The success of the Rugby World Cup and the Cricket World Cup in New Zealand means scenes such as Germany's triumph in the last Fifa World Cup could be replicated if the world's biggest sports event was also played here. Photo / AP
The success of the Rugby World Cup and the Cricket World Cup in New Zealand means scenes such as Germany's triumph in the last Fifa World Cup could be replicated if the world's biggest sports event was also played here. Photo / AP
Exclusive: The man credited with making the 2011 Rugby World Cup a runaway success sits down with sports editor-at-large Dylan Cleaver to outline his latest vision for the country — co-hosting the biggest sporting event in the world.
It is too big. A fanciful pipe dream. New Zealand hasn't the capacity. It doesn't have the pedigree. Fifa is a viper's nest of corruption and bad will, so why would you willingly cuddle up to a snake? It will hit the taxpayer in the pocket.
Let's get all the reasons why the Fifa World Cup - the World Cup - will not come to New Zealand on the table right away and work backwards from there.
Yes, this is a pipe dream, but it is one Martin Snedden believes passionately in. The former head of Rugby New Zealand 2011 and now chief executive of Duco Events says the country's hosting of the rugby and cricket versions of world cups are proof we have the capability and, importantly, infrastructure, to cope with an event of this scale.
"It is important to concentrate on the core of the idea, rather than the potential blockages," Snedden says, adding that the economic benefits, raising the country's profile and general feel-good factor would far outweigh the negatives.
"In the past four years we've hosted two major events and haven't just done them okay, we've done them brilliantly, far beyond the expectations of ourselves and of those who granted us the events.
"Our event capability is that much greater, the operational and logistical challenges are nowhere near as great as they were 10 years ago."
Snedden led the joint NZC/Cricket Australia bid for CWC and last year spent time in consultation with Irish government officials, rugby union and tourism chiefs to brief them on a bid for RWC 2023 - they have now decided to proceed with that bid.
In Snedden's vision, he sees New Zealand linking arms with our Anzac comrades and making a compelling pitch for the 2026 or 2030 World Cups. New Zealand would host two to three of the eight pools and a couple of knockout matches.
He sees the process happening over three phases.
Phase one
This involves dealing with the stakeholders in New Zealand, including central and local governments, New Zealand Football, tourism operators and Sport New Zealand.
Duco Events chief executive Martin Snedden wants to bring the Fifa World Cup to New Zealand. Photo / Ted Baghurst
"I've had informal discussions with [associate minister and minister for sport and recreation] Murray McCully and Jonathan Coleman to seed the idea with them," Snedden says. He has also talked to NZF and NZ Sport bosses Andy Martin and Pete Miskimmin.
The key, he said, was to get the stakeholders "past that first instinct" that New Zealand was too small to do this and to think how to make it happen.
"There's real value in thinking about the sort of events that people naturally assume we can't do," he says. "At a high level, every angle you can think of stacks up."
It's an aspirational event, one significantly higher in profile and cachet than CWC or RWC.
From a purely sporting point of view, New Zealand might be a rugby country but football is a growing sport and has room to grow further. Cricket has already seen a significant boost to participation numbers and that was from the lead-in only, the real surge is not expected until the start of next season.
Then there is the obvious economic benefits and spike in visitor numbers. New Zealand had 133,000 visitors for the RWC, more than double the estimated 65,000. Snedden acknowledged a great deal of scepticism came hand in hand when dollar values were put on benefits to the economy from big events, but the increase in visitors was "real and measurable".
Less easy to measure was the increase in international profile. The RWC sent broadcasts into more than 200 countries, while the CWC had astonishing viewer numbers, but those could only be expected to increase with the world's most popular television event.
On the subject of stadiums, New Zealand spent hundreds of millions upgrading for 2011. Eden Park's capacity can be increased to 60,000 at minimal cost. Westpac Stadium would need little work done to it and Christchurch is already investigating a rectangular stadium to house the Crusaders and occasional All Black tests.
"The investment in stadia has already been made," Snedden says, "this would be a way of maximising that investment."
End of phase one: New Zealand stakeholders buy-in to the idea. A bit of time and very little money has been spent.
Phase two
This is convincing Australia to come on board. In Snedden's frank opinion, at this point they would be "lukewarm at best about holding hands with us".
There are three things playing in New Zealand's favour:
1. Australia had a crack by themselves for 2022 and they got smashed, failing to get a vote other than their own in the first of four rounds and were subsequently ousted from consideration.
2. Australia hosted a superb Asian Cup in January, exceeding spectator and viewer expectations, which should have restored some confidence in Football Federation Australia quarters.
