I truly hope that Blatter is ousted, the Qatar decision is reversed and given to a nation that with a less-appalling human rights record and some actual interest in football. I can't name a single Qatari club or player and know nothing of their league (other than Gabriel Batistuta played there for a year at the end of his career), and I'd consider myself to be someone who knowns a fair bit about football.

These are not profit making events to host, or at least they ought not to be. The benefits are varied and certainly not trivially reducible to profit/loss on the event itself.

http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ghosts-of-olympics-past?...

http://www.businessinsider.com/sochi-olympics-ghost-city-201...

http://distractify.com/culture/sports/haunting-images-of-aba...

In fact, the 'legacy' of the Games was one of its main themes[1]. A ton of money was spent redeveloping Stratford, the area surrounding the Olympic Park, and the site itself has been converted into a park. Lots of the venues were temporary, and the major ones - e.g. aquatics, velodrome - are still being used. Many of the venues were also designed with conversion in mind - the aquatics centre was downsized, the stadium is being taken over by a football club. I think a lot of past problems stem from massively oversized venues that nobody can use afterwards, so hopefully that will be avoided.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_the_2012_Summer_Olymp...

Not really. While there might be some cases where some of the infrastructure is something where the operating/maintenance costs would be justified but which didn't get built because of the up-front capital costs, and where hosting a special event which happened to need the same infrastructure might provide an excuse (or an otherwise-unavailable source of funding) for the capital costs, that's rather exceptional. Normally, the most of the infrastructure needed for the event consists of things for which the operations/maintenance costs would not be justified once the event is over.

- Sea to Sky Highway went from being a ridiculously dangerous road between Vancouver and Whistler to being a pretty good road (still twisty, but there's only so much that can be done about that), and sorely needed these improvements for many, many years without budget for it.

- Canada Line also received a whole bunch of federal money to get built, probably bringing it ahead of schedule by many years. An airport transit line was badly needed in Vancouver, especially with $40 cab rides to downtown.

- BC Place's renovations got a major budget boost from the Olympics, allowing it to be turned into a great venue. The pressurized roof was a huge annoyance (air locks, yay! /s) and collapsed on several occasions, so the new retractable roof probably wouldn't have happened without the Olympic money.

- Cypress Mountain finally got off their ass and built a proper lodge with proper facilities to support the Olympics.

Vancouver also reused a lot of existing stadiums and infrastructure, opting to upgrade rather than build from scratch. It was honestly an example of a really, really well executed Olympics with a lasting legacy. There have been complainers the entire time, but honestly, it made Vancouver a better city. Closing of Granville for theentirety of the games also allowed the city to experiment with closing off city blocks for events, and that now has become a yearly tradition (along with Robson St). On a more sentimental note, it brought the country together in a unified passion which I had not seen before and have not seen since. It was truly a spectacular experience. I like rewatching the closing comments on CTV (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX_dndXEGHI) as well as Stephen Brunt's video essay (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz8tzP3oeDg) every so often to remember that.

Even London 2012 was a great example – reusing infrastructure, upgrading it, etc is a good way to do it.

Another good idea: One of the recent UEFA cups was hosted by two countries together (actually, several of them were). Which is another good idea, several less developed countries working together to still get the profit off of the games, but sharing the costs.

Now let's talk about the "DEVELOPING COUNTRIES"... what good examples do you have?

And yet FIFA insists on a bunch of expensive stadiums each time.

Probably easier to build new ones than adapt old (cf the demolition and reconstruction of Wembley to fix these and other issues.)

Of course, they can easily demand mad money for entry tickets this way.

3 of the 10 stadiums built in Portugal for the Euro 2004 have been considered for demolition because they have been largely unused since the tournament and the municipalities have no way to fund their basic maintenance.

In many ways, the World Cup was a tragic waste of resources for South Africa, and even though it showcased the country (for that one month the South African government showed it could rise above mediocrity), the opportunity was soon squandered.

Most of the alleged spin-off infrastructure (Gautrain, new Durban Airport and Gauteng highways), would have happened regardless, and probably at much lower cost, because of price fixing and the general supply-and-demand situation in the construction industry as a result of the World Cup.

Not "some of those built in Portugal in 2004" but actually most of them are currently being used way below capacity. And some of them are actually causing financial problems for the local governments, as the stadiums generate little to no revenue and the maintenance costs are huge.

But everyone involved in getting them built, apart from the guys laying down the bricks, profited hugely from this absurd and pharaonic decision, and the taxpayers didn't really complain properly (and still don't).

