Repercussions after blackout during Super 14 game

The seven-minute power cut on Friday night at Vodacom Park in Bloemfontein during the Super 14 rugby encounter between the Cheetahs and the Blue Bulls was a serious PR blunder. The Super 14 tournament has an international audience, and the blackout forced the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup Local Organising Committee to issue a statement to allay fears of power outages at South African stadia in June and July this year.

The stadium is one of the official 2010 World Cup venues. Local Organising Committee (LOC) spokesperson Rich Mkhondo said that the electricity and emergency generator will be used simultaneously to avoid power disruptions at the stadium during World Cup matches. He said this worked well during the Confederations Cup last year.

Gustaf Claassens, a senior marketing officer of the Mangaung Municipality, said the emergency generators were not on when the disruption came, but they will be in full force come the World Cup.

A dedicated team has been established to ensure that the electricity requirements for the 2010 World Cup are met.

Projects are being implemented to meet the additional electricity demands from stadia and the expected visitors. This includes generation, transmission and distribution projects.

As a Fifa requirement, all stadia being used during the World Cup have to run primarily off generators, with grid electricity as a secondary power source. The former Department of Minerals and Energy allocated more than R136 million to the nine host cities for the upgrading of the electricity networks. As part of the upgrade, generators were installed in March 2009.

The electricity requirements and demands by Fifa were one of 17 guarantees given to the international football body in relation to the 2010 World Cup. To deliver on these guarantees, the South African government made available more than R31 billion to support preparations for the tournament.

Why?

It is all wonderful, but one vital question remains: Why is the LOC and Fifa so reactive? Why were the power generators not in full operation during the Super 14 games?

Perhaps it was done by the local governments because it is so costly. Yet, it would be less expensive than tickets that are not purchased due to negative perceptions and images of South Africa abroad, particularly in Germany.

Attendance at the World Cup is already under threat from media reports that South African and Fifa officials have condemned as emotional and inaccurate reporting – particularly in England and Germany – about the dangers to soccer supporters from some of the world’s most violent criminals.

Recently, alarm bells have started ringing also about high prices, which are hitting advance ticket sales.

Fifa officials said two-thirds of the three million tickets for the soccer extravaganza had been sold and they were delighted by a surge in demand after the final draw in December, but a lack of flights, the cost thereof and negative reporting about security were having an impact.

Fifa general-secretary Jérôme Valcke said that flying from Europe ”costs a fortune”, partly because there were not sufficient flights.

There is also a concern about internal air travel, where some prices have trebled during the month of the World Cup, starting on 11 June. Accommodation prices have increased even more – by three-, four- or even 10-fold for some luxury digs. South Africa’s competition watchdog says it is investigating six local airlines for alleged price-fixing during the World Cup.

The prices are causing a great deal of anger, even though it generally is acknowledged that South Africa, as a long-haul destination, was never going to attract the same rush for tickets as Germany in 2006.

Sugen Pillay, global events manager for South African Tourism, told Reuters that authorities were very concerned about ”ridiculously” high prices because they wanted the World Cup to lure visitors back for future vacations.

“Our main concern is, if people don’t have a value-for-money experience, they are not going to come back to South Africa... the formal industry understands that, but people who want to make quick money don’t understand that and quite frankly, they don’t even care about it,” he said.

Ticket sales are particularly low in Germany, home of one of the largest fan bases, where crime-scare stories and high costs appear to have had a big impact. (Source: "The Times", South Africa, January 2010)

The German soccer federation said that ticket uptake was similar to 2002 when the tournament was held in another long-haul location for German fans – South Korea and Japan.

Foreign demand for tickets has come primarily from the United States, with England in second place, yet thousands of seats for the first round remain unsold.

Against this background, the Bloemfontein blackout was most unfortunate. Instead of luring international visitors to South Africa for the World Cup – with Super 14 spectators talking about their wonderful experience at World Cup stadiums – these potential visitors are being chased away by reports about blackouts in Bloemfontein.

Being reactive afterward to try and set the record straight is unlikely to repair the damage done. It was unnecessary and avoidable bad publicity in the first instance – particularly in countries such as Germany and England that already are bombarded with negative publicity.

South African soccer requires new spin doctors or new strategies – or both.

Otherwise, the final third of the Soccer World Cup tickets will not be purchased in a hurry.

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