Frank Lowy’s pre-emptive blame game over AFL and World Cup bid

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Frank Lowy’s pre-emptive blame game over AFL and World Cup bid

Authored by: Mister Football
on Sunday, October 17 2010 @ 08:20 pm ACDT

It's debateable whether it's good for the economy - the cost to the taxpayer is so massive, no serious economist would recommend hosting a world cup for economic reasons.

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Mister Football

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Mister Football

Frank Lowy’s pre-emptive blame game over AFL and World Cup bid

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Sunday, October 17 2010 @ 10:14 pm ACDT

I saw one report saying the legacy for sport would be greater in Oz than the US because of the new stadia needed, even though mostly the bid suggests using existing stadia and only modest upgrades, whereas the US has more than enough, on average much larger, stadia ready to go.

Really the US is in a far better position to host a bigger games and in a better time slot for Europe, so the question will presumably come down to whether they want to go for the best bid commercially or to Australia because the region has never had it before. The latter might be a strong argument, I have no idea how FIFA thinks about these things.

However, I read something interesting about China being interested soon and how that could affect the Australian bid. If Australia is in the Asia region as far as FIFA is concerned, wouldn't Australia getting it rule out China for the next 2 games according to FIFA rules on regions? So if that meant no China in 2026 or 2030, then the soonest they could get it would be 2034, 24 years away. Surely FIFA doesn't want to wait that long to get into China. That might be the biggest issue of all. In which case it won't matter how much money or goodwill Australia throws at FIFA. Of course, the AFL will still get the blame. Still, we all blame Demetriou for everything already, so he's used to it!

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

Frank Lowy’s pre-emptive blame game over AFL and World Cup bid

Authored by: Michael Christiansen
on Monday, October 18 2010 @ 10:45 am ACDT

There's a lot of things that are unknown. One is that because 2018 and 2022 have been packaged in the one bidding 'season' so to speak that the rumblings from the Chinese soccer association that China should bid for 2026 don't need to be more official for at least another 6 years before the bidding process for 2026 (and 2030 at the same time??) begins in earnest.

Would that be enough to sway 2022 voting away from Asia (including Australia) and back to the US (1994 to 2022 is after all a 28 year gap).

However, it isn't FIFA head office that votes - it's the confederation delegates and one wonders how much head office strategies play into this vs national rivalries and political posturing.

The other thing around the Australian bid is that the guarantees that the AFL/NRL/ARU are seeking as signed off in the MOU are NOT able to be signed off on by the FFA/FIFA until after the host country is named. So, should Australia 'win' the bid, only then does FIFA start considering such issues. Whether the FFA could have gone harder earlier and sought real assurances from FIFA is another question. Buckley offered vague comments about the precedence of the MLB in the USA.

So, is it possible yet, that Australia wins hosting rights, but, if FIFA is not willing to permit the AFL and NRL to access host cities during the 4 weeks of the tournament, then, it appears the MCG is still able to be withdrawn. What would happen then?

I'd assume that the AFL and NRL would push for so much compensation that the FFA might be able to host the event, but, the FFA might come out of it financially worse off than they were going in??

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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