World Cup Brazil 2014

When cities were applying to FIFA and CBF to be a host of games in the World Cup 2014, all they had to present was an artistic design of the future stadiums (besides, of course, evidences that the city would be financially capable of building the stadium and implementing all the necessary urban infrastructure).

Based on such artistic designs, FIFA and CBF elected the twelve host cities of 2014.

Now, the cities have to produce not only artistic, but actual projects. As all the twelve stadiums  will have to be built or rebuilt, all the stadium owners  had to contract archictecture and design firms to work on the real project.

According to the Portal Transparency of the Cup 2014, the prices of the Projects are:

A comprehensive Project involves researching, planning and implementing all aspects of infrastructure, illumination,  acoustic, waste treatment, urban legislation, accessibility, environment and more.

This broad reach of tasks could be a explanation for such a wide variation in the estimated cost of projects; however, there may be also other reasons.

Yesterday, for example, the Government of Natal cancelled the contracts with the firms hired to design the Arena das Dunas Complex. The reason was that the Public Procurement found the cost of R$ 27 millions to be excessive, and demanded explanations.

The explanation of the Natal Local Committee was that the project was chartered to the same firm which had prepared the artistic design, and hence, “there would no need for a bidding process”. The absence of competition, of course, permitted the architecture office to skyrocket their prices. The Local Committee realized that their position was unbearable, and decided to cancel the contract.

At least in this case, some public money was saved, but Natal is now running the serious risk of being ruled out of the World Cup.

Since it first leaked to the media, the World Cup 2014 logo has been receiving bad criticisms in Brazil.

This week, the Brazilian Association of Designers issued an open letter called World Cup 2014: a wasted opportunity?

This article is interesting because, supposedly, represents a technical opinion by the Brazilian professional designers (the letter is signed by João de Souza Leite, a Director of the Association, also Professor of Design at respected PUC-Rio); besides, examples are provided of what could be considered a good design.

Below, some non-literal translated excerpts of the message:

An event such as the World Cup is an unparalleled opportunity for the host country to demonstrate some of its more significant values and skills.  The World Cup 2014 can make visible our in design, implementation, realization.

In other big events in the past, hosts took the opportunities to expose the culture, make experiments and look even beyond the limits of the events.

For example, in the Olympic Games of Sidney in 2000, Australians elected eco-sustainability as one their main values; and the infrastructure of the venues and city showed it.

In the Olympics of 1964, the signs created by the Japanese – pictograms that overcame the language barrier through the use of meaningful images accessible by any citizen of the planet – set a parameter for all communication to be implemented in similar situations, airports hotels, large areas of the congressional stadiums.

Good logos also incorporate traces of a National image. The logo designed by Josep Trias for the Olympics in Barcelona echoes the language of Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, reinforcing the cultural origin of the symbol. The logo adopted by the Americans for the World Cup 1994 is a direct reference to the American flag.

The logo presented for the World Cup 2014 seems to be in opposition to all these values.

The judging commission can’t be blamed; their members are not used to think about such values – that’s not their jobs.

The logo of the World Cup 2014 is rough and unfinished. Its basic concept- multiple hands taking hold of a ball or a CUP – is open to questioning, since that should not be its primary goal . It is unfinished because of the inadequacy of the design, which sits somewhere between the comic and ironic, with unnecessary details to delineate the shape – the use of shadows in the hands is the most basic of the resources available in graphics software design.

The form of letters, what to say? The typographic tradition started in the 15th century indicates that the shape of the letter always carries some sort of meaning. The 2014 Logo only shows a certain inability in writing, something childish.

Besides, the lack of a reference basis causes a lack of vertical support, keeping it in precarious balance.

By presenting this Logo, we are showing to the World an enormous incapability to work with project and design of symbols.

See full original text.

Brazilian newspaper Valor (the best business newspaper in Brazil) published an article today July 21st 2010 (for subscribers only) about the investments which will be made in the IT (Information Technology) and Telecom sectors to prepare the country for the World Cup 2014.

According to the article, Brazil will invest a total of R$ 21.3 bn (about  US$ 12 bn, at current exchange rate) in infrastructure, to upgrade internet backbones (fiber optics, routers, computers, etc), fixed and mobile telecommunications (expansion in the number of lines and upgrade to new technologies), building of new datacenters, etc.

The article also estimates that total investment in infrastructure will be as high as R$ 143 bn.

This high amount reflects two factors: the expected big increase in demand for connections during the WC 2014 and the current bad quality of Brazilian Telecom companies.

