Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to establish the background to understanding the impact of the 2014 FIFA World Cup projects on the cities of an emerging country such as Brazil. In order to do this, this short introduction assesses the discourse and practice of sports mega-events organisation elsewhere. Next, the main historical, economic, political and social aspects of contemporary Brazil are addressed. After this, the reasons for the choice of Brazil are assessed by analysing the Brazilian government’s efforts to bring the mega-event to Brazil and its relationship to the recent FIFA reorganisation. Finally, the main results of the World Cup organisation are evaluated in terms of the Responsibility Matrix, the amount of public and private investments made and the reaction of society.
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Notes
- 1.
We refer here to the concepts of the current stage of development of capitalism, where the global accumulation regime comes about through the dominance of finance capital over production, made possible by the deregulation of international capital flows and the adoption of the neoliberal political and economic doctrine (Chesnais 2004; Foster 2010; Harvey 1990, 2005).
- 2.
We here recall two emblematic cases: the first one was the demand made by FIFA to change the location of Cape Town Stadium in the 2010 South Africa World Cup to a photogenic setting, with the sea in the background, avoiding its construction in the original planned location close to a poor neighbourhood and low-income residential developments (Broudehoux 2015); the second one is the clash between the FIFA rules regarding the consumption of alcohol in stadia (since one of the main sponsors is a beer manufacturer) and the national legal restriction on their consumption, which had to be relaxed in Brazil during the event.
- 3.
Behind the US (US$17.4 trillion), China (US$10.4), Japan (US$4.6 trillion), Germany (US$3.9 trillion), the UK (US$2.9 trillion) and France (US$2.8 trillion) (World Bank 2015).
- 4.
Some Brazilian sociologists argue that poverty has ‘colour’ in Brazil, affirming that former slaves were equivalent to almost half of the population at the time of the abolition of slavery.
- 5.
‘Developmentalism’ is an economic ideology that was very popular from the 1930s until the 1980s, which advocated the industrial development of peripheral countries as a way of overcoming their economic underdevelopment. It was based on the association of the state with the national bourgeoisie to promote industrialisation through import substitution. Some authors consider it a peripheral version of Keynesianism.
- 6.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1931–) is a Brazilian sociologist, political scientist, university professor, author of many books and politician. From a leftist political formation, as Minister of Finance, he implemented the economic stabilisation plan (Plano Real) in 1994, based on the Washington Consensus ideas. After this, he was elected President of Brazil in 1994 and was re-elected in 1998. His approach to neoliberal ideas would have caused him to say: ‘Forget everything I wrote before.’
- 7.
The Washington Consensus was a set of neoliberal economic policies to tackle the problems of emerging countries promoted by multilateral institutions based in Washington D.C, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and based on the ideas of the British economist John Williamson (Williamson 1990).
- 8.
When it was established, the exchange rate was R$1.00 to US$1.00 in June 1994.
- 9.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (1945–), informally known as Lula, is a Brazilian politician. A former lathe operator and trade union leader, he was one of the founders of the left-wing Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT: Workers’ Party). After running three times for the presidency, he was elected President in 2002 after moving to the centre-left and was re-elected in 2006. At the end of his term in 2011, he managed to get his protégée Dilma Rousseff, also from the PT, elected.
- 10.
According to Ban (2012), ‘neodevelopmentalism’ entails a new form of state activism. It is a national capitalist development programme meant to guide the transition of developing countries away from the Washington Consensus. It is based on the adoption of a development strategy that allows domestic firms to take advantage of global economies of scale and technological updating processes, but also innovation policies and activist trade policies targeted at investment opportunities for domestic firms.
- 11.
In 1982, the BNDE gained an ‘S’ for ‘Social’, becoming the National Economic and Social Development Bank (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social).
- 12.
Established by the Federal Law 10,836/2004, this is a direct transfer income programme to families in poverty and extreme poverty. In 2015, the programme assisted 11.5 million households (23 per cent of the national total), transferring R$25.4 billion (US$6.5 billion) in benefits (Brazil 2015).
- 13.
João Havelange and Joseph Blatter were responsible for giving the FIFA World Cup the format it has today: a transnational multibillionaire business. Going to Africa and Asia would help their ‘business’ as the controls and legislation in these continents are more flexible. In 2015, after 17 years as President, Blatter was suspended by the FIFA ethics committee, as he is under investigation by the Swiss authorities on suspicion of criminal mismanagement and misappropriation (Vinton and O’Keeffe 2015).
- 14.
These groups were divided into three planning cycles (Brazil 2013): infrastructure projects from 2009 to 2010 (stadia, urban mobility, airports and ports); support services projects from 2010 to 2011 (security, tourism infrastructure, telecommunications, energy, environmental sustainability and institutional communication); and operational actions from 2011 to 2013 (airport and port operation, urban transport, energy supply, medical and transitory facilities) (Brazil Ministry of Sports 2014).
- 15.
The total amount was R$27.1 billion (Reais) converted at an exchange rate of R$2.68 to US$1.00 on 23 December 2014, according to the Brazilian Central Bank (http://www4.bcb.gov.br/pec/conversao/conversao.asp). These values may have slight differences, because between the signing of the Responsibility Matrix in January 2010 and its final version in December 2014, the Real devalued by 14 per cent against the dollar, discounting inflation. From that date until 1 March 2016, the Real lost 49 per cent of its value, mainly due to an economic crisis and the severe recession Brazil has been undergoing.
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Nobre, E.A.C. (2017). The 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. In: Nobre, E. (eds) Sports Mega-Events and Urban Legacies. Mega Event Planning. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44012-5_1
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