3. The Cricket World Cup was an outstanding success on multiple fronts.
That last point raises an interesting dilemma for Snedden, and he admits it is not one he has immediate answers for. New Zealand and Australia are not only two separate sovereign nations, but they represent different confederations. NZF, against the wishes of many, remain the big fish in the extremely small Oceania pool, a pool FFA abandoned long ago for the more competitive Asia confederation.
Countries have co-hosted a World Cup before - Japan and South Korea in 2002 - but never two confeder-ations.
"If we put aside our paro-chialism and territorialism, we share more obvious synergies and tourism strategies than Japan and South Korea," Snedden says.
Because his cup is always half full, Snedden again sees this as an opportunity for Fifa, not an obstacle. He reasons that they are committed to spreading the football gospel and this is an area of the world that is relatively untapped. Oceania is never going to have the capability to host a World Cup solely, so a transtasman co-operation is the best it could hope for.
"And from Australia's point of view, there is no other country it could link arms with; there just isn't a synergy within that Asian confederation. We're their best bet."
There were some obvious shortcomings with Australia's 2022 bid. Because it would be a European summer event and most of the stadiums would be home to other winter codes, significant compensation would have to be paid out to various oval-ball codes so they could temporarily relocate.
Sepp Blatter and Fifa are not easy to work with. Photo / AP
Commercially it might be a hard sell to those in Fifa's Ivory Towers. A study done in the previous bid process came to the conclusion that if the USA measured a 100 per cent score on a commercial viability scale, then Australia would be a lowly 68.
"The IRB was worried from a commercial standpoint, too," Snedden recalls. "In the end we delivered revenue that far exceeded expectations and came in only marginally behind France 2007, which until that point was the highest by a country mile.
"The ICC shared similar concerns and they're delighted by what was delivered."
The tendency is to look at Australasia and think about the geographic isolation and time zones issues, but these can "all be mitigated", Snedden believes.
End of phase two: Australia agree to a joint bid. If Australia say no, then a bit of time but very little money has been wasted.
Phase three
The hard-to-talk-about bit where lobbying comes in.
First, you get the two confederations on board, "then I'm sure it gets difficult from there, but so what," says Snedden. "If the two countries are united, we can make it happen.
"There's nothing crass or marginal about lobbying as long as you go through a really transparent process.
Eden Park was picture perfect during the Cricket World Cup and could be again for top-flight football. Photo / Nick Reed
"The most recent example of against-the-odds effective lobbying was Murray McCully's campaign, run over several years, leading to New Zealand securing a place on the UN Security Council."
Fifa are not renowned as the easiest organisation to work with. The public are not known for embracing flights of fancy. We return to the opening salvo: isn't it all a bit hard?
"I want to see us, New Zealanders, give something a really good crack that we didn't think we'd be able to do.
"If you're looking for a safe bet, this isn't one of them."
Most watched television global sporting events*
1 The World Cup
An estimated billion people watched last year's final between Germany and Argentina, which is a large chunk of the world's population, up from the 910 million who watched Spain beat Holland four years previous. Generally considered to be the Big Daddy of sport events (as every football fan will tell you ad nauseam).
2 The Olympics It can be quite difficult measuring the true impact of the Olympics as some events, the men's basketball final for example, are far more attractive than the rifle prone final. Even given the limitations of the research, it is estimated around 70 per cent of the world's population saw at least some part of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which on most metrics would make that the most-watched sports event of all time.
Steve Smith of Australia and team mate Shane Watson of Australia celebrate winning the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup final match. Photo / Getty Images
3 The Cricket World Cup Cricket, rugby, athletics and NFL all like to scrap over the rights to the term third-biggest sporting event in the world. By the most tenuous of fibres, cricket can lay claim to this title after it was estimated that a billion people tuned into the India-Pakistan Pool B clash from Adelaide this year, and a further 25 million watched it on digital streaming. The final between New Zealand and Australia was the third-most watched broadcast in New Zealand history, with close to two million viewers, behind only the 2011 RWC semifinal and final.
4 Rugby World Cup Again, it's a fraught discussion, but the RWC 2011 was broadcast in 207 countries, which puts it just behind the Olympics and World Cup for global reach. Where it falls behind cricket is that it does not have fanatical support in some of the world's most populous countries, as cricket does on the subcontinent.
5 Take your pick More than 110 million Americans watch the Super Bowl, so maybe the NFL. Formula One fans will tell you that 25 million people alone watch the Monaco Grand Prix, so extrapolate that out to a season and you have some big numbers. Meanwhile, the IAAF confidently declares track and field to be the second-biggest sport in the world.
* These figures are notoriously fickle and often disputed.