Take for example the proposed Olympic Games 2024 Hamburg and Kiel:

Kiel hosts the largests sailing event worldwide every year, and hosted the Handball world cup before – and, due to having the best european team in Handball, we also have often large matches.

Hamburg has also lots of other sports which are done on worldcup level. Combined, we have the infrastructure done to host more than half of the Olympics RIGHT NOW. You could host more than half of the Olympics right tomorrow, without any additional constructions.

And Kiel has also been co-host of the Olympics two previous times, each of them producing a net-profit and developing a complete new district out of the investments – the facilities built for Olympia 1972 are still in use today.

What are we going to build for Olympia 2024? Nothing new – we’ll update existing infrastructure and stadiums, improve public transport (which would have been done anyway, and is already being built today), and add some new living quarters for the contestants – which could be used as cheap student housing afterwards, as both Hamburg and Kiel are facing a crisis where not enough affordable apartments for students exist.

Reusability quota: 100%. We’d have no losses, only profits, and it’d be cheap, too.

Only two new permanent facilities were built for the games: Olympic Velodrome at California State University, Dominguez Hills and the Olympic Swim Stadium at the University of Southern California. Both of those received heavy corporate sponsorship which covered most of the costs.

Overall, the Los Angeles Olympics made a profit of around $200 million.

I lived in the area at the time (Pasadena, to be precise), and the Olympics were remarkable unobtrusive. Mot people expected traffic to be really terrible during the Games, but enough people apparently took vacations or arranged to work at home or shifted their schedules that my daily freeway commute during the games was actually much faster than it had been before.

Best 8000$ party I ever threw.

So yes, while the actual events were hard to get to, there was more than enough for everyone to do, and it was, as OP put it, a massive party. I'd easily do it again for $8000.

[1] http://www.startribune.com/hartman-2016-ryder-cup-chairman-s...

Who knows though.

As to who reaps the profits, I wouldn't neglect decision makers within governments, as usually the companies that are involved in building and promoting the whole thing have to be "friendly" to get the contract...

The entire region is crazy about football. 5 of the 20 richest clubs in Europe are sponsored by a Gulf company.

http://gulfnews.com/sport/football/more-football/uae-tops-eu...

Xavi, 35, would also work with Qatar’s Aspire Academy, become an ambassador for the 2022 World Cup to be held in the Gulf state, which is one of Barcelona’s main sponsors, and aim to start his coaching qualifications, his agent, Ivan Corretja, told Reuters.

Corretja declined to comment on reports that Xavi will earn €10m (£7.2m) a season."

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/may/20/xavi-hernand...

It's within 200 now, though the many follow-up stories have diffused the voting somewhat.

I hope they get them all. I don't care about the reason behind it... FIFA/Soccer Federations are just to messed up to stay like this unpunished.

GO USA!

Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton's State Department (26 May 2015)

Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation... nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation and also gained State Department clearance to buy caches of American-made weapons even as the department singled them out for a range of alleged ills, from corruption to restrictions on civil liberties to violent crackdowns against political opponents.

...the Algerian government donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation and its lobbyists met with the State Department officials who oversee enforcement of human rights policies. Clinton’s State Department the next year approved a one-year 70 percent increase in military export authorizations to the country. The increase included authorizations of almost 50,000 items classified as “toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment” after the State Department did not authorize the export of any of such items to Algeria in the prior year.

...Goldman Sachs paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to speak to “approximately 250 high level clients and investors” in New York, according to State Department records obtained by Judicial Watch. Two months later, the State Department approved a $675 million foreign military sale involving Hawker Beechcraft -- a company that was then part-owned by Goldman Sachs. As part of the deal, Hawker Beechcraft would provide support to the government of Iraq to maintain a fleet of aircraft used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Goldman Sachs has also contributed at least $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to donation records.

Stephen Walt, a Harvard University professor of international affairs, told IBTimes that the intertwining financial relationships between the Clintons, defense contractors and foreign governments seeking weapons approvals is “a vivid example of a very big problem -- the degree to which conflicts of interest have become endemic.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons...

Your second point about "false flag" makes no sense whatsoever.

EDIT: This is why HackerNews is going to the dogs. This perfectly reasonable comment has been downvoted numerous times.

"Clinton Foundation took at least $1,250,000 from Qatar and its World Cup committee implicated in FIFA bribery scandal"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3099839/Clinton-Foun...

To the extent that the FIFA discussion is inappropriate for HN, the correct response is to flag the article, not post things off-topic to the article in the thread.

