On Dec 02, 2010 I wrote Send us to the World Cup, on the subject of Rants, Politics, and Football.

Lots of mithering on Twitter today about how England aren't hosting the 2018 World Cup and Russia are. Well, let's think about this. We're in a big financial crisis where people don't have any money. Some might say that that's more important than splurging an infinite amount of cash on the World Cup. But that's a miserable and football-hating point of view, and I like football. So let's think about it a different way.

How much does it cost to host the World Cup? According to the Telegraph and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, "it would cost £5.3 billion to stage the World Cup but bring a net economic benefit of £3.2 billion." So it'll cost £2.1 billion. That's £2,100,000,000. A phenomenal amount of money. But people want the world cup; what can you do?

I know. Let's imagine that a ticket to a World Cup game costs £90 (average match ticket price for 2010 was $139). So, a trip to the World Cup might cost this:

Tickets to 5 games	£90 × 5 = £450
Three weeks in a hotel¹	£50 × 21 = £1050
Return flights to Russia²	£250
TOTAL	£1750

So that £2.1 billion will buy a three week stay in Moscow with tickets to watch five matches for over a million people. Let's say the government only bought the tickets for half a million people, and spent that left-over billion quid on making schools better. That's still five hundred thousand residents of Britain who get to see the World Cup.³

Good luck getting that many into Old Trafford.

Gotta be able to get this rate, surely, if you buy this many tickets. If not, HMG need to boot their price negotiators in the arse, since I got Travelodge rooms for £19/night earlier this year ^
According to Skyscanner I can fly return from LHR to Moscow for £219. At that rate I might go there on holiday. ^
Free benefit: everyone who cares about the World Cup will be in Russia and I won't have to be annoyed by flags on every fucking car on the motorway. ^

Bob Hazard

Valid points, but you are more likely to do well if you host. Especially for England playing at home.

sil

Bob: we want to win so much that we're prepared to pay £2,100,000,000 to do so? Can't we give that money to the FA to spend on improving football in schools?

Julian Andres Klode

The pound sign becomes "u00a3" on Planet GNOME and the multiplication sign is displayed as "u00d7", making it hard to read your entry. It seems to be caused by this pipes.yahoo.com thing.

sil

Julian: yeah, I noticed that myself. Annoyed; I hate tracking down that sort of problem :(

A "net economic benefit of £3.2B" surely means that there is 3.2B profit - ie spend 5.3B, get back 8.5B.

Although the free benefit that you mention still stands.

Giacomo

I think you're reading it wrong...

"The PwC report estimates that extra tourists could inject an estimated £4.1 billion to the economy". So the boost can't be just 3.2 bn; that 3.2 is probably the *net* value, once costs are taken out -- i.e. the total revenues would really be 3.2 + 5.3 = 8.5 bn, with a 3.2 net gain.

These numbers are for the whole economy; HMRC would probably get an extra (net) billion or two max.

sil

Hm. Well, perhaps I read it wrong, but that's because I don't believe for a moment that it won't cost money. It took Montreal thirty years to pay off the cost of the Olympics.

Dan Lynch

Interesting point. I like the idea of paying for everyone to go to Russia instead but realistically that's not going to happen. I think you're right that it could have cost us some money. I'm not convinced by those figures though and I think the benefits of something like this are not fully taken into account. It's hard to quantify these things but a lot of the money spent on infrastructure, transport improvements and so on are of direct benefit to the country anyway. I also think it's a bit unfair to compare the costs South Africa incurred in 2010 because they had no infrastructure and had to build stadiums just to stage the event. We are already in much better shape to stage an event. Look at what's happening with the 2012 Olympics, that's a far more pressing financial concern for the country and nobody is ranting about that like they are the possible cost of a World Cup 8 years away from now! Who knows what situation we will be in then.

I would love to believe that the money saved on this will go into schools and other valuable projects but I just don't. I'm a cynic but having worked in the public sector I know how most of the money put in is wasted or frittered away to private companies who have influential friends. That's a sweeping statement I know but it's based on what I've seen and experienced. We should deal with that and we could save £3 billion. We spent more than that on the aborted NHS National IT system, then just threw it in the bin.

I'm not massively upset we didn't win this and I take into account your financial argument, but you have to admit it says something when we send our Head Of State, the Royals and all kinds of other people to lobby and we still can't get a World Cup in England, the supposed home of football. It would have been 52 years since the last and only English World Cup by 2018. God knows how long it'll be before now we see a domestic World Cup again, if ever. We seem like the unwanted cousins of the International community. That's the thing that makes me sad as a football fan. I know the social and moral arguments are far more complicated than that.

I'll shut up now because I'm in danger or writing my own blog post with the length of this. See you in Russia? :)

Dan

Adam Williamson

"It took Montreal thirty years to pay off the cost of the Olympics."

Montreal did a shit job of running them and had to build a ton of infrastructure. England would have to build almost no infrastructure to run the World Cup, it has a ton of world class stadia and reasonably good transit links already. Not a very useful comparison. I can certainly see the World Cup turning a profit, looked at on a broad enough scale, in the UK. It's an inherently cheaper event than a major multi-disciplinary competition.

Oli

I see where you're coming from, but the line reads (and you've copied it) "a net economic benefit of £3.2 billion". The "net" bit means the World Cup would, by their figures, bring in £3.2 more than it would cost.

I do think it's a shame we didn't get it (because the team were right, we could have given one hell of a show) but I don't think we deserved it any more than any of the others.

Chris Jones

"net economic benefit" hides a multitude of sins. The Olympics is causing London's boroughs to cut lots of public service budgets so they can make their compulsory contributions to the games. They won't see very much more money as a result, it will all flow into local businesses and multi-nationals. Not that businesses making money is in any way a bad thing, but real, important services are being cut back slightly or entirely to achieve it. Too heavy price imho.