$30 Million for Australia's World Cup Bid 10/12/2008 |
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Australia’s government will contribute A$45.6 million ($30 million) toward the nation’s bid to host the 2018 soccer World Cup.
The money will be spent over three years to try to bring the most-watched sports event to Australia for the first time, Football Federation Australia said. The national soccer body will formally make the bid by the end of 2010, with a decision set to be announced before June 2011.
“I wouldn’t ask the government to support us for a pipedream,” FFA chairman Frank Lowy said in a statement. “This is not an impossible dream. It is very achievable.”
Hosting the 2018 World Cup and the FIFA Confederations Cup a year earlier would boost Australia’s A$1 trillion economy by A$5.3 billion and create about 74,000 jobs, the FFA said, citing estimates by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
England and Russia are among the nations that have expressed an interest in bringing the 2018 World Cup back to Europe, where Germany held the last edition in 2006. South Africa is hosting the 2010 tournament, to be followed by Brazil in 2014.
Asian soccer’s leading official said in October that he supported an Australian bid because it was the region’s only serious contender to host the 2018 tournament.
Mohamed bin Hammam, president of the Asian Football Confederation, said that the region would unite behind a single bidder even though FIFA would prefer to hold every third edition in Europe.
Football Focus
“Europe has unquestionably been the focus of football growth and development for much of the past 80 years,” added Lowy, Australia’s second-richest man. “But the future of football is in the ‘new world,’ that is, the developing and growing regions of the world such as Asia.”
Australia joined the Asian confederation from Oceania in 2006 in an attempt to improve soccer standards by playing stronger opposition.
The Socceroos lead their group in the final phase of Asian qualifying for the 2010 World Cup.
(Source: Bloomberg)
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