Brazil’s Most Expensive World Cup Stadium Is Now A Parking Lot

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When Brazil spent an approximate sum of $3 billion for either newly building or upgrading the 12 stadiums that had hosted the 2014 World Cup fixtures, the officials had promised that these  taxpayer-funded venues would continue to generate revenue for years, hosting concerts, pro soccer games, and other events.

But as Lourdes Garcia-Navarro at NPR reports, most stadiums are failing to generate much revenue at all. The most expensive one, in Brasilia, is most regularly used as a site for a municipal bus parking lot.

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One of the major problems that these stadiums (including the $900 million stadium in Brasilia and the $600 million stadium in the rainforest city of Manaus,) have been facing is the failure to attract a large amount of crowd. These stadiums were built in cities where there are only minor league pro teams that don’t draw large crowds. This was done so World Cup games could be spread across the entire country, instead of just the southeast, where most of the top pro teams play. It’s as if the US built gleaming new stadiums in Montana and Alaska for hosting a World Cup in the US. [1]

“The local league games have very low attendance, and it costs a lot of money to put games on at the arena. So, in Manaus nowadays, local team matches actually take place in two training centers, and not in the World Cup stadium,” Leânderson Lima said. [2]

Adding fuel to the fire is the fact  that in many of these cities, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced from neighborhoods that were torn down to make way for these stadiums. And even though the World Cup was partly billed as a way to upgrade Brazil’s overall infrastructure, several of the big projects — such as light-rail systems in São Paulo, Cuiaba, and Fortaleza — still aren’t close to being finished.

“I don’t see any World Cup legacy to Brazil except the debts we have inherited and the problems we now have,” Jose Cruz, a sports reporter in Brasilia, told NPR. “The World Cup is over; we are suffering with everything that came after.”

Economists have studied  the potential economic impact of these events on the cities that host them, and their findings are unequivocal: they are not worth it . As Victor Matheson, an economist at College of the Holy Cross says, “My basic takeaway for any city considering a bid for the Olympics is to run away like crazy.”

This problem will soon come back to haunt Brazil because it going to host the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio De Janeiro. And its planned $10.6 billion in spending for that event includes another $2 billion on sporting venues, according to proposals.

The lesson to be learnt here is not only for Brazil. Countries like China, UK, and the US have had incidents of relocating poor residents in order to construct and develop sporting venues for some mega event. This must serve as a warning to future hosts that the games rarely if ever deliver on their promises, and their true costs are often only apparent once the events themselves are gone.[3]

Sources:

[1] http://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8592805/brazil-world-cup-stadiums

[2] http://www.hngn.com/articles/91675/20150513/world-cup-brazils-3-billion-stadiums-now-parking-lots.htm

[3] http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2015/05/12/3657744/brazils-expensive-world-cup-stadium-now-just-bus-parking-lot/

 

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6 COMMENTS

  1. I’m from Brazil and I can say that this country is shit. Shit of President Dilma, said the money would be “returned”, but that is not what has been happening lately, the prices of everything have gone up, strikes and more strikes happening all because this corrupito government.

    Hospitals are crowded, people are more 1hr or more on the waiting list, some not aguntam and die, all because of that.

    Until that famous player went, “You do not do world cup with hospital”, see how the country is now sucks. If this still does not know where we will stop, and as a Brazilian (did not want to, but do what), I recommend to foreigners from outside do not come here.

  2. Why are people not out raged and taking to the streets? The government clearly does not care about the people or the country to be building more useless stadiums that will be obsolete after the games.

    • Yeah, DF… I’m brazilian and I can say that even the people here, almost everybody is corrupt! Only some people were on the streets, but it seems like nobody else cares anymore. A lot of people say “politics are damn bullshit!”. All that because the government teaches the people to think it, by giving no education, hope and so on… but from now on, people seem to get more in rage, and we are starting to do something about our situation. But that’s only the lucky people, who can pay at least U$ 500 per month for a school… now, what about the poor people? The slums? Only future knows.

  3. Legado da Copa o mundo vê crítica e apoiou e apoia quem protestou contra, já por aqui o que mais de ver é bando de babão de políticos corruptos silenciados via esmolas disfarçadas de programas sociais e outros favorecimentos…

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