Tom Humphries

[elroy]

This guy has it so good, he spends 90% of the year writing columns exalting the gaa over football and even more so rugby. But for the last 2 weeks or so the guy has suddenly taken over as the times headline sports reporter at the WC. Galling to say the least. Going on about everything great about the game, the spectacle etc.


Despite my dislike of his over the top bias, he has (for once) written a good article today about the WC and the effect of the FIFA commercial machine on South Africa.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...274512450.html

[OneRedArmy]

Tom can now get back to what he does best...... writing about Dublin camogie, hating the Irish for liking rugby and generally being Ireland's greatest gael.

God help him, having a head that big it must hurt having it rammed so far up his posterior.

[DaveyCakes]

I. Hate. Tom. Humphries. And. His. View. That. Constantly. Writing. Short. Sentences. Makes. Him. Seem. Ever. So. Clever.

[endabob1]

A poorly written article with some truth and some garbage, standard fare from Humphries

[geysir]

What were the truths and what was the garbage content?
I do appreciate an objective critique?

I quite like this line
'The trick every four years is for the usual corporate bandits to fool the local population into believing this World Cup is theirs. And then to depart with the bill still on the table.'

[Den Perry]

What were the truths and what was the garbage content?
I do appreciate an objective critique?

I quite like this line
'The trick every four years is for the usual corporate bandits to fool the local population into believing this World Cup is theirs. And then to depart with the bill still on the table.'

What a boring article. Interesting to see what he writes about the post-game scenes from Croke Park yesterday

[Mission Bell]

Humphries is not to be taken seriously. A gaa head always looking to knock Irish soccer especially FAI. Him and Dunphy are cut from the same cloth

[endabob1]

What were the truths and what was the garbage content?
I do appreciate an objective critique?

I quite like this line
'The trick every four years is for the usual corporate bandits to fool the local population into believing this World Cup is theirs. And then to depart with the bill still on the table.'

The stadiums here cost two billion rand more than they were supposed to and the host cities got to pick up the excess tabs

. I'd love to see the source for this, both for the amounts and the assumption that the host cities pick up the tab.

Yet, for instance, Cape Town had wished to revamp the existing Athlone Stadium to host its World Cup Games. Athlone Stadium. Fifa did not approve. The surrounding area was too depressingly run down. TV wouldn’t like it. In Durban, a 56,000-seater World Cup stadium was constructed a couple of hundred yards away from the existing Kings Park Stadium, which holds 50,000.

Very true on Durban especially, the Athlone site is completely unsuitable, actually Newlands was in the original bid document but WP Rugby who own it refused to allow the necessary changes to make the stadium suitable for a semi-final, thus the new stadium was built for the sole purpose of hosting a semi-final. That said it's in a much better location than Newlands which is in a quiet residential area and suffers from chronic parking & public transport problems as well as the lack of opportunity for expansion because of the effect on local housing.

Speaking of coming from a very long way away, the South African tourism industry was rubbing its hands at the prospect of attracting over three million tourists in their winter season.
No figures are available yet but every hotelier and taxi driver you speak to expresses disappointment.

More rubbish, the original forecasts were for 5 to 6 hundred thousand revised down to 450 when the recession hit, estimates have the number of tourists between 450 & 500. I know a few people in the trade and they have been happy with the business, I've said elsewhere on this site that Match screwed over a lot of people and I think the Tourist Industry here was Naive and too trusting but in general there have been a lot of tourists spending a lot of money and having a good time, which is what everyone wanted.

Africa has seen worse obscenities so some perspective is necessary but with 355,000 unsold tickets left in a country where the host population had neither the money nor the infrastructure to be ordering them online, the South African government (never the parasitical Fifa) were forced into buying huge swathes of tickets for their own people and selling them at hugely subsidised rates.

Again where's the source on this because frankly there were nowhere near that amount of unsold tickets, empty seats maybe but Corporate sponsors left thousands of seats empty. I have to say I have never heard that the govt stepped in to buy tickets and then sold them on at a loss & it frankly seems incredible. I think there may be some confusion between the WC & the Confed Cup the previous year where local Govt back sponsors bought huge numbers of tickets that weren't being sold because A) they were massively over-priced and B) No one really cared about the Confed Cup..