Whether the FIFA-related article is appropriate to HN is completely irrelevant, in any case, to discussion of whether the attack on Clinton is itself on-topic to the thread discussing the FIFA article.

"Clinton Foundation took at least $1,250,000 from Qatar and its World Cup committee implicated in FIFA bribery scandal

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3099839/Clinton-Foun... Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3099839/Clinton-Foun...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3099839/Clinton-Foun...

    > There's no way Blatter gets through this unscathed

As someone pointed out on Twitter, "oh look, the only people left to vote on Friday are Blatter-friendly".

Can't believe Blatter and his cronies would be so stupid, but perhaps some of the weaker and greedier executives were, so Blatter is happy to serve them up?

The bribery charges aren't about payments to FIFA, they are about payments (for instance) that constitute fraud against FIFA (and various other subordinate soccer organizations, among others) as an organization. [0] In some cases, these are frauds that were being investigated when the relevant officials resigned from FIFA (ending the FIFA investigations, but not retroactively negating the fraud.)

While organizations current executives may have power over the organization, they aren't legally indistinguishable from the organization.

> Can't believe Blatter and his cronies would be so stupid

Its not uncommon for powerful people with a tendency to corruption to be, or become after years of smaller transgressions not seeming to have consequences, arrogant enough to commit major transgressions that authorities are willing and able to prosecute.

[0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2088...

Well, the "end" is hard to assess. What has happened so far is a series of investigations begun and dropped over various sex-related crimes until the current set for "aggravated pimping" for which he was tried this past February with the verdict to be read in June.

Thousands even, and the sad thing is the number of slavery condition migrant workers have been very high in Qatar and the Emirates since the start of this golden age.

Let's hope some things improve for those who suffer the most. And fuck FIFA.

The only way Blatter will step down is if a major football country association or group of associations (e.g. Germany, Spain, Holland) threaten to leave FIFA if he doesn't.

To really hit the tournament, you would need the support from several historical and relevant members in each Association. As an example: USA, Mexico in Concacaf; Argentina and Brasil in Conmebol; Italy, Germany, France and England, Spain (mainly for their leagues) in UEFA.

Let's say Germany 'secedes' from FIFA. I know for a fact that if Holland (I'm Dutch, but same thing goes for England) were to win the next World Cup in the absence of Germany, it wouldn't be taken seriously. I'd say most Dutch football fans would rather not win it at all in the absence of Germany. If they didn't qualify, well that's a whole different story, then they obviously weren't good enough to start with.

More detailed account of prison labor in Nevada regarding casinos and construction. http://vltp.net/casinos-prison-labor-strange-bedfellows/

The slave market: http://www.unicor.gov/

You can even get slave labor to operate your call center: http://www.unicor.gov/services/contact_helpdesk/

It creates an incentive for the prison industry to lobby for more prisons, tougher anti-crime laws, tougher border crossing penalties, longer sentences. The profits incentivize a total lack of addressing recidivism.

1 out of 4 prisoners in the world occupy a US prison (we account for what? 4-5% of the world's population?). Violent crimes have been trending down over 20 years, but prisoner population as a percentage is at an all time high due to tougher drug convictions.

Also, then there's huge factory farms, which are known to use migrants of questionable citizenship as laborers, and report them to the police when they complain.

The points you bring up about prisoners is interesting. I've always found the moral idea of a for-profit prison as reprehensible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_the_United...

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/04/21/nobodies

Since then, they've helped the government rescue over 1,000 people from slavery in the southeast U.S.

Every few years since, IIRC, at least the mid- to late-1980s there seems to be a new exposé about various forms of slavery in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (particularly Saipan), though that may have been at least somewhat mitigated in the last few years by Congress' federalization of CNMI labor and immigration policy in 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/americas/03iht-slave...

The term mostly used nowadays to describe the selling of people is "human-trafficking" even though human trafficking is a little bit broader category. Its common for organized crime to deal in human trafficking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_State...

We can get FIFA, but we cannot get Roman Polanski?

Here:

(1) Several of the charged principals are US persons (individuals or corporations),

(2) All of the other principals are charged with conspiracy with the charged US persons,

(3) Several of the charged acts took place in the US or by means of US institutions,

(4) Several of the charged persons, and the various properties allegedly illegally acquired through the illegal acts and against which criminal forfeiture is sought, are within the US.

(5) Also, the main charges are not paying bribes, but receiving/profiting from the bribes (constituting fraud against various organizations, money laundering to conceal the proceeds, etc.)

