The fifa world cup is one of the biggest events on the planet, drawing 5 billion viewers worldwide. But when that attention turns away again, what happens to the stadiums left behind today, we’ll explore the troubling fate of world, cup stadiums in russia, brazil and south africa, and examine how qatar plans to deal with this situation and why they have already begun dismantling one of their stadiums, currently only 3.2 percent of our viewers- are subscribed to our channel. So if you enjoy our videos, make sure to click that button foreign over the past decade, qatar has built an entire world cup infrastructure with modern stadiums, state-of-the-art training facilities and improved transport links.
In total, they spent more than 200 billion dollars and astronomical sum. This is way more than any other host ever spent, mainly because qatar had to build the majority of this infrastructure from scratch. Four years earlier, russia spent closer to 16 billion, while brazil spent 20 in 2014, but even 20 billion dollars is a lot of money, especially considering the entire event is over in less than a month. Besides, gaining worldwide attention. Countries hope that the world cup infrastructure will offer long-term benefits.
The transport links could breathe new life into previously run down areas, while stadiums could start to pay for themselves by hosting concerts and events. It’s a bold vision, vibrant venues outliving their original purpose, but it doesn’t always work like that. When we look at the history of world cup stadiums, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Qatar has other plans which we’ll get to later, but first, let’s see what they’re trying so hard to avoid foreign. So what happened in previous world cups in the build up to the 2018 world cup russia, built nine new stadiums and upgraded three existing venues. The cost of all this is hard to pin down, but it was a significant part of the 16 billion us dollars that russia spent on the tournament as a whole. When the world cup ended, russia decided to rent these stadiums to domestic football teams. It was an obvious step. These stadiums were designed to host matches and the ticket sales would help to pay the running costs, but this strategy failed, russia’s teams aren’t well supported, and most of them struggled to sell even half the tickets to matches at the fished olympic stadium in sochi, the local team, draws an average of 6 000 fans. Barely 15 percent of the stadium’s total capacity. These low attendances make it hard to cover the running costs. The stadiums are leaking money and taxpayers are footing the bill. They’ve been described as white elephants, expensive, pointless and burdensome a a year after the world cup. When the kaliningrad stadium began to sink into a swamp, it cost almost a million dollars to save it from a financial perspective. It would have made more sense to just let the kaliningrad stadium collapse only one of russia’s nine new stadiums is enjoying a successful afterlife. Kazan arena has been turned into a multi-purpose venue, hosting football matches, concerts, car shows and fashion events. It’s also decked out with restaurants, bars and hotel rooms. Maybe that’s the key to long-term success, transformed the stadium into something entirely new, but was it the same in other countries?
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40 years before russia, the world cup host was brazil, a nation whose stadiums tell a similar story.
Most of them are used by domestic teams, with thousands of empty seats, brazil is a passionate footballing nation, but its stadiums are simply too large to fill. The most striking example is the arena to amazonia. In the remote city of manaus, the stadium is meant to seat forty thousand people, but the local team draws crowds, no larger than a thousand. It’s leaking money at an alarming rate. More than two hundred thousand dollars per month in a desperate effort to cover costs. Another world cup stadium, the estadio nacional, has recently been used as a bus, shelter. Meanwhile, the arena das dunas is trying to make money by hosting weddings and children’s parties. It sounds even worse when we consider the fact that some of these stadiums only hosted four world cup matches was all of this worth it for just six hours of football. Brazilian taxpayers, don’t think so. A quarter of the country is living in poverty and instead of sinking money into loss making stadiums, they would prefer to see their taxes spent elsewhere. Jose cruz, a brazilian reporter, summed it up in 2015 I, don’t see any world cup legacy to brazil except the debts. We have inherited four years earlier the world cup was hosted in south africa. These stadiums are doing slightly better than the ones in russia and brazil. The moses madiba stadium in the city of durban now operates as a multi-purpose venue, as well as hosting events and music concerts. Visitors can ride a sky car to the top of the central arch and even do some bungee jumping south africa’s stadiums aren’t all successful.
The cape town stadium, complete with 65 000 seats, has never turned a profit. There have even been several calls to demolish the stadium, and it might only be a matter of time. Qatar is keen to avoid these mistakes of previous world cups, especially after their bid was mired in lots of controversy, with almost 30 fifa officials forced to step down. After evidence of corruption and bribery, things got even worse in 2013 when amnesty international reported serious exploitation of migrant workers, many of these workers were poorly paid or not paid at all and forced to work in dangerous physical conditions in 2021. An investigative report by the guardian newspaper estimated that more than 6 000 workers had died in qatar since their world cup bid. Overall, it’s caused a lot of damage to the country’s global reputation about the only thing they haven’t been criticized for are their plans to deal with the world cup stadiums when the tournament comes to an end foreign. So what are qatar’s plans for their world cup stadiums? Existence of eight colossal stadiums would be irrational for a country as small as qatar. To put it into perspective, the nation is home to 400 000 qatari citizens. The stadiums meanwhile have the capacity to hold four hundred, and twenty thousand russia is home to 140 million people, while brazil is home to 220. If these countries can’t fill their world cup stadiums, qatar won’t stand a chance, but qatar won’t try to fill them. Instead, they want to transform them the two largest stadiums, lucille and albite- will be transfigured into modern multi-purpose venues at lucille stadium.
Most of the seats will be removed to make way for shops, cafes, a school, a health clinic, and maybe even some apartments albate will undergo a similar process. It will be turned into a five-star hotel, a shopping mall and a hospital in both of the stadiums, the pitch will be kept right at the heart of the other amenities, but it will mainly be used to host community events as opposed to professional football matches. Three more of the stadiums ahmad bin, ali, al-janub and al tumama stadium- will still be used for football matches, but only after the venues are massively downsized. In all three cases, the capacity will be cut from 45 000 down to 20 000 by removing temporary seating. This strategy was also used in russia with temporary stands squeezed at the end of ikaterinburg central stadium, qatar prom to donate the temporary seating to other countries who are looking to improve their sporting infrastructure.
The downsized, 20 000 cedar stadiums will probably struggle to reach capacity since the qatari football league sometimes only draws crowds as small as a couple hundred people, but then there’s stadium 974. The most innovative solution of all this stadium is a completely temporary venue. The first of its kind in world, cup history, it was constructed using 974, recycled shipping containers and can be fully dismantled and rebuilt again somewhere else. It’s a groundbreaking approach to sporting infrastructure and something future world cups could adopt. Instead of building new stadiums in each host country, a set of temporary stadiums could be moved from place to place. Qatar is also planning to use their world cup infrastructure to host some future events. That’s what brazil did in 2016 when they hosted the summer olympics and used five of their former world cup stadiums. However, when the olympics ended, the situation was basically the same as before. In 2024 qatar will host the asian cup an international football tournament for teams in asia and oceania.
They will also host the 2030 asian games and international athletics tournament with more participants than the olympics. In both of these cases, they plan to reuse their world cup infrastructure. As much as possible making sure the projects don’t go to waste, they’ve also set their sights upon hosting the olympics, maybe as soon as 2036.. Only time will tell whether any of these plans will actually work, but one of them is already underway. After hosting a match between brazil and south korea. On december 5th, the deconstruction of stadium 974 was put into action. Rumor has it the pieces of the stadium will be shipped to uruguay, who are hoping to host the 2030 world cup? So what do you think are the mobile stadiums like this, a good idea for future world cups?