The points about FIFA basically taking the top but leaving the bill is pretty spot on FIFA and their umbrella organisations have done good and bad but they were never going to be left with anything other than a massive profit and the clampdown on local traders made the area around the stadium feel clinical and un-African. The local organising committee to their credit tried to give traders the opportunity to trade outside of these zones, the fan walk in Cape Town seemed to become more relaxed as the tournament went on and more and more street vendors were popping up.

[Schumi]

God help him, having a head that big it must hurt having it rammed so far up his posterior.

In fairness to him, it has to be that big to keep it in proportion with his belly.

[geysir]

. I'd love to see the source for this, both for the amounts and the assumption that the host cities pick up the tab.

5 new stadium expenditure USD 1.4bn x 8 ? = >11bn rand upgraded stadia cost USD 300m = Rand 2.4bn

SA paid out US$4.5 billion of public funds (US$2.2 billion/stadiums and US$2.3 billion related infrastructure)
One report states that the Stadium infrastructure estimates leaped in some places by 750%.
Does 2bn Rand over the estimate sound outrageous?

More rubbish, the original forecasts were for 5 to 6 hundred thousand revised down to 450 when the recession hit, estimates have the number of tourists between 450 & 500. I know a few people in the trade and they have been happy with the business, I've said elsewhere on this site that Match screwed over a lot of people and I think the Tourist Industry here was Naive and too trusting but in general there have been a lot of tourists spending a lot of money and having a good time, which is what everyone wanted.

The 3m visitor figure was rubbish. However reports say Match AG dumped 450,000 pre booked rooms onto the market.

Again where's the source on this because frankly there were nowhere near that amount of unsold tickets, empty seats maybe but Corporate sponsors left thousands of seats empty. I have to say I have never heard that the govt stepped in to buy tickets and then sold them on at a loss & it frankly seems incredible.

FIFA admitted on May 5th that 300k tickets remained unsold after their firesale in April'
Another report about ticket subsidisation
'We know our fans are poor,’ stated the LOC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Danny Jordaan. ‘So we have decided to accommodate them.’
Unfortunately, subsidisation eroded the government’s main revenue stream from the event. Group tickets selling for US$20 and final match tickets for US$150, were described as the cheapest tickets in World Cup history. A further 120,000 were earmarked for free distribution,.'
Germany as host last time, made their profit in the ticket sales.

The points about FIFA basically taking the top but leaving the bill is pretty spot on FIFA and their umbrella organisations have done good and bad but they were never going to be left with anything other than a massive profit and the clampdown on local traders made the area around the stadium feel clinical and un-African. The local organising committee to their credit tried to give traders the opportunity to trade outside of these zones, the fan walk in Cape Town seemed to become more relaxed as the tournament went on and more and more street vendors were popping up.

FiFA do take 95% of the profits and exist in a bizarre tax free bubble.

[Cuyahoga]

I've three words for Tom Humphries ' Last Man Standing' .

[endabob1]

5 new stadium expenditure USD 1.4bn x 8 ? = >11bn rand upgraded stadia cost USD 300m = Rand 2.4bn

SA paid out US$4.5 billion of public funds (US$2.2 billion/stadiums and US$2.3 billion related infrastructure)
One report states that the Stadium infrastructure estimates leaped in some places by 750%.
Does 2bn Rand over the estimate sound outrageous?

Not outrageous but I question the numbers because of context really, in late 2008 & most of 2009 the Rand was depreciating heavily and was trading as low as 10.50 to the usd & over 13 to the Euro. This was the real cause of increased costs, ironically the rand has since recovered and is back trading at normal levels 7/8 with the USD & 9/10 against the Euro, partly because of the perceived strength of the economy helped by an estimated 1.5% increase in GDP as a direct result of hosting the World Cup.
I also question who foots the bill, the Cape Town stadium was built at the insistence of national government, admittedly the Western Cape is unique in having a non ANC provincial government & Cape Town City Council so the costs were not borne entirely by the host city.

The 3m visitor figure was rubbish. However reports say Match AG dumped 450,000 pre booked rooms onto the market.