Some combination of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (where a company can be prosecuted in the US for bribing officials abroad) mixed with RICO. The RICO part might not even be necessary, but it would allow them to go after anyone in the organization if they felt like it. I'm betting Blatter is sweating bullets right now.

As I understand it, the FCPA covers U.S. companies and their foreign affiliates and companies/organizations that trade securities in the U.S. If any employee or agent of such an organization bribes a foreign official, the DOJ or the SEC can go after them. "Foreign official" is defined really broadly as well. It includes foreign government employees, but also employees of international agencies and employees of government-managed industries (like doctors working for a state university hospital.) Also, the payment has to be illegal and not just "grease" money to speed up an ordinary task.

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but the DOJ might be able to draw a line from various U.S. individuals to various FIFA board members or from US Soccer to FIFA itself depending on how broad the definitions are. If they get that second one, everybody on FIFA's board is screwed.

RICO is cited in the indictment, along with wire fraud and money laundering statutes; FCPA is not.

DOJ has a lot to do with bribery by US persons (natural persons and corporations), and criminal conspiracies involving such bribery (even if not all the principals are US persons), and criminal conspiracies making heavy use of US financial institutions.

Of course, don't let the facts get in the way of all the Qatar/Russia bashing.

I think the fact that the charges indicate a massive pattern of corruption by FIFA and subordinate organization executives in a wide variety of decisions is quite relevant to the FIFA-bashing over the decisions regarding the way that the Qatar and Russia decisions, given the factual conditions surrounding hosting the cup in those countries, seem inexplicable on any basis other than corruption at FIFA.

Even if the charges don't include charges specific to corruption around those decisions.

It does not mean Qatar/Russia campaigns were corruption free. They do not have the evidence for it, or have not yet found a localization (US) vector that could aid in prosecution. My personal opinion is there was corruption (as normal) for both Russia and Qatar, but especially Qatar. The Jeremy Schapp ESPN documentary gives you a peek into things, including the bribing of local African football association officials.

The fact that all games of WC will be played in one city is the problem. All the fans in contact for a prolonged span...It won't end well.

They may have money to throw at the problem, but Nepalese migrants building the infrastructure to host the 2022 World Cup died at a rate of almost one per day. Look at the full report, it's astounding:

* Evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project.

* Some Nepalese men have alleged that they have not been paid for months and have had their salaries retained to stop them running away.

* Some workers on other sites say employers routinely confiscate passports and refuse to issue ID cards, in effect reducing them to the status of illegal aliens.

* Some labourers say they have been denied access to free drinking water in the desert heat.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/revealed-qatars...

Violence and the Euro 2004, in Portuguese.

http://ielt.fcsh.unl.pt/ielt/pt/acontecendo/no-passado/132

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/16/sports/world-cup-98-fans-s...

The lack of humanity they displayed was an eye opener for me and helped me come to the realization that Soccer/Football has become the proxy for war in Europe. While that is, all things considered, an excellent development (I'll take hooliganism over world wars), it's also scary that people seem to have a deep-seeded, tribal need to fight and, when we do, we seem to lose all compassion for the opposition. Events like the World Cup seem to play on this need rather than trying to quash it.

Of course, almost every major soccer league in the world runs during the winter with a summer break, so moving the month-long World Cup to would have thrown a wrench into the scheduling of every league and match in the top leagues. It would be an absolute nightmare.

I have high hopes that the World Cup will be moved (it's been moved with as little as three years notice before), but if not it will be chaos.

None of the major professional leagues are happy about this. If the world cup remains in Qatar it's going to be a fiasco.

http://www.businessinsider.com/qatar-world-cup-disaster-2015...

Qatar would build them on less time and less money, I suppose.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/11/405955547/b...

Besides the issues with building stadiums in states without a football tradition, Brazil is facing the problem that people just don't go to the stadium much. For example, the national league, which finished its third round last week, has had only 3 games with more than 20000 spectators so far.

That was already a big problem before the World Cup, and only became bigger after it since the cost of maintaining the stadiums is much higher now, and so are ticket prices.

That's quite low - only the bottom two Premiership teams averaged less than that for 2014-15. But presumably it'll pick up over the season?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_home_attendances_in_non... implies there's at least 3 clubs averaging >20k a season recently.

Do you have any sources for the claim? As far as I know, football is quite popular in middle east. Football clubs in that area have consistently been strong contenders in the AFC champions league. This means they have a healthy and competitive domestic league. Claiming they don't have soccer-related infrastructure is pretty ridiculous.

[0] " Local organizers are planning to build 9 new stadiums and expand 3 existing stadiums for this event." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar#Football

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_2022_FIFA_World_Cup_bid#P...

