Lay woes at feet of FIFA

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/06/2015 (4075 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the most hated people in sports administration were NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and any member of the International Olympic Committee.

Now, these monsters seem like adorable kittens compared with the Bond-villain arch-nemeses at the helm of FIFA, an organization fairly regarded as the Felons Incriminating Football Absolutely, thanks to the bribery scandal.

Even before the arrests of FIFA officials in Switzerland, soccer fans had every right to be outraged at the decision not to spend a piddly $3 million on natural turf for a tournament featuring the best women to ever play the game.

After the arrests and the revelations millions were frittered away on bribes, that outrage is even more warranted.

Hence the genius of a U.S. fan who showed up at Friday’s Women’s World Cup matches at Investors Group Field — only a shill would call it “Winnipeg Stadium” — with a sign reading “FIFA, kiss my Astroturf.”

Yes, FIFA is the organization every sports fan loves to hate, even as this city and province benefit wildly from the millions spent here this week by at least 10,000 visiting Team USA fans and other tourists.

So at the risk of beating up an easy target, it has to be noted FIFA messed up the Women’s World Cup in one other manner: not giving a green light for some form of Winnipeg host committee to oversee logistics, organize events and generally improve the fan experience throughout the tournament.

Earlier this week, I wrote about the underwhelming hype about the Women’s World Cup in Winnipeg, noting the absence of signage and organized events downtown.

FIFA responded by insisting they didn’t want to compete with other events this week, such as Pride Winnipeg and the Winnipeg International Jazz Festival. Tourism Winnipeg noted visitors have jammed Winnipeg restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions to capacity, claiming that alone makes the fan experience a success.

With all due respect, Tourism Winnipeg is in deep denial. Women’s World Cup visitors had no choice but to spend their money in Winnipeg.

The sheer number of complaints about the lack of some form of centralized Women’s World Cup headquarters suggests that yes, this city did in fact drop the soccer ball when it came to organizing a downtown concert stage or viewing parties.

A good salesperson doesn’t brag when customers spend money. A good salesperson wants their customers to be happy about the money they spend, because those customers will come back.

There aren’t many occasions when 10,000 tourists show up in Winnipeg. Most will leave the city with positive impressions of the people, but so much more could have been done to make visitors feel welcome.

Tourism Winnipeg, however, isn’t the villain here. Neither is Travel Manitoba, the City of Winnipeg or the business community.

It was a FIFA decision not to spend money on Women’s World Cup events in Winnipeg. More significantly, FIFA did not encourage the creation of a Winnipeg host committee capable of co-ordinating a multi-governmental and private-sector response on the scale of a Pan Am Games, Grey Cup or Juno Awards.

Host committees matter because they delegate responsibilities and promote communication across many sectors of the government and the private sector.

For example, a Women’s World Cup host committee could have ensured Winnipeg’s public works department told road-construction crews to wait until AFTER the tournament to block eastbound Bishop Grandin Boulevard. Instead, that blockade went up this week, causing traffic snarls before Friday’s match at Investors Group Field.

A host committee could have ensured Canadian border guards at Emerson and Sprague beefed up their staff complements this week. It’s not like the Women’s World Cup snuck up on anyone.

A host committee most definitely could have secured the corporate sponsorship necessary to erect downtown banners and create a downtown events program on the scale of what transpired at The Forks during the 1999 Pan Am Games. The notion FIFA events would have detracted from free jazz at Old Market Square is ludicrous.

It’s easy to blame the city, the province and tourism agencies for this failure to capitalize on an opportunity. But the ultimate responsibility lies with FIFA, which simply doesn’t spend anywhere near as much on elite women’s events as it does on men’s soccer.

The women’s game has arrived, especially in the U.S, as the massive crowds of American tourists in Winnipeg this week demonstrated. Men’s soccer will always be more lucrative for FIFA, but this ossified organization of entitled control freaks needs to get with the bloody times.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca