 |
| The Fonte Novo goes down |
 |
| The Castelão, no more |
Belo Horizonte | 743,4 | 10,6 |
Brasilia | 696,0 | 9,9 |
Cuiaba | 342,1 | 4,9 |
Curitiba | 222,0 | 5,3 |
Fortaleza | 532,6 | 6,7 |
Manaus | 499,5 | 11,1 |
Natal | 400,0 | 8,9 |
Porto Alegre | 270,0 | 4,4 |
Recife | 532,0 | 11,6 |
Rio de Janeiro | 1100,0 | 14,5 |
Salvador | 1605,0 | 29,2 |
São Paulo | 1070,0 | 22,3 |
average | 667,7 | 11,6 |
I have the nagging fear that I am repeating myself here at geostadia. The complexity of the World Cup has become so ordinary that I'm not able to tell the tale of crime, obsfucation, robbery and incompetence any more simply unless I get some inputs from other people. Fortunately, there are many of you out there reading the blog and thanks to your input I've got another spin on the 2014 World Cup stadia disaster: cost per seat.
I launched a larger version of the above table at the ABRAJI conference in Sao Paulo last week. The complete table shows that there has been a 170% increase in construction costs since 2009, with no ceiling in sight. The longer the stadiums get delayed the more they will cost to finish. We know already that the stadiums in Manaus, Natal, Brasilia, and Cuiaba will have no functional sporting use after the event. What I have isolated above are the construction costs and the costs per seat.
Thanks to Ian Nuttall from stadiumbusinesssummit I received news that RCD Espanyol in Barcelona recently constructed their 40,500 seat stadium at a cost of 1850 Euros, or 4162,5 Reales per seat. The above table shows that only the stadiums in Cuiaba and Porto Alegre come close and the former is an intentionally manufactured elefante branco. The average for the 12 World Cup stadiums is nearly three times that of the Barcelona stadium where surely things like concrete, land, and labor are more expensive than they are in Brazil. Hmmmmm...If I were a federal prosecutor it would be hard to know where to start: collusion, theft, nepotism? Can you sue people for gross incompetence? Even the US$1,15 Billion Dallas Cowboys' stadium managed to keep the cost per seat at around U$10,450 (R$16,200). Wembley, the most overblown budget of all time was around R$22,000 a seat - exactly what Corinthians new stadium will cost. How is this possible?
The ABRAJI conference brought together a slew of investigative journalists working on exposing the horrors of mega-event planning in Brazil. Foremost among them were Andrew Jennings and Juca Kfuri, both of whom are working hard to expose the inner workings of FIFA and the CBF. Juca is under continual legal attack by the CBF and Andrew's long and dedicated work has started to unravel the FIFA family at the highest levels. We can only hope that someone will be able to get to João Havelange before he dies so he can spend his remaining years behind bars along with Ricardo Teixeira and the rest of the FIFA "family".
The very notion of the FIFA and IOC family was discussed by Jens Anderson of the Danish-based NGO Play the Game. In his talk at ABRAJI, he noted that we should think of sport as a community which would open things up to discussion and debate, remove us from patriarchal systems of historically situated privilege and eliminate the closed nature of international (and national) sport governing bodies. (the following is my interpretation of Jen's talk, and are not quotes attributable to him) When the IOC comes to town, they will have exclusive "everything" for the "Olympic Family" - meaning that if you've got the right blood or have somehow pushed your way in, you get the keys to the safe and the city. FIFA is a known international criminal organizations - their dirty laundry has piled up in the Swiss courts for a long time and may be aired fairly soon. The Olympics and the World Cup being emotion and excitement every so often, but wherever they touch down, the wreak debt, delusion, and devastation (not to mention amazing real-estate deals).
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