhood sandwiched between Newlands Rugby Stadium and Newlands Cricket Ground and I felt I was the luckiest kid around. the Rugby stadium steeped in history was founded in 1890 and was shut down last year in February. Considering the oldest rugby ground in the world is Lansdowne Road being built 12 years earlier than Newlands. The Western Province Rugby Union was forced out of their ground in order to take over the vacant World Cup white elephant in Cape Town. How sad that this had to happen as all the history that has gone before has now all been lost. New does not always mean better as you cannot buy the history.

The same pressure has been happening in Durban at the Sharks stadium (Kings Park) where across the road is a brand new empty stadium that the Durban City Council wants to have them as a new tenant. These older stadiums will just be demolished justifying the new builds not giving two hoots what the real sports fan thinks. There was no legacy and the reason behind the builds all hinged on corruption at the highest levels. Imagine obtaining the concrete tender even when you have never bought or sold concrete in your life before as this is what went down. Another reason is they would also have total control over the tickets which they wouldn't have if they rented a stadium for the event but still would have made far more profit but then again couldn't hide all the dodgy receipts a new build can.

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The Arena da Amazonia was used for 4 world cup matches and 2 other matches since. Cost $669.5 million is now being considered being developed into a prison. All of these events are littered with stadiums around the World standing empty costing the tax payers monthly to maintain.

There is one massive difference between Qatar's world Cup and South Africa's and that there will be some sort of legacy left behind. Qatar may have spent 20 or 30 x more than everyone else but they have something the entire country can benefit from and that is infrastructure they never had. A fully functioning international airport, metro systems, highways, hotels and the list goes on and on. They have rebuilt their country so that they can all benefit from this event when it is long gone.

In Johannesburg ,South Africa we had a new mono rail called the Gautrain which goes from the Northern Suburbs to the airport. No one uses this as it is just too dangerous as a passenger due to crime. I cannot think of one item that is left behind that has any real use case that you could say thank you. Qatar are lucky even though it was an underhanded deal to land the World Cup at least they have spent in areas where the people will benefit. Imagine using an event to rebuild your entire country and not end up wasting billions on stadiums you cannot use or don't need. I agree maybe they have one extra stadium in Qatar that is unnecessary for their needs but they have done well if we overlook all the negatives and try a positive spin at least.

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That's pretty ridiculous. I know they want to move things around and give other countries the opportunity to host, but at this point they are just throwing away money. There are plenty of stadiums all over the world that can support this kind of event.

Agreed but there is no money to be made by doing that as the big ticket item is building a new stadium. just think a stadium costing $1 billion plus how much is being skimmed off as it must be over 10% which is a cool $100 million. Where else are you going to find that if you are crooked? Any excuse to spend on large items as then they wangle the tenders as they are running the show. I know a lady who was running a coffee shop and she ended up along with black partners supplying cement/concrete for the Durban Stadium build. You are set for life and don't care about the corruption as if you don't do it someone else will.

Qatar is eyeing of becoming one of the powerhouse leagues in Asia (or maybe a league that is on-par with European leagues in the future). This is what I foresee why they tried so hard to get the right to host. I'm quite amazed how they were able to manage this World Cup so well without controversies or perhaps they paid to silent the media?

But overall, I'm shocked how the stadiums built in 2010 and 2014 have been a mess because of monthly maintenance cost. USA & Canada have to learn from this.

No the end game is not about football but rebuilding their country by doing the necessary infrastructure. The Arab countries don't have a future with oil and the only other offering is tourism which is why Dubai is developing. Qatar is not a holiday destination and will not be able to compete with Dubai or other Arabic States unless they relax their laws on dress codes and alcohol. They sent a clear message when they changed their initial World Cup laws 3 days before kick off.

It's painful to see a stadium that was built with a huge amount of money to be abandoned.
They were tired of the renovations because it was costly.

We can do better than this, thank you for this amazing content.

Yeah your are right I read your whole article. Every year spend billions of dollars to make new football ground. After world cup government allot for parking and things. That's really very painful. This year Qatar spend billion of dollars.

Going forward, I can see the kind of model that there was for Euro 2020 and that there will be for World Cup 2026 with multiple host nations being popular. In the current economic climate, it’s going to be difficult for most nations to justify massive spending on those kind of development projects when essential services aren’t getting adequate funding

It seems Qatar planned this very carefully, at least one of the stadiums will be dismantled and others will have seats removed, these will probably be donated to a few poor countries. The infrastructure projects have a view to the future so actually the Qataris will not have wasted their money, at least not all of it. And they have profited, just think of it, probably a few months ago there were a lot of people that didn't even know Qatar was a country, now it is really on the World map. I think for Qatar this was a very good investment.

I’ve not always understood why so much is spent in building more stadiums. Just look at the scenarios you’ve stated. You spend so much on stadiums you’ve already decided to demolish.

Qatar using this to develop their country is very good and maybe USA and Canada should learn from it and not end up putting up structures they intend demolishing.