Africa Gulf International Corporation (AGIC) and its partners/allied companies strongly believe that stadiums are and will remain the immortal engine of a city, constantly reinventing themselves for the challenges of modern urban life in permanent change. Indeed, from ancient theatre and arenas to community hubs and renewable power plants, stadiums always have the potential to bring together multiple functions, and as such help cities create a more sustainable future.
In effect, AGIC leadership have witnessed sports stadiums benefits throughout many countries around the world and will like to portray the case of Qatar as being more familiar with, in an attempt to answer the following questions commonly raised by good people within the society:
- Why are stadiums so important to society?
- What are the benefits of stadiums?
- How do stadiums generate revenue?
- Why are stadiums good for city and urban life?
In the year 2000, we visited Qatar and have been privileged to meet with the famous Sheikh Jassim prominent family members who allowed us to take a tour of Al-Sadd sports club that ended at Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium owned by Al-Sadd sports club. Two years later, we were back to Doha to witness the commencement of the construction of Aspire Zone which comprises a multi-disciplinary fully covered sports facility, the birth of the World’s largest multi-purpose sports hall with a landmarked dome development for the region. At the completion in September 2005, we were invited by the executive office of the then Emir of Qatar, His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani for the inauguration of the said facilities on 17th November 2005.
It is worthy to note that many other commercial infrastructures have been planned to be built at the same venue to surround the Aspire Academy of Sports Excellence and the Sports Hall at the Khalifa Sports City which comprises two main sections. The first section contains a major football field, an aquatic complex, a table tennis court, and five-A-side pitch. The second section includes the largest facilities designated for track and field, a judo hall also functioning as volleyball court, a fencing court which can function as a multi-purpose hall, a gymnastic hall, two squash courts, and a main purpose arena where games like basketball, handball and volleyball can be held. Under the dome’s distinctive sloping roof, there are also lecture halls, classrooms, science laboratories, dormitories, a library, an amphitheatre, and a medical centre. Located between the two main sections is a centralized area equipped with special commentators’ cabins for events taking place in any of the venue’s facilities. Aside from the sports facilities, this state-of-the-art steel structure also contains a large number of public service facilities, such as restaurants, refreshment areas, physical fitness hall, jacuzzies, and a special VIP lounge in the central area.
This sports hall is forty-six metres high and comprises of five levels with an overall area of one hundred and twelve thousand square metre, and a total seating capacity of fifteen thousand designed to connect the various sports facilities to the administrative and teaching buildings.
With two-point five square kilometres (2.5 km2), Aspire Zone, the ultimate new sports experience, boasts some of the world’s finest sports infrastructure and facilities, becoming as such the award-winning sports and healthy lifestyle destination. Among other planned infrastructures, are the international airport midfield terminal building, a world class building designed to accommodate up to twenty-seven million passengers annually, Ras Laffan industrial city and a port expansion, Aspire Zone headquarters building, Hamad Aquatic centre building, the Torch Doha hotel, Aspire attraction park, villaggio shopping mall, ladies club, Al Aziziyah Boutique Hotel, the Mosque, National Teams camp, Ladies sports hall, the world’s leading specialized orthopaedic and sports medicine hospital, and many warm up track/field…
Nowadays, the smallest emirate in the Arabian gulf has emerged among the world greatest nations thanks to a combination of political will and ambition coloured by a visionary stand and a process guided by wisdom: Qatar is hosting the 2022 world cup finals whereby the Khalifa international stadium, this crowned development in Aspire Zone and tailored to host major sporting events of international standards will hold the final of the FIFA world cup 2022 in a unique and unprecedent manner as a stadium for the first time in the history will be using an innovative cooling technology incorporated to ensure an optional playing temperature for fans and players.
It is therefore in the interest of governments to foster sports participation by creating an enabling environment for an effective development of sustainable sports infrastructure.
In effect Sport infrastructure: has been defined as ‘the primary physical and organisational construction needed to facilitate sport participation. From a functional point of view, sport infrastructure enables community members to participate in sport‘. it comprises facilities, system, goods, and services that enable sport and is vital for any country to compete in the international sporting arena. Sport infrastructure assists in the development of world-class athletes and also provides impetus to the youth of the nation to actively take up sport and build a sport culture, impacting as such the socio-economic growth.
Adequate sport infrastructure is important to sport participation, as many sports cannot be performed without having the appropriate sport facility. sport infrastructure is needed to succeed in the government policy objective of fostering sport practice and business.
