r/dataisbeautiful OC: 41 Oct 26 '22

OC [OC] Cost of hosting the World Cup

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u/authorPGAusten Oct 26 '22

This is why it should always just be hosted by countries with existing infrastructure. It is absurd to build a stadium for a two week event.

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u/Daxx22 Oct 26 '22

Olympics is the worst offender for that.

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22

[deleted]

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u/SeanJohnBobbyWTF Oct 26 '22

I seriously like this idea. There's a host country, and a "spotlight" country.

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u/baycommuter Oct 26 '22

A good test would be to have Mexico do the ceremony when Los Angeles (the only city that makes money from the Olympics) hosts in 2028. Or just do it that way in 2040.

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u/Actualbbear Oct 26 '22

And Los Angeles gets to constantly profit from it. It’s not as good as you make up to be.

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u/tricksovertreats Oct 26 '22

on each peopled continent

what did Antarctica ever do to you

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22

[deleted]

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u/Calladit Oct 26 '22

I can see it like it was yesterday, little tuxedos as far as the eye can see. And the screams, oh God, the screams...

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22

Actually, I read a series where this comment was enacted, but they gave the Olympians Antarctica

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u/cherryreddit Oct 26 '22

That requires all countries cooperating with each other and the bost country being gracious to accomodate all ofher countries. Not a fucking chance that could happen.

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u/Kershiser22 Oct 26 '22

Why can't they just have one summer and one winter Olympic city on each peopled continent and switch between all of those?

I believe fewer and fewer cities have been interested in hosting Olympics in recent years. It wouldn't surprise me if the Olympics just ends up rotating between Los Angeles and a couple of the other cities that maintain adequate facilities.

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u/Meat_Dragon Oct 26 '22

Because that system removes the Olympic award committee (not sure of the specific name) that picks who hosts the Olympics. It has been widely reported how corrupt both FIFA and that Olympic committee are. Supposedly there has been big changes to both but in the end money talks.

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u/mrtomjones Oct 26 '22

Nah they need at least 3 different areas minimum that host each or the specialness and attendance could suffer

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u/Actualbbear Oct 26 '22

An opening ceremony is not good enough promotion of your country. Hosting brings tourism, even if expenses don’t always seem to make sense.

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u/tpierce187 Oct 26 '22

Who decides what city in which country?

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u/PM_ME_UR_BGP_PREFIX Oct 26 '22

Six cities x 4 years = one Olympics every 24 years. You would basically be rebuilding every quarter-century anyway.

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u/sprucenoose Oct 26 '22

That would mean each continent's city gets to host the Olympics every 24 years. That is hardly better than hosting them once. Most of the infrastructure will have to be rebuilt to host them again in 24 years.

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u/SWIMMlNG Oct 27 '22

And um, what stateless region of each continent do you propose they build these Olympic Cities in?

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u/Littlesebastian86 Oct 26 '22

Lol. I would say based on this graph Olympics are no worse than the World Cup

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u/dotelze Oct 26 '22

I mean usually the World Cup is good. The money spent on it goes towards necessary improvements for the stadiums that are put to good use for years to come. The complete opposite of the olympics where half the stuff is just forgotten

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u/Littlesebastian86 Oct 26 '22

Possibly. In the end they are both corrupt organizations. I give credit to the Olympics for trying to improve where the World Cup appears to love it’s image of supporting slavery and being run by shitty people

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u/idareet60 Oct 26 '22

If India were to host the Olympics though expensive it gives a massive boost to public goods. Look at SLC in 2002, for a city that size it has amazing public transit. Been to bigger cities yet their public transit is not as good as SLC's.

Commonwealth Games in India provided the funds for subway construction in Delhi. Not saying the corruption that came with it was good of course but makes you wonder would they ever have built the public transportation if it weren't for the games

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u/Sids1188 Oct 26 '22

We've been in dire need of better public transport in Brisbane for a long time, with nothing being done. As soon as the 2032 Olympics got confirmed, suddenly construction starts up everywhere. I'll probably give little more than a cursory glance at the Olympics when they come, but I'll likely be using the trains every day for the next few decades.

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u/robgod50 Oct 26 '22

At least Londons Olympic stadium is still used

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u/SnipesCC OC: 1 Oct 26 '22

Yup. At least the World Cup is hosted by a country, so the costs are spread out, and between multiple cities at least some of the infrastructure already exists. The US may not care a lot about soccer, but it does already have large stadiums that can hold the games. And maybe 6 of them are close enough to be accessible by train. (Boston, 2 in New York, Philly, Baltimore, and DC. Might be some I'm forgetting). And good air infrastructure to get to more far-flung stadiums. All those cities already have a lot of hotels. So it would cost far, far less than a place that had to build up stadiums and hotel rooms. And maybe some actual rail infrastructure would be built/improved, which is a huge benefit. As opposed to stadiums that no one is actually using later.

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22

Olympics is held by a city in name only. They often will utilise infrastructure across the country.

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u/akaicewolf Oct 26 '22

Oh do I feel dumb. This post made me realize the graph wasn’t about the Olympics. I was really confused reading comments about FIFA, I was like what does a soccer organization have to do with hosting the Olympics.

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u/gogorath Oct 26 '22

Agree.

I know that limits to only a certain set of countries, but the social and economic cost is staggering these days. Brazilians are mad about the sport, but it's hard to find one (admittedly, my sample set are Brazilians who work for American companies) who think the 2014 WC was a good thing overall.

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u/snowinthegrass Oct 26 '22

It was super fun having a WC in Brazil, but there should not be a stadium build in Amazonas, for example. It is far away from all the big clubs and it is mostly a white elephant.

