Balls and all: Australia audaciously bids for sporting bonanza

AUSTRALIA could host the world’s major sporting festivals by 2020, if a cartel of the nation’s powerbrokers succeeds in winning bids to stage world cups in football and rugby union, together with an Olympic Games for Brisbane or Melbourne.

Football and rugby union have held talks on a joint strategy to stage world cups in 2018 and 2019 respectively, while the Queensland Government and Victoria’s Major Events Company have lodged preliminary bids with the Australian Olympic Committee to host a Summer Games between 2020 and 2030.

AOC president John Coates said: “The Queensland Government and Victoria’s Major Events boss, Sir Rodney Eddington, have both shown interest in bidding for an Olympic Games between 2020 and 2030, and I told Sir Rod that Australia’s best chance is for a city which hasn’t had the Games.

“That means Brisbane, but we’ve got to look at whether Brisbane will have the infrastructure by 2020. While I don’t want them spending money – it costs $50 million alone for an Olympic bid – they’ve got to look at leaving land for a stadium and an Olympic Village contiguous with it. If Brisbane is up for it, we’ll support them but, if not, it’s Melbourne.”

Should the 2018, 2019 and 2020 bids be successful, Generation Z will be gifted a legacy of stadiums and sports facilities the envy of the world.

Although sport is tightening its belt, given the global economic crisis, an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report this week said Australia was one of a handful of developed countries whose economies were expected to grow.

Football’s World Cup is the biggest show on earth. The commercial rights to the 2010 tournament in South Africa sold for $3.4 billion, 30 per cent more than Germany 2006.

Football Federation Australia boss Frank Lowy has been lobbying the Federal Government and FIFA executive, travelling to Beijing during the Olympics to meet confederation bosses. A winning World Cup bid also delivers the Confederations Cup, played a year earlier as a rehearsal.

Furthermore, Australia is an early favourite to stage the 2015 Asian Cup, a 45-nation tournament with 16 finalists that would initiate the momentum for a major event almost every year from 2015 to 2020, creating billions of dollars in economic impact and distributing infrastructure costs over a decade.

Complicating this future jigsaw of cities, stadiums and sports is the possibility that Australia will host another Commonwealth Games in 2018, with the Gold Coast, Perth and Adelaide considering bids.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald.

Published by: Qalinle Hussein

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