Yesterday I finished my posts regarding the box at the Kings Park Rugby stadium and how the government is trying to squeeze them out into using the soccer stadium across the road. Cape Town has the same issue and these two stadiums are costing a fortune to maintain.
Just because you are hosting an event and need more infrastructure it doesn't mean everything has to be new. These are two examples that could have used what was available and just modernized them at a fraction of the cost.
Cape Town spent $600 Million building it's showpiece which was 54 percent over budget.Durban spent $450 Million building the other white elephant. The other cities were smarter and in Pretoria they upgraded what they had already in place.
FIFA made around $600 Million for holding the event in South Africa and the country lost over $3 Billion. A good deal,I think not as the only benefit was upgrading some roads and infrastructure.
Once the tournament is over there are costs to maintain the structures and this is where the real cost comes in. Between the two stadiums they are costing the cities in the region of $10 million per year to run and maintain. These are still fairly new so maintenance is still fairly small.
This is the real reason why they are forcing others to move into their mistakes so it will take the costs away. The $10 Million per year is losses as that is taking into account of hosting a few events. One football match in Green Point had 500 spectators so a massive loss.
The people of the cities involved foot the bill through their rates every month and this is totally unfair. When you have 50 and 60 percent over runs in building costs someone needs to be accountable as this smacks of corruption.
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