It may be the time when everybody looks to be busy with Brazil 2014 World cup, but in another part of the world, i.e., Russia, preliminary steps have been initiated for the next world cup which is scheduled to be hosted by them. Russia was chosen as the host of the said world cup in 2010 and at that time the expected budget was around $10 Billion which is now doubled upto around $20 Billion to be precise. This mammoth investment will be born in 50:50 ratios by both public and private sectors in the country. At the moment, there is a huge margin of development in every department: may it be adequate transportation, equipped stadiums, transportation, or even hospitality. Vitaly Mutko, the sports minister of Russia, informed about this raised budget after his joint conference with FIFA president Sepp Blatter last Sunday. Notably, public sector’s expenses will be borne by both central and regional governments equally. Moreover, he also said that these figures are not full and final, so he left a scope for further enhancement once the infrastructure work starts.
The Segregation
As Vitaly informed, out of total planned budget, around 40% will be used on direct sports facilities, like stadium, training facilities, and equipment while rest of the budget will be used to provide world class hospitability, like hotels, transportation, airport, and even global cousins of foods. Due to geographical scattered Russian map, most of the matches will be hosted in the cities most nearer to Europe, hence there’re eleven cities which have been shortlisted to host the world cup matches; these are: Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, Volgograd, Samara, and Kaliningrad. Based on present scenario, according to Vitaly, not a single stadium is ready for a world cup match so each and every stadium needs complete overhaul to host a most popular game of the world.
After the conference, FIFA president Sepp Blatter told to the media that he has never seen a country dedicated so much for a soccer world cup, and he expects this event will surely set many standards for the event. He said, “We are in a very comfortable situation when it comes to the organization of the World Cup 2018 We are one year ahead of our schedule and this is a new approach to organising World Cups…With this approach we have already come so far, six years before the start.”