The days of major events of the World Cup (such as open and final games) should register record number of phone calls and internet connections. In the opening of the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing, there were 220,000 simultaneous calls and connections; today, the entire city of Sao Paulo, the busiest in Brazil, registers between 60 and 80,000 simultaneous connections.

Governments and private companies will have a challenge: to provide this massive availability of services during the Cup, without having to deal with a  large unused legacy after the event. A few months ago, the Federal Government passed a law to recreate Telebras (the former holding company  of the State owned phone companies) and charge it with the job of creating and deploying, until 2014, a National Broadband Plan.

The article makes indirect references to the current low quality of Brazilian Telecom services. “In 2014, tourists will bring their 4G cellular phones, and we will have to be ready to offer them this service”, declared the director of a Telecom.

Brazilians are still getting used to 3G, which operators still advertise as “the newest marvel in mobile technology”; there is no mention of commercial 4G in Brazil.

Service for 3G is expensive. The table below shows prices charged early this year (January 2010)  by Vivo, the largest 3G operator in Brazil; a direct link was not placed because operators seem to hide their price tables – the prices were quoted from this site.

Notice that there is a promotional price for the first 3 months, then normal prices apply (a trick to bind clients to a long term contract). Packages start with an allowance of 50 MB per month, and go all the way to unlimited plans – however, Vivo and all other operators put in the contract that, if the traffic of your “unlimited plan” goes beyond a certain level, Vivo will restrict the data transfer rate.

Besides Vivo, the other major operators of telecom in Brazil are Oi Telecom (the biggest one, if we include fixed and mobile lines, but nonetheless the worst company of all), Claro and TIM.

The Brazilian coast is nearly 8,000 km (5,000 miles) long, the best part of which in the tropical zone; several Brazilian capitals are located by the sea. The country seems to have potential to be a popular destination of cruises.

However, by visiting the sites of the biggest and most popular cruise operators, such as Royal Caribbean, Carnival Lines,  Princess and Norwegian,  one notices that there are few options, if any at all, of cruises to Brazil.

There are a few explanations for such. The most important reason is that, until 1995, only national flag ships could sail between Brazilian ports. Until then, most international cruise operators stayed away from Brazil; the only company which registered ships in Brazil was Italian Costa Cruises, which dominated the Brazilian market for decades.

Since 1995, other cruisers have slowly started to come to Brazil, but they face two big problems: Brazilians (except for a small elite) are not used to cruises, and the ports are not prepared to receive big crowds.

This situation, however, is likely to change until 2014.

The main reason is that cruises will be used as accommodation. Hotels are being built, but not in enough numbers to accommodate all visitors during the peak moments of the World Cup. In big events such as Carnival and New Year in Rio, it is already common to see tourists staying in cruisers, instead of hotels.

Besides, it is expected that, with the massive exposition of Brazil in the media, tourists will be more interested in destinations such as Fernando de Noronha, Natal, Fortaleza and others, and the operators will start to offer more packages to Brazil.

A few weeks ago, FIFA manifested preoccupation with the delays in the works for the World Cup 2014. The Brazilian Local Committee started an auditing in all host cities, to check out how the works in the stadiums were going.

However, as the Minister of Tourism recently declared, even more than stadiums, the concern is with airports. Stadiums can be shut down during refurbishment, and more money can be pumped into them to speed up the works; however, in airports (most of which are already working above capacity), any move which impacts the existing flow of passengers must be carefully planned.

The Brazilian Government acknowledged the problem, and issue the Provisional Measure 489 – MP 489 – see ful text here (in Brazil, a MP must be confirmed by the Congress, but it is enforced as law since its publishing by the President of the Republic) allowing to Infraero more flexibility to hire contractors.

The MP also created the Olympic Public Authority (APO), a body whose goal is to guarantee tha Brazil and Rio will comply with the demands of the Olympic Committe regarding the Olympic Games of 2016. Article 11 of the MP determines that all biddings related to the APO and to the infrastructure of airports necessary to the realization of the World Cup 2014 shall be regulated by the MP.

The two main changes are: electronic auctions (bids are made over the internet) are now allowed; the bidded price will be ranked first, and only afterwards will the technical and financial qualifications of bidders be evaluated.

According to Infraero, the new legislation “will permit faster bidding process, will alllow fewer appeals to bidders, and will lead to faster conclusion of works”.

Some specialists, however, say that the MP is illegal. For them, the flexibilization of the bidding law is allowed only in cases of emergency or perils, and not in situations caused by the omission of the Government.

