The World Cup Without You (Fans)
What if one of the biggest sport-events of the world became one of the biggest failures in sport history? The first World Cup Championship on the African continent could turn into a disaster for the FIFA and South Africa. After facing challenges of building stadiums and improving the infrastructure, the host South-Africa might deal with a worst-case scenario: a World Cup without fans.
It started with a great idea- a billion dollar sport event in a soccer-fanatic continent. After decades of World Cups in Europe, Asia, or America FIFA declared South Africa to present the world the diversity, beauty, and uniqueness of the African continent.
Positive press-echoes around the world were the first result, but after a while the enthusiasm gave way to realism. Did South Africa knowing what they were getting into bringing the World Cup home?
South Africa is one of the richest African nations, but under the shining layer there lies a big dark spot - a great social layer of poverty. A small minority of the people are wealthy (to European Standards), with the majority living on just a few dollars a week. Officially 25% of the population is without a job – unofficially the numbers are way higher- around 40% of the South African are unemployed – most of those individuals are black South Africans from the Townships (kfw-entwicklungsbank – a German public development bank). The average income is roughly 350 Euros or $458 USD a month (kapstadt.org). One can imagine what is left after rent, food, and other costs (medicine, school-money, kids) are paid. All of those numbers don’t even mention the high crime rates that follow poverty.
Another problem is the impermeable wood of building companies, which build the football (soccer) stadiums. The stadiums have been the big question mark as they resembled skeletons rather than the planned football temples. Another big dilemma is the insufficient infrastructure. There are no linked bus-systems or similar transportation offered for the soccer-fans.
"This world championship should become an African world championship, however, up to now all involved parties don't want to come to the party." (Danny Jordaan)
So it’s quite logical that no one wants to travel to the World Cup in South Africa. This seems to be the opinion of most fans. The FIFA admits that there are still tickets for all stadiums and games - a novelty in the history of the FIFA. Although tour operators had to pay high fees to the FIFA, they are not selling their luxury trips and private boxes (nearly 60% of the boxes are still not sold- even in for the World Cup Final).
In England 6,000 of 29,000 tickets are still available, something that never happened before in the soccer fanatic Kingdom. For the three German matches (against Ghana, Serbia and Australia) only 1,916 tickets were sold (9%). According to the FIFA, the number of German football tickets sold was higher at 3,316, but this includes the 1,400 tickets for the player-families and sponsors. For the residents in South Africa the FIFA world championship ticket is priced at $20 USD, but that is way too expensive for most of the South African soccer fans (in the less developed parts of the country).
FIFA Secretary-General Jérôme Valcke said that two of the 3.1 million world championship tickets are sold. However, ticket agents are not the only ones that doubt two million tickets are already in the hands of football (soccer) fans.
- Tjaden F. Bricout - RotoKingdom Staff Writer