Advantages and Disadvantages to Bring World Cup to US - Research Paper Example

Research advantages and disadvantages to bring World Cup Soccer to US Soccer is a game of incredible esteem globally in the current times. Throughout the twentieth century, the game has gained enormous heights of fan following but America has been an exception in this case lagging behind in the race. The global popularity of soccer in the United States (US) has been less than the other countries. This can be evident from the quotes of an American book, Offside, “The sport the world made its own was association football, the child of Britain’s global presence…..This simple and elegant game, unhampered by complex rules and equipment, which could be practiced on any more or less flat open space of the required size, made its way through the world entirely on its merits. But not in the United States” (Markovits & Hellerman, 2001, p.7). Sports culture is what people breathe, read, discuss, analyze, compare, and historicize and the less popularity of soccer in the US may be a reason of cultural hegemonic sports culture in the US which may lead to the domination of other sports like baseball, basketball, tennis and so on over the soccer extravaganza (Markovits & Hellerman, 2001, p.9). However the craze for soccer is gaining speed in America and a transition has taken place from soccer pioneers to soccer-literate and are gradually directing towards the creation of the road to soccer-passionate by the soccer fans (Saporito, 2010). The Men’s Soccer World Cup held in 1994 saw almost near-capacity crowds at stadiums around the United States and attracted large domestic television audiences. Coupled with this success, the Major League Soccer (MLS) was founded in 1996 with money flowing from large owners and influential investors accelerating the games’ recognition with high media coverage. Women’s football became the most popular game in the United States nowadays followed by the phenomenal World Cup shootout victory over China by the United States Women’s national team in 1999 paving the way for the Women’s United Soccer Association’s (WUSA) founding in 2001 with huge inflow of investments (Richard & Nagel, 2007). The US bidding committee has also started bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup for bringing this mega event in their country. This paper will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of bringing the World Cup to the United States with the subsequent impacts on the social, economic, and environmental dimension of the country. Emphasis is given on the research of secondary literary resources. Justifications of the statements are provided with examples and graphical analysis has been also adapted in order to have a clearer view. Social impact The extensive television coverage of the 2010 South Africa World Cup and the growing popularity of the game have created unrealistic benefits of hosting World Cup in the United States (Coates, n.d., p.3). The social impact on the United States for hosting this mega event is manifold. On this ground the positive impact as well as the negative impact of the Soccer World Cup on the US society needs to be discussed. Positive impacts or advantages Soccer bears a unique democratic perspective among the other sports involving team work. It does not matter whether the person is tall or short, a skinny African kid, white or black. A look at the success story can be defining this. The best player in the world, Argentinas Lionel Messi, is barely 5 ft. 7 in. (174 cm). Samuel Eto who is a successful Cameroonian footballer was raised in the seaside city of Douala and he describes his initial child hood way of living as “very, very humble”. Character, self-confidence, and drive are the innate qualities which led Eto to be one of the superstars of the European football and a role idol of a huge number of global youth. Professional soccer is a giant meritocracy with millions and millions of people all over the world share their superstar’s dream of glory. Bringing world Cup to the United States will infuse the virtues of this moral culture and strengthening of democratic feelings among the common mass (Carlin, 2010). Educational awareness is a phenomenon which is exaggerated through the soccer propaganda. It is a great platform for spreading awareness of how to control and combat AIDS and other diseases. FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, Nike, Adidas run AIDS- awareness and education campaigns linked specifically to Soccer (Carlin, 2010). AIDS is a disease of significant predominance in the United States with 50% black African American , 27% Whites and 19% Hispanics/Latinos was diagnosed with HIV AIDS (HIV statistics, 2011). Thus, bringing the World Cup in the United States will definitely increase the awareness for the disease alleviation. Corporate vice president of global brand management for Nike, Trevor Edward states that emotional connection with soccer has been the greatest and with the sports comes a tribal instinct. People watching the game in the television as well as in the stadium gets injected with cross cultural dimensions and gets acquainted with many cultures of the globe (Carlin, 2010). For the effort of bringing the FIFA World Cup to the United States in 2018 or 2022 Academy Award-nominated director Spike Lee has joined the Board of Directors for the USA Bid Committee. An ardent sports fan Lee has a tremendous passion