INTRO | HIGHLIGHTS | FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | PERSPECTIVES
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Sport Mega Events are also widely
televised, providing large sources of
revenue for broadcasting corporations.
Importantly, what is seen at the event
is not always what is seen on TV, as any
unintended interactions between fans
and the sport event are normally ignored
or censored from view, such as offensive
language or other disturbances. In terms
of surveillance, football stadiums in
particular were used for the piloting of
CCTV security systems in the UK before
they were widely used across urban
spaces from the early 1990s. At large
televised football matches the many
(audience) watch over the few (football
players); in turn police/security view
the crowd from CCTV control rooms to
track and identify terrorists, hooligans or
anyone looking suspicious.
globalised networks of expertise, unable
truly to challenge the reproduction of
predefined security exemplars. Yet if
the autonomy of local parliaments is
limited, so is the scope of public debate:
...negotiations leading to the Host City
Charter were a priori excluded from
democratic scrutiny. (Klauser, F. 2011)
In order to host the FIFA World Cup,
governments must hand over exclusive
rights and spaces to the organisation’s
personnel and the corporations attached
to them. A new security template is
then put in place by FIFA. There is an
imperative to generate profit at these
kinds of events, which involves private
corporate influence. When South Africa
hosted FIFA in 2010 it also saw it as an
opportunity to redefine itself.
South Africa is the first African country
ever to hold an international sports
event as large as the FIFA World Cup.
The World Cup took place in the vicinity
of leisure and retail areas originating
from gentrification; it was not held in
a poorer residential area. Homeless
people and unauthorised vendors were
removed forcefully, as is the case in
Above: 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
other cities hosting Sport Mega Events.
But the levels of security in Cape Town
had a variety of effects on a number
of different levels. Crime was reported
to have dropped during the football
tournament, but then rose significantly
after the security officers supplied by
the World Cup left. There were also
novel methods of security management
developed through cooperation between
the police and armed forces, but not all
of the structures developed as a result
of the World Cup remained in place.
More CCTV cameras were installed in
Johannesburg for the World Cup and
an additional 100 cameras were put in
place afterwards. Durban also installed
200 more cameras after the event. These
surveillance initiatives which remained
are used for urban security over the
long-term with some linked to biometric
databases. Thus there are post-security
legacies established in countries that
host Sport Mega Events like the World
Cup, but especially in developing
countries in terms of policing and
electronic surveillance.
In the case of Euro 2008 (UEFA
European Football Championship), UEFA
suspended claims of local businesses
to spatial ownership, but also denied
any public resistance within host cities.
This is one of a number of examples
that shows how although these events
are indeed ‘public’, they are driven by
private interests. The implementation
of fan zones in Switzerland and Austria
was permanently ‘guided’ by UEFA,
meaning that host cities were coerced
into accepting them. In terms of security
policy, it is the technology companies
themselves who are playing a greater
role in governing Sport Mega Events.
Private security companies not only
implement surveillance technologies,
but supply the personnel as well. If they
continue to define security governance
in terms of establishing ‘best practice’
how, if at all, will any input be allowed
from public stakeholders, particularly
local communities, for how security
risks are governed in the future? It does
not necessarily follow that privatisation
equals less democracy, but private
companies’ interests can have a
tendency to muffle diverging critical
viewpoints from outside, preventing any
public scrutiny from taking place in a
meaningful way.
This model has also been followed by other
countries in Europe, such as CCTV police
surveillance intelligence used in Italy;
this is in a sense an ‘exemplar’ of ‘best
practice’ that transfers across national
boundaries. Also, these kinds of sport
events are far more focused on the ‘middle
class’ in terms of accessibility. Stadiums
have in a sense priced out the poor from
attending football matches. This was to
reclaim ‘safe urban spaces for respectable
fans’. Instead of football matches being
a culturally expressive and in some cases
chaotic ‘carnivalesque’ event that dates
back to the Middle Ages,
they are now largely controlled,
commercialised events.
English Premier League stadiums are
not only for football, but like other large
public areas such as airports, have been
transformed into shopping malls and
high-profile conference suites that are
part of the backdrop of luxury hotels,
health clubs, bars, etc. The branding
rights for the stadium are then sold to
the highest bidder, which has become a
norm in that many former public arenas
are now labelled with consumer brands.
This sets the tone for the way Sport Mega
Events and other small or large public
events are managed, not merely in terms
of public safety, but in the interests of
private business.
Terrorist attacks have also left a lasting
impression upon large urban centres where
Sport Mega Events are held. Since 9/11
and especially since the 7/7 bombings,
which occurred a mere 20 hours after the
International Olympic Committee