I recently chatt with Gillian Saunders, director of Grant Thornton Strategic Solutions, the consulting firm that has been working on the 2010 World Cup for over a decade now. In this podcast she explains why South Africa got the bid, how preparation for the tournament has chang the country, the controversy behind the giant stadiums, and the one thing you should see when you visit South Africa. Be sure to check out more “Place of the Year” contributions here.
Gillian Saunders: Well we were first approach in the late nineties by the South African football association, FIFA, to assist them with looking at a bid for the World Cup, and they felt that the way to promote this country going for the bid, was to look at the economic impact it would have on the country. So we did an economic impact analysis then; subsequent to that we did one for the 2006 bid and then we did another one for the 2010 bid which of course was a successful bid and we now actually have the event happening next year. Since then we’ve updat it a couple times. Most recently only last year, haven’t updat it again since, we will plan to update it after list to data the draw in December when there’s a lot more finality about exactly who’s coming, where they’re traveling, etc…
Rafferty: In 2004, what role did you
Saunders: Well I think one of the reasons that Africa was seen as an attractive destination for the event was people did feel that it’s an event that can actually help the economy of a country like South Africa and other countries in Africa, and that was what we demonstrat and what went into the bid book and what help I think position South Africa as a meritus winner of the event; and if we go back even further, the initial exercise we did, and it was bas on work we’d done previously for Grand Prix that had been successful as well in terms of saying that major sporting events actually leave an economic legacy and are beneficial to the destination. And that you know there are some people that feel the benefit is minimal, that the benefit is often not only measur in the actual economic benefit of the event or the net additional economic benefit of the event, but the calculating customer lifetime value profiling of the destination that has a knock-on effect for trade, investment, and tourism in years after the event. So we look at all of that, and basically our exercise was us by the football association to get South Africa to buy into bidding for the event. And the
FIFA 2010 event is a huge
a undertaking from a government perspective; the country has to give a lot of guarantees and has to be involv in a lot of the clean email infrastructure nes if there are such. So it brought our government on board to go for the event
Rafferty: So since winning the bid, what role has your firm play in the preparation for the tournament?