for international soccer and the Arsenal Football Club of the English Premier League. Lee formerly became the 40,000th season ticket-holder for F.C. Internationale Milano, a persistent contender in Italy’s Serie A and Europe. The Vice president of the bidding committee stated that the Lee’s passion for the game will be incorporated into his voice in the development of the bid. He will add a unique valuable perspective to the board of directors. Lee also stated that, “The sport of soccer has a global unifying aspect that allows it to break down social barriers and sets it among other universal languages such as music and the visual arts” (News & Features, 2010). Former US president President William Jefferson Clinton also joined the Bid committee to promote the development of bringing the World Cup to the United States (News & Features, 2010). Negative impacts or disadvantages Stress and stimulation seeking theory views sport act as a stressor and thereby creates the Sport in this role provides a socially acceptable mechanism with excitement and stimulation and leads to vulnerability of the aggressive behavior among the individuals. The nature of the playing mechanism of soccer is aggressive (Douvis, 2008, p.24). Crime rates are assumed to increase during this mega events. With the increase in the infiltration of people from all over the world will a have a tendency of upward pressure in the crime rates regarding these events. The Women’s football has been many times attached with crimes from 1970s to 2000. The administration should be stringent in administering the crime rates (Hellerman & Markovits, n.d., p.14). Prostitution associated with these mega events is a social problem which crops up. With large amount of money involved with these sports events. Super Bowl is a large sporting event and is also prime target for sex traffickers because of the escalated demand enthralled by the thousands of men visiting the events and spend their weekend for fun. It has been estimated that at least 10,000 sex workers has been infiltrated into Miami. Following the year, several stringent efforts were adopted in order to curb this down. Despite these efforts, a large number of women and children are sexually exploited. Bills and laws have been passed for toughening the human trafficking in the Super Bowl Games (Holocomb, 2012). Economic impacts Cost of hosting the World Cup The cost of hosting mega events like Soccer World Cup is a significant topic of discussion and provides scope to understand the intensity of budget allocation required for executing such large events. Basically, two broad types of cost of hosting can be identified for putting on such an event. They can be classified into direct and natural costs. The costs include security and public safety, sanitation and clean up, stadium renovation, street upgrades, and expansion of public transit facilities and so on. These are really huge costs which are to be taken into account rigorously. From the reports it can be found out that the German Organizing Committee allocated 300000 Euros, i.e, around $390,000 to the host cities for the expenses including insurance, decorations, places for warming up, etc but it was revealed later that the allocations were insufficient. The largest expense has been identified for the stadium construction and renovation and there lies a huge gap between the projected estimation and actual costs. South Africa’s bid in 2010 games were with a proposed budget of about $225 million for stadiums and $421 million overall but the actual figures far exceeded the projected rates. The actual cost for stadium expenses exceeded the planned level of $225 million to $2.13 billion and the overall expenses jumped similarly from $421 million to over $5 billion (Coates, n.d, pp. 18-19). Fig.1 (Coates, n.d, p.19). From the above figure it can be seen that the actual costs far exceeded the projected cost estimation. So the stadium costs have to be taken into account by the US administration for game hosting purposes. Hidden costs Extortion money demanded by the foreign soccer clubs from towns seeking to host them for training is another hidden cost which needs to be incorporated. Reports reveal that Brazil demanded $3.3 million of Hiroshima City to guarantee the club would use that city for training camp while a Japanese village “with a population of 1,400 people spent nearly $700,000 to get the Cameroon team to practice there”. Saudi Arabian Team demanded the local committee to put a mosque in the hotel and the American Team demanded a room with a billiard table. Such costs are majorly hidden but these are thought to have to greater impacts on the economy and a subject matter of thinking by the bid committee (Coates, n.d, pp. 19-20). Opportunity Cost Another type of cost which is deemed to have economic impacts is the opportunity costs. However, it is hard to document but its potential is immense. The opportunity costs reflect the value of the next best opportunity. The identification of this is difficult to know but there are several ways by which the taxpayer dollars can be spent in order to provide better return to the society than spending money on the World Cup. A considerable cost of hosting the event is the requirement for security and public safety. It is difficult to find the specific estimates of the costs to the US bid cities and to gain an idea drawing inferences from the other events may be useful. For the Athens Olympics in 2004, the security cost was estimated at $1.5 billion. 