In 2007, Rio hosted the Pan American Games. The initial estimative was that the event would cost US$ 200 millions in infrastructure; a few months before the Games, the works were delayed, there were also changes in the bidding process; as a result, the final cost shot up to more than US$ 2 billion (see here and here).

Anyhow, despite the controversies, Infraero can now try to speed up the building and refurbishing of airports.

CBF, the Brazilian Football Confederation, will file lawsuits against several Brazilian corporations for the practice of  ambush marketing, “a marketing campaign that takes place around an event but does not involve payment of a sponsorship fee to the event”; the event, in this case, is the World Cup 2010.

On May 26th, it was announced that CBF would start action against Claro, TIM, Café Pelé, Banco Votorantim, GM, Mastercard,  Hyundai, MRV Engenharia, Samsung, Walmart, Ipiranga, ALE, Ponto Frio, Ricardo Eletro, Casas Bahia, Diário de S. Paulo, Magazine Luiza (all these companies are multi-million or multi-billion dollar companies),  Noova Produtos Promocionais, Ponto Inicial Brindes, The Leadership Group, Chevrolet Américas Barra, Prensa Popular, Definitive 1 and Perfumaria Ribeiro Box.

Today, June 2nd, the following companies, all big corporations, were added to the list: Caixa Econômica Federal, Aguardente Ypioca, Telefônica, Olympikus e Supermercado Guanabara.

These companies, in their marketing campaigns, made references to the expression “World Cup”, and/or exhibited someone wearing the Brazilian uniform. Below, a movie in which Robinho advertises a Volkswagen car:

Several of the above companies are direct competitors of the official sponsors of the Brazilian team; FIFA and CBF claim they have to take strong measures to protect the interests of such sponsors.

This kind of action is unheard of in Brazil until recently. In November of 2009, FIFA lawyers started sending warning letters to companies using the trademark World Cup (by then, FIFA had already registered nearly 30 expressions, marks and logos with INPI, the Brazilian Institute for Intellectual Property).

The outcome of such suits is still hard to predict – but they will certainly establish a jurisprudence for the World Cup 2014.

Source: Google and France Press.

According to Jerome Valcke, Secretary Genral, FIFA has learned its lesson from problems with Internet ticket sales in South Africa and will overhaul its pricing and ticketing ahead of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

FIFA made two major mistakes in the World Cup 2010: when initially made available, tickets could only be purchased after a complicated registration process in the internet; and prices of tickets sold for South African citizens only were considered expensive (see prices of tickets in 2010).

Last April, FIFA eased the rules, and started selling tickets over the counter and also increased the number of the least expensive tickets reserved for South Africans.

The measures were not enough to remedy the situation. In the rest of Africa, sales fell 76 percent below original predictions, with only 11,300 African visitors expected for the tournament, said South Africa’s Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk; the Minister vehemently blamed ”unaffordable pricing” and the exclusive use of the Internet sales channel, which he called “a huge mistake”.

South Africa is now expecting 300,000 foreign visitors for the tournament, 150,000 less than originally predicted

“We will start all ticketing policies from scratch for 2014. It could be that we would be facing some similar problems in Brazil”, Volcke added.

Since 2007, Brazil knew that we would host the World Cup, and since May 2009, the host cities knew they would stage matches; even so, after all this time, very little has been done to prepare Brazil for the World Cup (there are delays in stadiums, airports, telecom, transportation, etc).

Below, a few reasons which attempt to explain the delays.

First: cultural habits. Brazilians (particularly Governments) do not have the habit of planning, and, if planning, do not have the habit of keeping to the planned. Any foreign visitor who needs to have an appointment with a doctor knows that Brazilians do not keep time. A national institution in Brazil is the jeitinho, which could be translated as “not doing things the proper and timely way, but trying to make ends meet in a cunning way at the latest time”; unfortunely, FIFA doesn’t tolerate such methods.

Brazil lacks the money. Building a stadium, opening new highways, refurbishing airports, all this costs lots of money. Despite the enthusiasm that Governors and Mayors have demonstrated towards the economic potentials of a World Cup, the money isn’t in the coffers yet, and budget limitations sooner or later bring things to reality. A city such as Natal has a budget of about R$ 8 billion (source), and clearly can not invest R$ 1 billion for the Cup.

Legal limitations. Nine out of the twelve stadiums of the World Cup will be built or refurbished by the Governments. All Government contracts must follow an specific law; this law imposes minimum periods for bidders to present proposals – and if a bidder disagrees with the results, a dispute in Courts may last years.

