Jan 19 2010
World Cup 2010 – the one-continent affair
During my visit to South Africa in December/January I was impressed by the progress made with preparations for the FIFA Football World Cup. Especially the stadium in Cape Town is very impressive. No doubt, the country will be ready on time.
Still, I believe the event won’t be a success – with success defined as “many football supporters coming to SA from all over the world – Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa – to celebrate football in a truly multi-culti environment.”
That won’t happen. This event will mainly be a South African and African affair, with only few visitors from other continents. And out of Europe, the biggest disappointment will be Germany.
As positive and “begeistert” as Germans were about the “new South Africa” in the years after 1994, as negative about and disappointed with the country they are now. The mood has taken a 180 degree turn for the worse. As “übertrieben” as their positiveness was for SA in the early years, as “übertrieben” their disappointment with the country is now.
Yes, in my view the Germans have consistently failed to assess the country properly since 1994 (maybe also before then!)
The main reasons for their current negativity: the high level of crime and (most importantly) the killing spree on Zimbabwians last year. This event shocked Germany in its foundations. Blacks going against blacks…unimaginable. The same blacks who scored points by not going for the whites after 1994, now go for blacks…difficult to comprehend.
So, very few Germans will be in South Africa for the World Cup. German football guru and FIFA executive member Franz Beckenbauer said that much in this morning’s Financial Times Deutschland. This is what the FTD wrote:
“Franz Beckenbauer blamed the bad safety situation and high ticket prices for the slow worldwide sales of tickets. Who can afford €5,000 or €6,000 for a week in South Africa, he asked. According to the article only 6,700 of the 21,000 tickets available for the 3 German pre-round matches (Ghana, Serbia and Australia) have so far been sold. And to date only 25,000 tickets have been bought by Germans for games not involving the German team, Beckenbauer said.”
These are (1) shockingly low numbers and (2) not the message distributed by FIFA and the SA organising committee. The latter always tells of the “big demand for tickets from abroad” and the “huge number of tickets already sold”.
The question remains: Are the SA organizing committee and FIFA going to do something (eg. drop the prices and start a huge global ad campaign), or are they simply going to continue pretending all is honky dory and the event is heading towards a happy end?
So, now FIFA can’t understand why the Germans are so negative about the World Cup and about visiting South Africa…look at this article.
My, my. Mandela didn’t, Mbeki couldn’t and Zuma hasn’t done it to date…when are SA’s leaders going to grasp that Europeans find the crime levels in SA appalling? And completely unacceptable?
No-one of the people I know in Stuttgart, and no-one of my friends’ friends, will be going to SA for the World Cup, although many of them have season tickets for the local football team and sit in the stadium every weekend. Why won’t they be going? The same (and only) explanation is ALWAYS given, when I ask: It’s too dangerous with all the crime going on…
Do I try to convince them otherwise? No, I don’t. Because there is a real risk that something will happen to a friend, and I don’t want to live with the “yes, you said it would be OK” here in Stuttgart for the rest of my life.
So, Mr. Valcke, “it’s the crime, stupid”.
Christo
I received more information today backing up my view that SA’s FIFA Football World Cup might be in danger. It came in the form of a newsletter written by the owner of the Whale Cottage bed & breakfast “group”.
Here is what she wrote:
Ticket sales also seem to show that the World Cup may become a “FIFA flop”, with sales from international soccer fans being far below the initial estimates.
Only the England supporter numbers appear to be on target. The downside of this is that more bookings for tickets will go to South African fans living in host cities, which means that they do not need accommodation, restaurants , nor shopping, thus bursting the World Cup bubble for the hospitality industry. It is said that FIFA has oversold the benefit of the World Cup, which takes place in a world economy that has not yet shaken off the recession fully.
Exorbitant airline costs, and the cost of the MATCH accommodation/ticket/flight packages, with a 30% commission add-on, are also alienating soccer fans. Read more information about World Cup ticket sales.
And here:
Sentiment towards the World Cup in the tourism industry, particularly in Cape Town, was deflated by the FIFA accommodation agency MATCH announcement that it had axed over 400 000 room nights nationally, and about 65 000 room nights in the Western Cape, due to a lack of demand.
MATCH said it had released accommodation that falls outside the 11 June – 11 July World Cup dates, and accommodation that is further than 70km from a host city, as well as time-share weeks, an accommodation type which has not proven to be popular. MATCH has until April to make further accommodation cuts without having to pay a cancellation penalty to its contracted accommodation suppliers.
Non-MATCH contracted accommodation is also feeling the World Cup pinch, in that few accommodation establishments are fully booked in Cape Town, while in the rest of the province bookings are minimal. In Camps Bay, for example, the average booking rate is 21% of available rooms, but this average has been brought down by a number of guesthouses who have not taken any bookings at all, hoping for a ‘magic’ booking for this period. Whale Cottage Camps Bay is 40 % booked to date for the World Cup.
I (still) don’t see FIFA and SA advertising on German television to convince German football fans to take the trip down south. Why not?
(Read my previous posts on this topic under the tag “FIFA World Cup 2010″ in the righthand column.)
Christo
The latest tally for tickets sold has been published by FIFA and the situation looks bad (but not desperate, as I suspected it would look by now).
Here is how it was reported:
“Of the 2,2 million tickets sold to date, South Africans have bought just under 1 million (42%) tickets, followed by the United States (about 120,000), the United Kingdom (68,000), Germany (32,000), Australia (30,000) and Canada (16,000).”
Somehow, the stats don’t add up. Yeh, you might say, the remaining million was sold to countries not mentioned here. OK, but then there must be countries with more than 16,000 tickets (Canada).
Something doesn’t add up. Anyway, I’m happy (and surprised) to see that at least 32,000 Germans will be flying down. That’s about 30,000 more than I had expected…
Christo