30,000 police were involved in security for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. In Germany, assessment of the threats to the events was processed through National Information and Cooperation Center with collaboration with the German police, Interpol, and intelligence services. The Germans also classified several matches as high risk events with probability of trouble with clashes with the boisterous fans. Similarly, the US bid also intends to have similar venues in US host cities which signals for additional unknown costs attached with sanitation, and public health apart from costs associated with events held within the stadiums. Several instances in the USA can be mentioned in this respect. In 2002, the Super Bowl in New Orleans was designated a “National Special Security Event”, putting security in the hands of the Secret Service, and boosting cost for the event to $6 million. In 2003, San Diego spent more than $2 million on Super Bowl Sunday in 2003. There was an additional expenditure of around $350,000 with an additional $245,000 for traffic control by Police and fire and rescue overtime in Tampa for the 2009 Super Bowl. The mayors and the city managers claim that assigning the staff from one job to another is an opportunity cost. The value of anything the workers would have completed as a substitute of their Super Bowl-related duties is a real cost of hosting the incident. Compared to Olympics, one advantage for the US bid for the 2018 or 2022 World Cup is that the stadiums for the events already exists and no specialized locations like velodromes or bobsled tracks needs to be constructed (Coates, n.d, pp. 21-22). Lost output Predictions of outputs made by the US agency AECOM in the 1994 world cup was at the level of approximately $4 billion but it heavily contradicted with the actual results which stood at a negative drop in gross output to approximately $ 9 billion. However, further studies of the bid committee reveal an accelerated and positive output growth in the hosting of 2018 or the 2022 World Cup (Coates, n.d, p 10). The graph below depicts the situation. Fig.2 (Coates, n.d, p 10). Environmental impacts Positive impacts The USA bid committee in their study released that a conservative domestic economic impact of $5 billion will be generated in the United States if they host the FIFA World Cup in 2018 or 2022. The analysis further estimates an estimated new job creation between that between 65,000 and 100,000 would be created in the host cities during the preparation and operation of the tournament in the year of the event. USA relies vastly on the economic practice at AECOM (formerly Economics Research Associates) which is the world leader in real estate consulting services. The Economics practice at AECOM has made important contributions to some of the world’s most innovative and successful projects and maintaining optimal balances of the environmental resources like energy, water, transportation facilities and so on. The company employs around 45,000 people and serves clients in more than 100 countries and has annual revenue in excess of $6 billion and USA is largely depending on the estimates and forecasts of this company for tightening the environmental measures for the mega event (News and Feature, 2010). Negative impacts Hooliganism and terrorism Security must always be a prime consideration when organizing a FIFA World Cup. With the terrorist attack on 11 September 2001 still vivid in memory, the event is massively vulnerable to such tragedies. Instances of hooliganism also can be an issue which can affect this mega event. Recent impacts of hooliganism between West Ham and Millwall also threatens and challenges of the security systems of the country. Conclusion The analysis of the paper suggests that the United States has the potential of carrying out the Soccer World Cup defeating the low popularity of the game but it is subject to some constraints. The structure of the American system dominated by a hegemonic environment in sporting events led to the suppression of soccer upon the other prevalent popular games. But the popularity is rising and the study reveals that there is an expected $5 billion impact from hosting the soccer tournament. But previously it has been seen that the predictions reversed and the output fell drastically. The economic costs have to be taken proper care and within the stipulated time span of 8 to 10 years the country have to gear up and tighten up its policies so that a successful venture can be established. References Carlin, J. (2010).The Global Game, Time Specials 175 (23), 60-71, Retrieved on May 25 2012, from: http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=6&hid=113&sid=f81a8b64-858d-4d3c-8ced-d0a80dd6fea6%40sessionmgr113&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=51238852 Coates, D. (n.d.). World Cup Economics: What Americans Need to Know about a US World Cup Bid, Retrieved on May 25, 2012, from: http://www.umbc.edu/economics/wpapers/wp_10_121.pdf Douvis, I. (2008). Perceived Impacts of Sport, 4, Retrieved on May 25 2012, from: http://www.choregia.org/4b3.pdf Hellerman, S. L. & Markovits, A. S. (n.d.). Women’s’ soccer in the United States, Yet another American Exceptionalism, Retrieved on May 25 2012, from http://pierretristam.com/pdfs/wc4.pdf HIV statistics. (2011). 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