We met with the South African World Cup team to learn about their goals for hosting the World Cup. We talked to them in their offices just outside the main stadium which is currently under construction as you can see below.
From the CEO and director to the communications manager, we learned about their goals from a cultural, economic and political perspective. Of the four we met with, World Club 2010 Local Organizing Committee CEO Danny Jordaan takes the lead on the de-brief with our blogging team.
Says Jordaan, “we want infrastructure improvement across the board, from broadcast, transportation, roads, accommodation and human resource capacity. We also want to promote growth in tourism as well as job creation which we’re struggling with right now.”
He continues, “our past comes from a past of a long struggle between black and white. What is important in that process is to create projects that are shared by the majority of the population.”
Below is Jordaan with his Chief of Communications Rich Mkhondo
He references the German World Cup created a new nation….remember up to 1990, there were two Germanies. It was two separate countries. In 1990, it brought down the wall but didn’t bring together a single nation. The World Cup did that. The Germans were embracing themseJordalves as one country. It is important for this country to develop that sense of a common South African nation.”
Lastly, they hope to develop a brand for South Africa. Because of the scale of the World Cup event, it can help develop a brand essence for South Africa, one which embraces democratic rights. They want to attract businesses and tourists to come to this country.
They hope to allocate at least 30% to help create economic opportunities for smaller businesses in South Africa, to that smaller micro-businesses can begin to grow and thrive.
While South Africa has hosted global sporting events including the 2003 Cricket World Club and the All African Games, South Africa has struggled to get the World Cup. In July 2000, they also tried to get the rights to host it, but lost to Germany. Finally, in 2004, they won the right to host in 2010.
Some of the sponsors and partners for this event includes Sony, Visa, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Emriates, Adidas. They go to great lengths to talk about economic gain from this World Club vis a vis others. The revenue generated from Germany was $2.8 billion. They tout that this event is moving towards $3.4 billion as a result of the commercial activities around this event to-date, more than any event in the last one hundred years.
He says, “it has been said that the two mega events that should not be hosted on the African continent are the World Cup and the Olympics. Now that we are hosting the World Cup, we hope this continent will next host the Olympics.”
There are various stadiums being built around the country. In Johannesburg, Soccer City is now 95% complete and will host 94,000 people, the largest stadium since Brazil in 1950.
In Durban, the Moses Mabhida Stadium will have 5,500 steps you’ll be able to walk up for a magnificent view of Durban’s coastline.
They’re also building the Mbombela stadium in Nelspruit (46,000 capacity), which is near the Kruger National Park. The capacity is currently at 46,000. In less than an hour from the stadium, people will be able to go into the game drive and witness elephants, impala, kudu, exotic birds, giraffe and other game popular to the region.
They’ll be able to sit 48,000 in the Port Elizabeth stadium. All of the seats are already in, and they’re currently working on the roof, all of which is due to be completed by May 2009. Rustenberg will be able to host 42,000 for the Confederation Cup. There are others being built including Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane, which will sit 45,000 and be completed in October 2009. Green Point photo below.
Jordaan expects 450,000 people visitors during the World Cup, which gives you a sense of growth of tourism in the country. He shows us year to year growth which is steady. “We want to move beyond 10 million tourists by by 2010,” he says.
Then he talks about IT infrastructure and our ears perk up. It will be the first World Cup where you can watch the entire game on mobile devices. IT partners include MTN, Sony, and local telecommunications company Telekom.
They plan to implement approximately 40,000 voice and data network ports, build in support for 10,000 communication and network devices, 4,500 notebook PCs, and 4,000 mobile telephony devices across 41 primary locations, which includes ten stadiums and ten FIFA venue hotels. They also expect to have 99.99% network availability up-time.
Then there are fan parks around the world. They want to create fan parks in all the host and non-host cities. Germany had 15 million requests for 3 million. In South Africa, we have 47 million population but here too we only have 3 million tickets that need to be distributed across the world, hence the importance of the fan parks.
They want people in Johannesburg to talk to people in fan parks in Cairo, Berlin, New York, Lagos and everywhere else in the world, so this becomes an “African celebration” around the world. The initial idea was to promote communication through satellite link-up….they haven’t thought about how they’ll use blogs and social networks yet, but they plan to explore the possibilities here, locally and internationally.
Teams coming to the Confederations Cup, which starts on June 14, 2009. The Champion of Champions who will be attending include the United States, Egypt, New Zealand, Iraq, South Africa, Spain, Brazil and Italy.
A chief challenge for them is obviously cost. They need at least 3.2 billion rand, and to-date they have raised roughly 1.4 billion rand. The good news is that they are about 80% complete.
Obviously since our lives are largely on the web, we want to know about their online efforts. Duncan Alfers, their online specialist, talks about some of their plans. According to Duncan, they’re working on key word search with Google. Other than that, we weren’t able to extract additional information about their social media and online efforts or their global marketing initiatives.
Nic from SA Rocks, wants to hear more about their marketing efforts since he doesn’t feel that it has been hyped enough locally or worldwide. And that there have been some issues about local transportation and accommodation.
Yet, when asked about publicity roughly 18 months before the event, Jordaan referenced local television campaigns, but this is a far cry from what needs to be done to get worldwide buzz going, particularly online which is where younger demographics live. What about using social media? Blogosphere viral programs? Contests on Twitter? YouTube interviews?
What we learn more about is infrastructure and security efforts. They’re bringing in an additional 1,400 buses for the event as well as three international airline entry points to accommodate various parts of the world. Durban will cater to everyone flying in from Asia, Cape Town will handle people coming in from the Americas, and Johannesburg will handle visitors from Europe.
They are looking at additional 200 airplanes to take care of additional demands as well as charter flights. He also talks about South Africa’s infamous Blue Train, which is a 5 star hotel on rails, a bit like the Orient Express.
There are 55,000 rooms for the ‘event’ requirement. In other words, their obligation is to provide accommodation to FICA family, the teams, the media and the organizers. Based on current availability, they will still have to contract 20,000 rooms.
Jordaan tries to reassure us that there will be plenty of capacity. While they expect 450,000 people, he reminds us that the event starts off with 32 teams. After the first round, it gets reduced from 32 to 16 which means that not everyone will be here at the same time. They get about nine million tourists in December so he feels confident that they can host 250,000-300,000 at any one time.
On the media side, they’re expecting 20,000 international media of which 360 are broadcasters. I ask them of the 20,000, how many will be bloggers and they haven’t figured that out yet. With a smile, we all get an invitation to return in 2010 to cover the Confederation Cup in 2009 and the World Cup in 2010.
What we don’t learn is whether they have seriously thought about integrating bloggers into their media campaign and no one seems to have put together a budget to accommodate them since we all know that bloggers or blog networks are unlikely to have the budget to fly someone across the world to cover the event in real-time. Hopefully they will start thinking about their online, social media and blogging strategy soon – the event is only a year and a half away.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
