Russia will host the World Cup in 2018, while Qatar has won the rights to host the 2022 version. The Russian bid was picked ahead of England, Spain-Portugal and Holland-Belgium to host the 2018 event. Qatar won over the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea to stage the tournament in 2022. Both decisions were made on Thursday following a secret ballot of football's world governing body FIFA's 22 executive members in Zurich. Russia received nine votes in the first round of voting and an outright majority of 13 in the second round, while Qatar obtained an outright majority of 14 in the fourth round of voting for 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who did not go to Zurich for the announcement, thanked FIFA for what he described as "a sign of trust" for his country.{jcomments on}

Naturally there were many disappointed fans and professionals. Dan Jones, Head of the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, praised England’s bid team on their efforts and the commercial strength and development of English football, which provide a platform for future success. “Whilst congratulations go to Russia, it’s very disappointing that the bid team’s efforts and the unique features of England’s bid did not deliver a positive result. England would have hosted a fantastic World Cup event, built on the solid foundations of the strengths of the game in this country, in particular the passion of supporters and two decades of investment in stadia facilities and community development activities benefiting communities in the UK and abroad. From the depths of despair of the 1980s, English football has successfully invested in facilities, people and activities to develop the most commercially successful and popular domestic competitions in the world. Over £3.5 billion has been invested in stadia, putting England ahead of rival European bidding nations; the Premier League generates more interest and revenue from the World’s broadcasters than any other domestic competition – from 2010/11 the Premier League’s overseas broadcast rights revenue is over £480m from over 200 territories; and for many years English football has been a leader in sport for using the power of football for community activities both in the UK and abroad. We hoped that the proven depth of passion for football amongst domestic communities, together with the unrivalled worldwide interest in the game in this country, would have stood England’s bid ahead of others. We believed England would have delivered the very best welcome and World Cup experience for all and, from a commercial perspective, would have enabled FIFA to generate greater funds for investment in football development around the world.” Indeed the England team did a sterling job particularly the efforts made over the years by the international division of the FA. In terms of political nous, however, the England bid was dead in the water soon after the poor decision to appoint Lord Triesman as head of the FA and certainly before his taped accusations of bribery to a lady friend. The later attacks by The Sunday Times and the decision by the BBC to provide an unbalanced FIFA-phobe journalist with airtime and a programme budget, did little additional damage to what had already been done. The British electorate might want to question, nevertheless, whether the money spent on the Panorama programme justified the possible waste of £15m plus in bid costs. In the FIFA Exco voting, England only won one vote outside its own. For England, with the world’s richest and arguably most popular league around the world, there should be an inquiry about the relative unpopularity of the FA. The Independent Guide to the International Business of Football www.soccerbusinessworld.com © No reproduction in whole or part without the prior approval of the copyright holder.

To move to the positive, Russia's plan for improving football facilities in host cities are also in line with FIFA's long-term plans for developing the sport, especially in regions with outdated infrastructure. Russia has proposed staging the tournament in 13 cities, grouped into four clusters that stretch from exclave of Kaliningrad on the borders of the European Union to Yekaterinburg in the Urals on the fringe of Siberia. Putin's promise to scrap visa's was seen as crucial to his country's prospects of winning the vote as nationals of almost all countries outside the former Soviet Union require the paperwork to visit Russia. There have been concerns that Russia's vast size, it's remoteness from other countries and what is seen as a relatively weak transport system could make travelling around the country problematic. All the host cities are in the European region of the country and Putin has promised that fans will be able to travel on public transport for free during the event. Russia for 2018 was the choice of our panel of experts.

Qatar is harder to explain. Our panel of experts chose Australia followed by Japan for the 2022 final. However, a recently published report by Madigan Cluff into the value of TV rights did suggest that Qatar was the least problematic choice. Madigan Cluff show that some of the impact of moving the World Cup around the world can be mitigated by moving when matches are played in the local time of the host country. Of countries competing for FIFA votes at present there are effectively two groups. They say: “For 2018 the matches will take place broadly within a European time zone with only Russia 2 hours forward of Central European Time likely to cause any issue. Even here a match kicking off at 5pm will be a 7pm match in most of Europe, and an 8pm match for the countries on the Western fringe. Only across the Atlantic does the time of day become difficult with Sao Paulo seeing the match at midnight, New York at 1am and the West Coast at 5am. For most of Asia Pacific the match will appear in daytime. From a European viewing perspective the 2022 decision can create winners and losers. If Qatar wins the scheduling can be similar to Russia and therefore not much of a challenge. However the risk is much greater if the tournament moves further East. Korea or Japan is 7 hours out of alignment with Central European time so a match starting at 1pm, runs at 8pm in most of Europe and 9pm on the Western fringe of Europe. Australia is a real challenge 8 hours out of alignment with Europe and 11 hours out of alignment with Brazil.”

Qatar's Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani who was in attendance in Zurich, and he thanked FIFA for "believing in change". The oil-rich Gulf state, with a population estimated to be around 1.7m, will be the first Middle Eastern country to host a major sporting event, and a central crux of their bid centred around boosting the region's global profile. The country's economy is expected to grow by 15.5% in 2010 and by 21% in 2011, Qatar will have no financial problem in constructing stadiums for the event, with the total cost of construction work expected to be around £3bn. Under the proposals submitted to FIFA, Qatar would renovate three stadiums and build nine new ones, with the 12 venues divided among seven host cities. This includes the proposed 86,000-capacity Lusail Stadium, which is expected to be completed by 2019 and is scheduled to host the opening and final matches. Bid organisers say that all the stadiums will be climate-controlled and zero-carbon emitting to combat what could be temperatures as high as 50C during the two hottest months of the year in Qatar. The country has also launched a major spending programme in recent years to accommodate it's growing population, spending on rail, air and road links. Plans are also in place to complete a metro system to connect each stadium by 2017, meaning travel time between venues would be no more than an hour. The problem of the state of public finances and the believability of government guarantees will have reflected negatively on the Spanish and Portuguese bids and upon the USA. Australia's strong bid which had government backing has witnessed devastation with the revelation that the team received just one vote from the FIFA executive committee and was the first nation eliminated. It emerged that after Australia was eliminated, rank outsider Japan - which received three first round votes - was eliminated in the second round. South Korea, which is facing military conflict, was the next to be eliminated leaving a head-to-head contest between Qatar and the United States with the Middle Eastern country prevailing 14-8. A bitterly disappointed FFA chief executive Ben Buckley said afterwards: ''We were confident that we had stronger numbers than that.'' When asked by The Age whether Australian representatives had been lied to after being promised their vote by about five FIFA committee members, Buckley said: ''I wouldn't use those words but we were confident that we had more support than that.''

Tweet

Tweetle                      Paylaş                        Paylaş