Hosting the World Cup and Olympic Games frequently demands the construction of new stadia and services for elites who are able to spectate the tournament. In response to pressure from commentators who suggested that the local populations do not benefit from the World Cup, FIFA began to highlight ways in which local populations can benefit (Lee and Taylor, 2005). ‘Football for Hope’ is FIFA’s social
32 programme, and, although it has projects that fall outside the World Cup, it is central to the social benefit claims that World Cup organisers and FIFA make.
However, within the sports mega-event literature there is an established body of literature that challenges the social benefit claims made by FIFA, the IOC and the host countries. Some scholars have argued that some groups do not receive either the financial or social benefits claimed and can be left disadvantaged from hosting the event (Tilley, 2006, Hagn and Maennig, 2009, Mol, 2010, Chalip, 2006, Hall, 2012, Whitson and Horne, 2006, Whitson et al., 2006, Black and Van Der Westhuizen, 2004, Horne and Manzenreiter, 2006a, Roche, 2000, Roche, 1992). Particular social issues that have been addressed by the literature include: the gentrification of urban areas in Beijing (Mol, 2010), South Africa (Tilley, 2006) and London (Horne and Manzenreiter, 2006b); ‘hiding’ unsightly parts of the city in Rio de Janeiro (Curi et al., 2011); urban regeneration projects which have not delivered in Atlanta (Andranovich et al., 2001) and Sydney (Waitt, 2003); and a lack of economic benefit to local communities (Pillay and Bass, 2008, Humphreys and Prokopowicz, 2007, Ugra, 2013), including access to sporting facilities (Whitson et al., 2006, Horne and Manzenreiter, 2004). These studies are largely quantitative or are written to influence policy.
There is a wider body of literature that claims hosting sports mega-events can act as a catalyst for achieving political goals, sometimes with social benefit outcomes. These have been argued to have a legacy far longer than the sports event itself (Cornelissen and Swart, 2006, Hargreaves, 2002, Scambler, 2005, Hayes and Karamichas, 2012, Horne and Manzenreiter, 2006b, Horne, 2007, Roche, 2000). The opportunity for local elites to re-frame dominant narratives (Black, 2007, Finlay and Xin, 2010, Fan, 2006), attract foreign investment (Cornelissen, 2008) or further political ideologies (Close et al., 2007) are all perceived as potential political outcomes of hosting a sports mega-event. Scholars have also argued it presents an opportunity for host nations and cities to align with neoliberalism and
33 modernisation by speeding up urban development projects (Levermore and Beacom, 2009, Levermore, 2011, Pillay and Bass, 2008).
Developing the argument from Black (2007), sports mega-events can be said to provide an opportunity for local elites to improve, change, re-frame or create a new image of their location (Finlay and Xin, 2010, Black, 2007). A common starting point of this body of literature is the marketing perspective. In a
marketing context, Fan (2006) describes how a nation has a brand image with or without nation branding. Sports mega-events can be seen as one mechanism to employ nation branding with the intention to change a country’s international image. Referring to national branding, rather than regional or local, Fan (2006) further describes how it ‘concerns a country’s whole image, covering political, economic, historical and cultural dimensions. The concept is at the nation level, multidimensional and context-dependent’ (ibid: 8). In the neoliberal context a good image is important to ensure trade, tourism and foreign investment (Harvey, 2005).
In the sports sociology literature, this has been interpreted as image leveraging (Chalip, 2006). This literature is mainly focused on the identification of image leveraging mechanisms and quantifying their impact (Bob and Swart, 2009, Grix, 2012, O'Brien and Chalip, 2007, Ferrari and Guala, 2015, Beesley and Chalip, 2011). Whilst this is a respected and important line of enquiry, it falls short in relation to my thesis, as it does not address the qualitative impacts of changing an image of a host city. Grix (2012) goes some way to identify this trend when he suggests the literature is mainly focused on post-event analysis and is quantitative. In reference to the recent trend of developing countries hosting an event, Corneilsson (2010) argues that sports mega-events are seen as a key political ‘imagineering’ of the governments. According to her, it allows governments to showcase the type of society and state they want to create, with an ultimate aim to re-position them in the international order (Panagiotopoulou, 2012, Sugden and Tomlinson, 2002).
34 Pillay and Bass (2008) suggests South Africa, the hosts of the 2010 World Cup, are a good example of this. The local organising committee in South Africa cited economic development targets as one of the fundamental reasons for hosting the tournament. Cornelissen (2011) discusses specifically how the ideals of neoliberal development, urbanisation and industrialisation were matched by both FIFA and South African policies, which enabled ‘re-imagineering’ through an extensive infrastructure programme. Donaldson and van der Westhuizen (2011) focus on one infrastructure programme, the Gautrain, a high- speed train linking different areas of Johannesburg. The train was argued to allow Johannesburg to compete as a ‘world city’. Linking back to neoliberalism, Van Der Westhuizen (2007) claims that the symbolism of a new local infrastructure programme has global consequences and further entrenched the neoliberal ideology in South Africa. The demand of sports mega-events usually sees an increase in infrastructure development programmes, these programmes are seen as essential to ‘re-imagineer’ a space or place.
Within the literature on the use of sports mega-events to ‘re-imagineer’, there is little qualitative literature that explores specific projects. The emergence of developing countries hosting sports-mega events is another dimension to this literature that has yet to be fully addressed. To date, there are no studies that engage with the social benefit claims, and in particular infrastructure projects, associated with the World Cup in Brazil.