WK Voetbal in Brazilië levert parkeerplaats van $900 miljoen op
Voorafgaand aan grote sportevenementen worden de meest fantastische economische effecten voorgeschoteld. Zo ook in Brazilië voor het WK van 2014. Een jaar na datum pakt het iets anders uit:
Brazil spent about $3 billion building 12 new or heavily refurbished stadiums for last year’s World Cup. Officials promised these taxpayer-funded venues would continue to generate revenue for years, hosting concerts, pro soccer games, and other events.
But as Lourdes Garcia-Navarro at NPR reports, most stadiums are failing to generate much revenue at all. The most expensive one, in Brasilia, is most regularly used as a site for a municipal bus parking lot. …
There are economists who study the potential economic impact of these events on the cities that host them, and their findings are unequivocal: they don’t pay. As Victor Matheson, an economist at College of the Holy Cross, told my colleague Brad Plumer, “My basic takeaway for any city considering a bid for the Olympics is to run away like crazy.”
