Hype for Cup underwhelming

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This article was published 10/06/2015 (4082 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By almost all accounts — anecdotal, by their nature — soccer fans visiting Winnipeg this week have favourable impressions of Investors Group Field, the Women’s World Cup games held at the stadium and the people of this city in general.

The friendliness of Winnipeggers comes up over and over again as the most positive thing tourists have to say about a Manitoba capital few knew anything about before they booked a hotel room here.

This isn’t surprising. As often as we crack nervous jokes about the social disparity and political ineptitude in Winnipeg, we tend to take pride in showing visitors a good time.

That’s why it’s uncomfortable to hear tourists say they’re less than impressed by the magnitude of the World Cup buzz in Winnipeg, given the prominence of the event on the world stage.

“I thought there would be more fanfare, so you’d go ‘Well, the hype of the World Cup is here in Winnipeg,’ ” Sydney, Australia, resident Rob Tappouras said Tuesday outside Parlour Coffee on Main Street, a thoroughfare thoroughly devoid of FIFA signage. “I thought there would be banners, signs the World Cup is happening.”

Don’t write this off as a single, anecdotal opinion. In a city that practically painted itself salmon for the 1999 Pan Am Games and is planning a range of events to coincide with the 2015 Grey Cup, the absence of off-field action during the Women’s World Cup is curious.

“The farther you stray from Investors Group Field, where the games will be played, the more the tournament fades from view,” Kevin Baxter wrote in the Los Angeles Times late last week. “No banners. No billboards. And among the locals, no interest.”

While the latter claim isn’t entirely accurate — thousands of Winnipeggers purchased game tickets — it’s fair to say FIFA fever hasn’t gripped the city.

This is partly because soccer still isn’t as popular as hockey or three-down football. It’s also because the games are taking place on a handful of non-consecutive days.

But at the risk of upsetting hard-working people who spent years preparing for the Women’s World Cup, nobody took on the task of creating a festival atmosphere for these games, at least outside the arrivals area at Richardson International Airport and the immediate vicinity of the football stadium.

On Monday, when two games were held at IGF, hundreds of visiting fans roamed the streets of downtown, looking for something to do.

FIFA’s Winnipeg staff estimate no fewer than 10,000 tourists attended Monday’s games. Many of those fans stayed far from downtown, given our limited number of hotel rooms.

But when people visit the city, they tend to head downtown, where no events were held in conjunction with the games and no one other than hotel staff and friendly pedestrians were available to show tourists around.

In the age of Google and ubiquitous smartphone ownership, you could argue tourists don’t need help finding their way to a good restaurant or bar. Tappouras, for example, managed to find good coffee.

But when you compare the buzz downtown during last year’s Juno Awards — a small event, in terms of tourist numbers — to the Women’s World Cup, you have to acknowledge there is less of an event presence in the city’s commercial and cultural core.

That’ll change with a FIFA flag-raising planned later this week, Mayor Brian Bowman promised on Tuesday. Ron Lemieux, the provincial minister responsible for both sport and tourism, said city and provincial tourism agencies did the best they could with event awareness, given the fact FIFA vets all signage.

Marina James, president and CEO of Economic Development Winnipeg — which administers Tourism Winnipeg — said a lot of resources were poured into showing off the city during the Women’s World Cup and creating awareness of the event.

Airport volunteers and hotel staff all received special training and tourism information was distributed widely, she said, adding events outside IGF would fall under FIFA purview.

“It’s not our job at Tourism Winnipeg to create events,” James said.

Chad Falk, FIFA’s Winnipeg venue general manager, said the array of existing downtown festivals (the Winnipeg International Children’s Festival, Pride Week and the Winnipeg International Jazz Festival all overlap with Women’s World Cup games) dissuaded his organization from competing with events of its own.

“We tried to do the best we could to make Winnipeg feel like a World Cup city,” he said.

There are still a few more days to make that happen. It’ll take more than raising a few flags, however.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca