Brian Rudman: Greed ensures Cup costs runneth over

A year ago, organisers of the 2011 Rugby World Cup were admitting they faced losses of $39.3 million on the tournament. Photo / Richard Robinson

A year ago, organisers of the 2011 Rugby World Cup were admitting they faced losses of $39.3 million on the tournament. The political cheer leaders chose to duck this cold dose of reality, preferring to deal in the hard-to-define currency of "wider economic benefit". At the time, $500 million.

This week, a Herald investigation has calculated the real costs to New Zealand of hosting this sporting extravaganza.

For expenditure of $1.2 billion, much it from the public purse, World Cup Minister Murray McCully is claiming New Zealand will gain direct economic returns of $700 million.

University of Auckland economics professor Tim Hazledine says the figure is more likely to be about around $150 million.

This should come as no surprise. International sporting extravaganzas have beggared countries much bigger than New Zealand in the recent past, so why should we be any smarter.

After years of fine tuning, the wealthy overlords of the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, of soccer's Fifa, and rugby, have got their "have we got an offer you can't refuse" sales patter, word perfect.

They're so convincing that they have sucker nations fighting with each other for the right to be the next mugs to be taken to the cleaners.

All the sports bosses have to do is sit back and up their requirements each time round. Better five-star accommodation for themselves, Crown limousines, to ensure they don't have to rub shoulders with the paying fans, that sort of thing.

Last September, the run-up to the Delhi Commonwealth Games was marred by the sports bosses of the old white Commonwealth threatening a boycott because the accommodation for athletes wasn't luxurious enough and because nasty insects might bite them.

At the time, there were protests in India at the $8 billion being thrown at the event by the Government while millions lived in abject poverty.

Mind you, India was parsimonious compared with equally impoverished South Africa, which ran up a bill of $12 billion hosting soccer's World Cup, and China, which splurged $60 billion on the 2008 Olympics.

Athens was brought to its knees hosting the 2004 Games, and the citizens of Montreal finally paid off their 1976 Olympic Stadium last year. But that's not necessarily something to celebrate for the locals, who continue paying annual running cost of millions of dollars.

As for 2011, we're saddled with the event now, so let's enjoy what it has to offer. But I was alarmed by a report from last August quoting local World Cup supremo Martin Snedden talking of going for a repeat.

Noting that it will cost Japan, the 2019 hosts, more than double what it is costing New Zealand 2011, he said that was not necessarily a turn-off.

He thought the members of the International Rugby Board could be persuaded that "there's more value to rugby from having it hosted in smaller places that might not give them the best economic return ..."

Given the tradition of greed and avarice eagerly perpetuated by the bosses of all the great sporting tournaments, Mr Snedden's musings are surely the stuff of pipe dreams.

All we have to be thankful for is that our politicians were seduced only into hosting the Rugby World Cup, and not the Olympics, as former Auckland mayor John Banks had his sights on.

Instead of recriminations, though, it might be better to put this expensive lesson to some use, and rally other victims of the smooth-talking, sporting moguls to join an international campaign to protect any further victims from their ruinous activities.

How many more cities and countries have to suffer at their hands?