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YOU may be intrigued to know that along with extortionate prices, and lower-than-expected demand for tickets, the World Cup later this year faces other threats - this time from a totally unexpected quarter. Guardian readers were warned in late November to beware Fred, one of the Cape Penisula's better known primates. Fred, you see, is a baboon, and he might yet discover that a bus-load of South Korean tourists wandering amiably, even excitedly, at Cape Point one June afternoon, represents an opportunity not to be missed. As the newspaper's David Smith wrote last year: "With the light-fingered primates having learned how to open car doors and jump through windows in pursuit of sandwiches and snacks, experts are warning that the hundreds of thousands of fans expected in 2010 will represent rich pickings."
It's that "experts are warning" that I like. It's particularly tabloid-ish sleight-of-hand that gets my hackles rising because although baboons might be a nuisance - might even be something of a menace - to depict them as a threat to the World Cup is rather pushing things. There are ten World Cup venues, after all, and 64 matches all told, only eight of them taking place at the Green Point stadium. Baboons won't be a problem at the stadium, or on the waterfront, or in the CBD, but Smith is nevertheless able to conjure an alarmist story out of exceptionally thin material. What will it be next? Fan eating spiders? Green giraffes? Buffaloes with halitosis?
Smith's tabloid muck aside, there are some very interesting and useful lines of enquiry that can be pursued by journalists looking for a hard-hitting World Cup story at the moment. All my anecdotal evidence suggests that demand is not what we thought. Keep your ear to the ground and you will hear the sound of organisers groaning. Africans haven't taken up tickets in expected quantities, locals haven't bought as we believed they would. Europeans and those from elsewhere in the world have been careful on how they spend their money. Why is this? The fact that South Africa is a long-haul destination undoubtedly has something to do with it. So, too, does the fact that our World Cup will be a winter event.
But there are other factors, too. Prices for a return ticket from the major European capitals are very expensive; travel in the country is also pricey. Hotel prices have gone up as well. Then there's the fact that the recession is still very much intact in most of Europe and some of the rest of the world as well. I think that what we'll be seeing, then, is that the middle band of traveller, those with some money to spend will be staying away. This means the World Cup will be, on the one hand, a tournament for the elite: corporate guests, executives, folk with credit cards more elite then most people knew was possible, and, on the other, the rabble. The rabble will consist of the young and the bold, the adverturers, and the fancy-free. They're good to have but they won't spend any money, because they will have spent most of it in getting here. The implications of this are significant. With the upper tier and the lower end of the market coming to South Africa, with little in-between, the main mass of folk in the middle band will be missing. As far as economies of scale are concerned, it is these people that, cumulatively, make a difference economically. This is not because they spend great amounts of money as individuals, couples or families, but because their cumulative weight is commercially significant. Without them the World Cup will be a spectacle for the super-rich, who will have a cocooned, air-conditioned experience second to none and who might even be able to spy themselves a green giraffe if they are exceptionally lucky and students and backpackers, the kind of guys and girls who, by definition, will try to get as much as they can on the cheap; who will schlenter and cajole and have fun, but who probably won't spend money in significant numbers.
So much for tourists to South Africa, what of locals themselves? Locals have not bought ticket in the quantities that the Local Organising Committee and Fifa would like. There are many reasons for this: going onto the Fifa website can be an arduous experience. Folk clearly don't like going into FNB branches. Now it looks as if alternative plans are going to be made to make buying easier. All in all, though, despite the tier of ticket sales being reserved for locals, take-up has been disappointing. Some games you wouldn't really want to be too interested in - New Zealand versus Slovakia at Rustenburg on the first Tuesday of the competition, anyone? - but there are some cracking games on offer: Netherlands versus Denmark anyone, or Brazil versus Ivory Coast. We would have reasonably thought that local takeup would be better. Then again, maybe they are just too worried about Fred the baboon...
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