A meeting held in Belfast yesterday heard how state agencies and private companies are helping Northern Irish businesses compete for some of the largest infratructure development programmes in the world, all based on major sporting events.
“The footprint of business opportunity around major sports events is far bigger tha most would imagine,” said Denis Mills, CEO of Major Events International addressing the conference at the University of Ulster in Jordanstown.
“Australian companies, through their state agencies are still leveraging enormous value from the hosting of the Sydney Olympics 12 years ago.”
“With deadlines for projects being immovable, experience in having worked on other major events is invaluable and having an ‘Olympic’ or ‘World Cup’ reference counts for an awful lot.”
Brazil is spending US$50 billion on infrastructure to prepare for the World Cup in 18 months time but even that is only 5% of what is being spent on building up infratructure and facilities in what is now the world’s sixth largest economy.
$812 million is set aside for development of media facilities alone with a similar amount set aside for security. Hosting the next Fifa World Cup and Olympics will transform the nature of the country which currently only welcomes six million visitors a year, the same number as travel to Buenos Aires, according to London based Brazilian lawyer Vitoria Nabas.
The area of sporting related infratructure has been specifically targetted by Invest NI who are assisting companies in the tender process for events in Britain from the 2014 Commonwealth Games through to the 2017 World Athletics Championships and special incentives to help small and medium sized businesses compete for specialist contracts has been established.
“We have an office already established in the middle east to focus on development in Quatar whereUS$100 billion will be spent in the next ten years on transport, hotels and stadia alone,” said Clare Gadd of Invest NI who heads up services to business across the middle east and South Asia.
Ireland’s rich sporting heritage and reach into international markets can be of huge benefit when it comes to opening doors towards lucrative international contracts. That is only the beginning but while economies remain flat domestically the opportunities presented by events like next year’s World Student games in Russia which has see the construction of 53 new stadia are enormous.
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