(ATR) The head of the 2010 FIFA World Cup local organizing committee was among the high-profile speakers on day two of SportelMonaco, updating the conference on preparations for the South African football tournament.
“Sepp Blatter and the FIFA technical inspection group express their satisfaction with the progress we have made. We will bring this message to the FIFA organizing committee at a meeting in Zürich on Wednesday,” said Danny Jordaan, CEO of the organizers.
He said four of the stadiums are ready for the Confederations Cup, taking place next June, with a further six World Cup venues to be inaugurated before the end of 2009.
Speaking to media on Monday, Jordaan said the global economic crisis would only have a "limited impact" on preparations. He admitted stadium construction costs had risen 10 percent compared with the initial budget, due to the soaring costs of steel, concrete and exchange rate variations. The increases were calculated some time ago and “all costs are now frozen," he said, confirming there would not be an impact on the stadia budget.
In comments at SportelMonaco about the thorny topic of ticket pricing, Jordaan said organizers had taken in account South African football fans, many of whom do not have huge incomes, with the creation of category 4 tickets.
Tickets for local fans would be pegged at $10 for Confederation Cup games and $20 for the WorldCup. He also touched on the subject of ticket scalping, insisting the organizers would seek to tackle the issue in conjunction with FIFA.
SportelMonaco attracted a number of IOC members Tuesday, with Switzerland's Denis Oswald and The Netherlands Hein Verbruggen joining London 2012 chair Sebastian Coe to take part in a session titled “Olympic Games and Television: from Beijing to London." Coe talked about the importance of using new technologies to engage the younger generation with the Olympics.
Meanwhile, officials representing the 2016 Olympics candidate cities kept a low profile, so much so that ATR was unable to track down anyone from Chicago and Rio de Janeiro. Leaders of all the bid teams are currently attending the Olympic Council of Asia General Assembly in Bali.
Tokyo 2016 was represented by Masa Takaya, manager of international communications, and Toshiaki Hosaka, senior director for operation planning. Representing Madrid 2016 were communications official Jorge Híjar and PR consultant Malcolm Munro.
On Wednesday, SportelMonaco will hold its first workshop on Football & New Media, with speakers from English football clubs Chelsea and Liverpool and representatives from Norwegian football sharing experiences and best practices about how to increase revenues through new media platforms.
With reporting from Heinz Peter Kreuzer in Monaco.
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