I agreed with the Match fact, I know Match screwed people over, they block-booked rooms and then when their extortionate packages didn't sell they dumped them, I know of one instance where an entire golf resort was dropped like this, an ENTIRE RESORT!!!!

FIFA admitted on May 5th that 300k tickets remained unsold after their firesale in April'
Another report about ticket subsidisation
'We know our fans are poor,’ stated the LOC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Danny Jordaan. ‘So we have decided to accommodate them.’
Unfortunately, subsidisation eroded the government’s main revenue stream from the event. Group tickets selling for US$20 and final match tickets for US$150, were described as the cheapest tickets in World Cup history. A further 120,000 were earmarked for free distribution,.'
Germany as host last time, made their profit in the ticket sales.

FiFA do take 95% of the profits and exist in a bizarre tax free bubble.

So over One Month before the tournament started <10% of tickets hadn't been sold, after that they went on open sale which resulted in massive queues and near riots as people tried to get tickets. I know from trying to buy tickets that every game in Cape Town sold out, I also know from going to games in Cape Town that there were as many as 5k empty seats at those games from unused corporate tickets. Some of the smaller cities had problems but >300k would mean that on average every stadium had 10% unsold tickets, in addition to the unused corporate seats in the early rounds would have left half empty stadiums. I can think of 3 or 4 first round games where I thought there were swathes of empty seats, but not in Cape Town, Durban or the 3 JHB/Pretoria stadiums which were the biggest grounds.
I haven't seen or heard the Danny Jordaan quote before, but I have no reason to doubt its authenticity. I know that anyone who worked on the stadiums were given tickets but that was arranged >1 year ago and the 20$ tickets were in place from the start, again I know this because I bought 20 of them. The idea was to get locals into games and how successful that was is questionable because of the online booking and complicated draw system where you give FIFA your cash for 3 months and hope you see it again.
The subsidisation of tickets was always in the plans, to blame it for the lack of profits is like Tesco saying it lost money because it was selling value baked beans at 10c a tin. Those deals are not designed to make money they're designed to lure people in, in Tescos case to spend extra on high mark up products but in this instance to try and show the world a real African world cup. From that perspective I think the LOC can only claim partial success at best.

[geysir]

Yeah but would Tesco lure people in with loss leaders to purchase stuff from franchises owned by somebody else
The subsidisation of tickets was certainly appropriate and to be applauded. Just the point is, that the ticket sales is where the host country has a chance to make ends meet. That was not possible in SA. Maybe they could have negotiated with FIFA to compensate for this predictable loss of income source from ticket sales.

[endabob1]

Fair point Geysir, but I can't see FIFA giving anything back that quietly. They would rather make 2.4b and then have a huge fanfare about investing a couple of million in some centres in the townships which Blatter could be photographed opening

[seand]

Yeah but would Tesco lure people in with loss leaders to purchase stuff from franchises owned by somebody else
The subsidisation of tickets was certainly appropriate and to be applauded. Just the point is, that the ticket sales is where the host country has a chance to make ends meet. That was not possible in SA. Maybe they could have negotiated with FIFA to compensate for this predictable loss of income source from ticket sales.

It was my understanding that practically all revenue from ticket sales goes to FIFA.

[geysir]

It was my understanding that practically all revenue from ticket sales goes to FIFA.

See Page 5

'The national football federation of the ‘winning’ country establishes a World Cup Organising Committee (WCOC) whose task is to build the infrastructure and to plan and conduct the World Cup contests. In the case of the World Cup 2006 (WC 2006) this was the Deutscher Fußball Bund (DFB). FIFA provides a grant to the WCOC and the organising committee receives all revenues from the ticket sales.'

2.7m tickets were sold at WC2006
German public purse got Eur40m from ticket sales. I suppose that is a drop compared to the investment.
The WCOC in 2006 made Eur140m gross profit, from that it paid out Eur40m to FIFA, Eur40m in taxes and Eur60m goes to the DFB and the German Soccer League.

Stadiums costs Eur 1.5bn a 1/3 of that came from the public purse.
Host City Infrastructure Eur 3.6bn
Germany claimed 15m extra visitors , tourist industry gained Eur400m, retail sales Eur2bn - drink?