Nor in Russia, especially considering they are at war with their neighbors, under sanctions, and how the anti-gay laws will treat gay fans and players.

We have unofficial reports of Putin gifting officials with bribes. If this investigation continues, we'll see a lot more than just Qatari corruption here.

It claims that Putin was initially skeptical about Russia's bid but had later thrown his full weight behind the process. "He (Putin) took a personal interest in the running of the bid in mid-2010," the committee report reveals.

Under the heading, "Intelligence relating to Russia 2018" a series of allegations are revealed about Putin's role in brokering a major bilateral trade deal for gas with Qatar, the winners of the 2022 bid, in exchange for each others votes and the votes of others of their supporters.

The allegations also detail the plundering of Russia's national art collection, either from the vaults of the State Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg or the Kremlin archives, as alleged kickbacks to Platini and D'Hooghe.

There are arrests being made and cases put forward based on this. So while it's not yet a finished matter, saying, "Nothing has been proven" at every piece of evidence is a bit of a cop-out. Pointing out what evidence there is does not qualify, as you claim, as "Putin slander."

I have not seen any first hand evidence. None of us have, I would say. Or has it been released? Otherwise, it is slander.

Slander:

Bob Jones murdered his wife.

Allegation:

Bob Jones is accused of murdering his wife.

Bob Jones allegedly murdered his wife.

Bob Jones has been charged with the murder of his wife.

Bob Jones was arrested following investigation of the suspicious death of his wife.

Bob Jones was arrested pending trial.

Witnesses claim they saw Bob Jones murder his wife.

Suspicion looms over Bob Jones following the murder of his wife.

There are reports that Bob Jones murdered his wife.

Someone told me that Bob Jones is the prime suspect in the murder investigation.

Police find evidence that Bob Jones murdered his wife.

I think that Bob Jones murdered his wife. (You probably wouldn't see that one printed in a newspaper though)

I think that there is enough evidence to prove that Bob Jones murdered his wife.

Family says Bob Jones is capable of murdering his wife.

There have been allegations that Bob Jones murdered his wife.

Also, you know, the thousands of people killed in slave labor to build the stadiums, the fact that Qatar is 120+ degrees Fahrenheit during the summer (50 Celsius), making playing a soccer tournament completely unreasonable, and the fact that this "outspending" is done via blatant bribery and corruption.

It's certainly just not the Anglophonic world that is fed up with FIFA and glad to see a change.

Yes, the labour laws there suck and are in much need of reform, but the levels of criticism this has reached crosses into downright racism.

Since we are on the topic of slavery. What about the millions of undocumented workers in the US, who work below minimum wage, have no rights, and no protections afforded by the law- They are effectively slaves working under the threat of deportation. The idea that US government cannot do anything to stem the flow of illegal immigration is ridiculous. We are talking about a country with military/police capabilities larger than the remaining top 5 countries combined. The fact of the matter is the US economy benefits from having a low-cost, migrant population with no rights, just like Qatar, and the government isn't in a hurry to fix it.

I would rather a World Cup be hosted somewhere in middle-east,Asia or Africa instead of yet another country in Europe or the Americas . India would make a great host if it could afford it. But we can't, and neither can many Asian/African countries. If the Qataris can and are willing to do it, give them a chance.

Edit: It's also amusing to find everyone on this thread and the internet up in arms against Qatar/Russia for all the bribery and corruption, when the indictments so far actually relate to corruption going back 24 years for matches in the US, South America (according to BBC) and the previous World cup in South Africa. I don't remember anyone complaining about corruption back then.

What the fuck? Thousands of people have died building soccer stadiums and people are saying that is wrong.

That has nothing to do with race whatsoever.

Over 1100 people have died in a span of a few weeks from the heat wave currently happening in India. This sort of thing happens. Obviously, the Qataris could be doing a lot more to reduce deaths and improve condition of workers, but this is not exactly news, nor is it due to slavery.

I still think that a lot of the hate haslittle to do with slavery and more to do with the fact that :-

1. Football fans from England/Europe/America pissed off that they couldn't host the world cup and are annoyed that the Qataris were able to buy their way into the world cup. This group has been running an effective smear campaign ever since the selection happened.

2. Undercurrent racism from football fans and non-fans (Why is this article even in Hacker News? Are there that many football, sorry soccer fans here?)

However Qatar are solely responsible for the slave labor and worker deaths. They own that.

I think that "what has so upset the Anglophonic world", plus several other countries and people that are not anglophone, was that that "outspending" was very likely due to corruption.