After the bidding process is finished, then Government and contractors must get all apropriate licenses, such as technical, Historic heritage, environment approvals. Getting licenses to build a new draining and sewage system carved under an old heritage stadium such as Fonte Nova, in Salvador, following all applying norms, can take a lot of time (things could be sped up if they had been planned before hand, but they were not).

Private stadiums (only three: Morumbi, Arena da Baixada, Beira Rio) are not restrained by the bidding laws. On the other hand, the owner of the stadiums will think twice before investing their money in an enterprise with unknown returns: is it worthy to invest US$ 200 million in a stadium to stage three or four matches?

Each of these factors could delay a project for a few months; put them all together, and the result is a several months delay.

The Minister of Sports of Brazil presented yesterday the results of a study conducted by the Brazilian Governments about the impacts of the World Cup 2014 in the Brazilian Economy.

According to the study, from 2010 until 2019, the World Cup 2014 will aggregate R$ 183.2 billion to the Economy; at today’s rate of US$ 1 = R$ 1.75, or € 1 = R$ 2.33, that amount equals approximately US$ 105 billion or € 79 billion. According to IBGE, the official Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics, the Gross Domestic Product of Brazil in 2008 was about R$ 2.9 trillion, which means that the World Cup may bring an increase of about 6% to the Economy.

Still according to the study, the impact on the Economy will be more relevant in Brazil than it was in the Cups of France, Germany and South Africa.

Always according to the study, “direct investments will be of R$ 47.5 billion, to be invested in infrastructure, tourism and consumers expenditure; the balance, R$ 135.7 billion, will be of indirect investments, derived from the recirculation of money during the event.”

In infrastructure alone, total expenditure will be R$ 33 billion, 78% of which will come from the public sectors. An amount of R$ 5.7 billion will be invested in stadia, R$ 11.6 billion in urban mobility and R$ 5.5 billion in ports and airports. Other areas which will get a share of the investments: telecommunications, energy, health, tourism.

Tourism alone will aggregate R$ 9.4 billion to the Brazilian economy. During the World Cup, Brazil expects to receive 600,000 foreign tourists, and other 3.1 million Brazilians should also travel within the country.

The World Cup should create 710,000 jobs (330,000 permanent and 380,000 temporary jobs). Permanent payrolls will increase by R$ 6.8 billion, and temporary payrolls by 1.6 billion; this will cause an increase of more than R$ 5 billion in expenditures of the Brazilian families.

From 2010 to 2014, tax collection should increase by R$ 17 billion; according to the Government, this is 33 times bigger than the US$ 500 million in tax exemptions claimed by FIFA.

“The impact in the Gross National Product will be of R$ 135 billion, until 2019. This happens because investments, consumption and tourism continue, even after the World Cup.”

Last year, FIFA appointed the 12 Brazilian cities which should host matches of the World Cup 2014.

Last week, the Minister of Sports in Brazil, when talking about the delays in the works of the stadia, said that some cities could be excluded from the list of hosts; a few hours later, the Minister withdrew, and said that there are no plans of excluding any city.

FIFA demands a minimum of eight host cities. South Africa will have nine host cities and Germany had twelve. Does Brazil need to have twelve host cities? Can Brazil afford it?

The decision to approve the final host cities is up to FIFA; FIFA will certainly listen to CBF before taking a decision. FIFA and CBF see the World Cup as a business, which must return a profit.

It was by a request of the Brazilian Government that 12 cities were appointed as hosts (and there were still other candidates). The Government hopes to gain world exposition to as many cities as possible, during the World Cup. That would be good.

However, what’s the cost of such diversification?

The first stage of the Cup has eight groups, with four countries each; each group will have six matches. It’s only in this first stage that any host city may claim to host matches; past that, when come the rounds of 16, 8, quarter finals, semi finals and final, matches become more and more important, and FIFA will direct them to the bigger cities and stadia.

So, it is likely that smaller cities such as Manaus, Cuiabá and Natal, will end up building a stadium to host only three matches of the World Cup. These cities don’t have strong local teams to occupy the stadia once the Cup is finished. Past experiences have shown that a World Cup can drain host city’s coffers.

Besides, distances in Brazil are much longer than in South Africa or Europe. Transportation infrastructure in Brazil is poor. By lack of money or of competence, the works in all stadia are delayed. FIFA was concerned with the dealys in South Africa, and will try to avoid the same mistakes in Brazil.

It will be no surprise if FIFA decides to reduce the number of host cities in Brazil.