Sporting life: mega-events

One way to measure the shifting patterns of global power and influence is through the hosting of sporting mega-events. Asia hosted its first Olympics in 1964 (Tokyo) and its first World Cup in 2002 (shared by Japan and South Korea); west of Beijing, the continent has hosted neither event. Africa has now had a World Cup, but is some way off staging an Olympics. But the world’s rising powers will soon host a series of sporting spectaculars. Following the Beijing Olympics and the South African World Cup, Brazil will stage the 2014 World Cup and then the 2016 Rio Olympics. Russia will host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and, if the rumours swirling around Fifa’s South African HQ are right, it (and not England) will be getting the 2018 World Cup, too.

Conspicuous by its absence from this list is India. But in October, the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games will see the nation emerge onto the global sporting scene. India is already the centre of the cricketing universe; its Twenty20 league has muscled its way into the top ten richest sporting leagues in the world. The golf industry is steadily building a presence in the country, whose elites, like so many others, seem compelled to get on the fairway. Motor sport grows apace in this manically motorising society. The Force India team has given the nation a place in Formula One and next year Delhi will host the first Indian grand prix.

These initiatives are all private-sector ventures, driven by the country’s industrial and media entrepreneurs and the immense market for glamour and competitive sports provided by the growing middle classes. The 2010 Commonwealth Games, however, are primarily a public-sector initiative; most of the sports showcased are of limited or no interest to the main consumer markets in the country. As a consequence, the preparations for the Games bear all the hallmarks of the pathologies of the Indian state.

Since the plans were first announced, the cost of the Games has risen an estimated twentyfold to $2.5bn—making them the most expensive Commonwealth Games ever. The London 2012 Olympics, which will probably cost four times the initial projections, look parsimonious by comparison. And the funding for the Commonwealth Games is being made up on the spot. Government grants are being supplemented at the last minute by new municipal charges and taxes. Despite the late arrival of two key sponsors (Hero Honda and Central Bank of India), there appears to be a gap that neither ticket sales or merchandising will fill.

The building of nearly all the venues is also, inevitably, running late, though they will almost certainly be finished on time. That said, at the 1996 Cricket World Cup match played in Delhi, the press corps found that their chairs were sinking into wet concrete. Serious problems afflict Delhi’s antiquated infrastructure, which has been utterly overwhelmed by the city’s economic and demographic growth. Ahead of the Games, much of Delhi’s road system has been rearranged and a new terminal built at the airport. However, it’s not what you do but the way you do it.

As often seems the case, a sporting mega-event has been taken as an opportunity by municipal and national elites to abandon all known planning laws, procedures and checks on the system in an orgy of chaotic state-funded redevelopment. The Housing and Land Rights Network, which catalogues the evictions and displacements caused by major sporting events, wearily reports that the Delhi Commonwealth Games will be responsible for the eviction of around 140,000 families and their relocation to land far away from schools, services or job opportunities.

The sports arenas are, as ever, being built without thought for their post-event life, and look likely to join the mouldering ruins of Delhi’s 1982 Asian Games; they will, however, enrich the contractors and officials, with allegations circulating that corruption is responsible for the soaring costs. Come the Games themselves, beggars, hawkers and rickshaw drivers will meanwhile be sent packing. As a former Indian chief justice remarked: “The state government has filed an affidavit in the supreme court to deport beggars to their state of origin. Fraudsters, thieves and corrupt politicians can stay in the city, but not beggars.”

Developing nations have no monopoly on authoritarian planning and slum clearance dressed up as beautification: both were aspects of the Seoul, Sydney and Athens Olympics. But while the Russian and Brazilian public sectors may prove more efficient and benign than India’s, I fear there is more of this to come. The question then becomes whether the IOC, Fifa and other bodies who award hosting rights are going to be as stringent and diligent in protecting poor urban communities as they are in establishing brand and trademark protection, and as insistent on seeing legacy planning as they are on seeing enough five-star hotel accommodation.