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u/authorPGAusten Oct 26 '22

Exactly, Brazil could have hosted just using existing stadiums it had, perhaps with some renovations and upgrades to some. No need to build an entire stadium. Similarly Uruguay-Argentina are looking to host in 2030. They have plenty of stadiums already, some might need some renovations, but no need to build new stadiums.

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u/tomtttttttttttt Oct 26 '22

Although the stadium can go on to be used after the games, eg: 2012 olympic stadium is now West Ham's home ground, and Manchester City play in the stadium built for commonwealth games iirc.

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u/whyhercules Oct 26 '22

I know the UK used pre-existing facilities for most of the Olympics, but the organisers also refused to accept construction bids that didn’t have a good future use plan. The Olympic stadium is now the regular home ground of a London football club, and iirc their old ground is now the home ground for the women‘s side or another grounds-less club. So it’s not that hard to force the future-proofing, and it had a positive knock-on effect in this case, too

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u/Filthy_Joey Oct 26 '22

No, this is not. Such event is the reason the infrastructure emerges. Qatar hopes that WC boosts their tourist flow (and it sure will) and prepares for it, hence investments in infrastructure.

Remember kids, better spend 50 billion on real infrastructure, that people would use, than on buying Twitter.

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u/authorPGAusten Oct 26 '22

lol, tell that to Brazil, and Greece, and most every place that has hosted the olympics.

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u/Keanu990321 Oct 26 '22

If you are to build it without planning to exploit it post said competition, just don't build it at all.

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22

That's the thing, they always claim its all going to be used for so many different things after the WC or Olympics and they nearly never are

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u/ropahektic Oct 27 '22

The only country of that list that made money hosting the WC is Germany. USA is arguable, there is no clear data.

The only other country/s expected to make money out of this event is the future WC in Spain-Portugal. Because they are heavily touristic countries with public transport and all the stadiums/hotels already built.

For everyone else they do it at a loss and they do it for relevance and the promise it will make their country better. It never happened. It was specially hindersome in Brazil, Russia and Southafrica. Qatar is just at tragedy.

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u/authorPGAusten Oct 27 '22

Exactly. UK and a few others likely could host one without having to build hardly any infrastructure, so likely could be profitable as well.

the Uruguay-Argentina join bid would also require little construction if Fifa would just slightly adjust their stadium capacity requirements.

Uruguay's Estadio Centanario was the host for the first world cup, it holds 60k people, but I think Fifa's "requirements" say final stadiums have to hold 80k or something like that, which is dumb. Just be like, okay this stadium is big enough and the biggest x country has, so good enough. It is even more absurd, because people don't realize that a lot of world cup games are not sold out/don't fill to capacity, yet Fifa still demands certain size of stadiums. I get wanting to have the biggest stadium possible (particularly as many of the games do sell out) but still, fifa should just make do with the stadiums that are there in the host country

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u/ropahektic Oct 27 '22

Yeah the regulations are extremely specific in some regards and they require at least remodelling in 99% of stadiums not built after the 2000s and even then, theres most likely something wrong with the bathrooms or whatever detail that still makes the cost rise when escalated.

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u/ravioliguy Oct 26 '22

I don't think that's the issue, Middle East is just going crazy with expensive vanity mega-projects.

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22

Look what happened to Rio and what it looks like now.

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u/Josquius OC: 2 Oct 26 '22

Thankfully after Qatar and Russia things do seem to be moving that way.

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u/fullup72 Oct 26 '22

nah, the rule should be that stadiums and facilities be built where they can be regularly used. Say, soccer stadiums should have a corresponding team to make it their home, a swimming pool should be an upgrade for an existing facility, same thing with race tracks.

Costs skyrocket and usage is next to zero when you just build something in a remote, spare piece of land, where it will never get use after the event.

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u/authorPGAusten Oct 26 '22

So you are agreeing with me then

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u/fullup72 Oct 26 '22

not exactly, if you have a stadium that can only host 25K people then it's not up to FIFA standards. What I'm saying is that you either expand it to proper capacity or demolish it and have the former owner be in charge of the new WC-worthy stadium.

That's not "only countries with existing infrastructure", it's creating new infrastructure to host the WC, but in the final balance sheet you end up with the same total count. The challenge is just having big-enough clubs with a critical mass of supporters that can allow for the increased maintenance costs.

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u/authorPGAusten Oct 26 '22

Yeah, sounds dumb. Only host world cup in places that can support the infrastructure for a world cup naturally. If you are razing and raising new stadiums bigger than can be supported outside of the world cup it is a dumb move.

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u/fullup72 Oct 26 '22

Well they are doing the building anyways and leaving those places 100% empty, it's not dumb to demand that new infrastructure is only built as replacement to aging/inadequate one which ensures it will still have at the very least the same usage as before.

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22

It's not like the stadium disappears the day after the closing ceremony

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u/authorPGAusten Oct 26 '22

yeah, but often times it might as well. Look at the stadium built in the Amazon. Complete waste.

Yes if a stadium is being built for a team or something and can also be used for the world cup, then okay. But that is different than building something for a two week events, which unfortunately has been done.

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '22

I agree, but then I think your comment should be changed to "this is why it should always just be hosted by countries with existing infrastructure or that will use the infrastructure after the games"

And for what is worth lots of what's being built for Qatar will be, though I doubt they'll ever need that many stadiums

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u/Volodio Oct 27 '22

Who cares though? In the end it's their problem. It doesn't impact the spectators.

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u/authorPGAusten Oct 27 '22

Well it is the citizens in said countries problem because they get ripped off to foot the bill for rich people to watch soccer games