Australia's bid not competitive

Doing the rounds in the various sporting forums, one notes a hint of pessimism creeping into the thought patterns of otherwise eager football fans in relation to Australia's bid to host the World Cup in either 2018 or 2022.

There are good reasons for this pessimism. Assuming that our very best chance is 2022, I would summarise the reasons as follows:

1. Host Cities

Australia's eight largest cities include the five mainland capitals plus Gold Coast, Newcastle and Canberra, and these would be your starting position if you were to put forward a list of suggestions.

The ACT Government has already publicly distanced itself from the possibility of fronting up the $200 million price tag (plus other costs and indemnities), and the two cities with the least need for large rectangular stadiums, Adelaide and Perth, are also looking iffy.

While both Adelaide and Perth have ovals that need upgrading, and which might be used for a WC bid at a pinch, both have been big on talk of late, but lacking in political will and decisiveness.

Thus doubts remain on three of our eight largest cities.

2. Stadiums

Following on from the last point, if you're lacking in host cities, there's a real good chance you'll be lacking in stadiums. The accepted wisdom is that we have five stadiums that pass muster, but that would still need money spent on them, and that seven stadiums would virtually need to be built from scratch or at a minimum would require large scale and expensive upgrades.

The Australian Financial Review quoted one state government insider on 9 November 2009: "Australia's chance of actually making a serious bid is somewhere between zip and zero because they want us to spend billions of dollars on stadiums and there just isn't a market for it".

Only today I have discovered that The Asian Football Confederation has extended the deadline for Australia to submit its bid to host the 2015 Asian Cup by four months.

This is so the FFA can "continue discussions with various levels of Australian government and other stakeholders to formalize the relevant guarantees and facility agreements, which are part of the bid submission.
See USA Today article.

3. Finances

I was listening to the Prime Minister only this morning talking about the need to tighten our belts fiscally because the Commonwealth's budget deficit is already in the tens of billions of dollars, and most of the states are no better off (relatively speaking).

The Australian Financial Review quoted one state government insider on 9 November 2009: "The states are furious about the bidder requirements, they are very very unhappy. We would be hard-pressed to find that money and we have got so much else that we have to spend money on. There are not any promises from the commonwealth that they will shovel any money in to build all these stadiums."

Conclusion

Note that I have not even touched on the issue of the AFL withholding Etihad should it become apparent that the FFA needs it for the bid.

Nor have I touched on the US bid which features 18 potential host cities, and 21 magnificent rectangular stadiums, every one of them above 67,000 in capacity.

All in all, it's very difficult to see us putting up a competitive bid.