What constitutes adequate sport infrastructure differs from sport to sport: different sports have different requirements for the given facility. Obvious examples might be that a pool (or open water) is needed for swimming and a prepared court is required for tennis. Thus, the availability of facilities has an influence on the chosen sport. Space, for example for parks, is also a consideration which challenges municipalities with regard to urban planning. For policy makers it is important to know which types of sport infrastructure should be built to increase sport practice and business.
It is understood that, the global attractiveness of major sporting events is underlined by their ongoing and generally successful expansion around the world over the last decades. The wave of new stadiums and large sports infrastructure around the globe, growing size of television contracts and the continued proliferation of sports advertising augur well for an industry that continues to soar, even as the global economy climbs out of recession.
AGIC is of the opinion that the sports sector needs to be taken out of the amusement and entertainment category and given an industry status as the first step, even though it is well known that the Sports Sector is plagued by the lack of infrastructure. Policy impetus enabling better maintenance and high-quality infrastructure construction is the need of the day. It is the viability of infrastructure that to a large extent affects the sustainability of the project that will bring in meaningful private participation.
It is this spirit that following submission of our project proposal for the development and management of sports infrastructure in favour of the republic of Sierra Leone sometime in the year 2019, the ministerial department in charge of sports did conclude the preparatory process for the signing of the agreement that could to the materialisation of the said sport facilities, giving as such clear mandate to AGIC to develop and promote the economics of sports oriented performance for youth empowerment and employment enhancement.
SPORTS INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT’S IMPACT ON YOUTH EMPOWERMENT AND EMPLOYMENT
It is fact well known and universally admitted that for every young person, a job offering decent work is an important step in completing the transition to adulthood, a milestone towards independence and self-reliance. For children and young people living in less privileged conditions and in other disadvantaged situations, employment is often the main means for attaining a better life, though such employment is often informal with poor or exploitative working conditions. For more fortunate youth, prospective employment influences their choice of education and training, and increasingly, their decisions regarding, kinship and cohabitation.
For society employment promotes social integration, intergenerational dialogue, citizenship, and solidarity. Creating and fulfilling income-generating job opportunities for young people can have direct positive consequences for poverty alleviation through the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) number 1, 3, 4, 8, and 10. Youth employment thus benefits social development. It also benefits economic development by facilitating the entry of young skilled people into the productive sectors of an economy and enabling the economy to sustain or increase its productivity and competitiveness in the global marketplace.
However growing and persistent youth unemployment has a negative impact on social development. Youth unemployment, in particular long- term youth unemployment, can generate frustration and low self-esteem, and can lead to increased vulnerability among some young people to drugs, disease, and crime. Youth unemployment can also lead to the marginalization and exclusion of young people.
Youth unemployment can impose large economic cost on society. Necessity to address the needs of long-term unemployed youth can become a significant burden on public budgets. When there is a mismatch between the education and training young people receive and the requirement of employers, or if the employment opportunities are simply not there, both young people and society bear the cost.
When some youths are unable to complete their education and training, or to successfully negotiate their way to employment, there is a need to offer them second chances through supported training programmes or job placement schemes. Yet, on a per-capita basis, there is a high cost associated with these programmes. Therefore, it is imperative that the education, employment and social services helping young people ‘get it right the first time.
SPORTS INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT’S IMPACT ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC GROWTH
People need money to spend on sport. A society that generates a good economic level where people can afford to do sport, will witness the majority of its people doing sport. As people have come to live in more concentrated areas, the sport facilities have become closer to one another. And so, people can now go practice sports or watch a sport event at a venue that is relatively close to their house.
Media such as newspapers, television, the internet, and radio, are all providing access to sport and athletes which helps in the sustainability of professional and recreational sport.
Sport facilities and venues are being constructed in different areas of the country. Thus, providing more accessibility to the public and indirectly provide a steady sport revenue stream.
The momentum that the sport movement gives to the country, the involvement that it requires, the partnerships that it demands all contribute to a certain socioeconomic boom.
As for the organization of any sporting event, it directly or indirectly involves the use of partners in the society, thus helping the economic wheel move forward.
All events require the following:
- Hotel rooms
- Car rentals
- Food beverage
- Flights in and out of the country.
- Uniforms
- Equipment and sport products.
- Advertising, printing and other
Many small, medium, and large enterprises are involved in the organization of any event. From advertising agencies, to printing companies, food and beverage suppliers, audio-visual professionals, sport goods suppliers, all the way to the cleaning crews involved, sport and sport event are contributing to developing the socio-economic wheel of the country. What is good is that a lot of the money invested is being recycled in the country. Of course, eventually a percentage of this money is exported outside the country, for various reasons such as purchase of raw material, or salary transfer of an expatriate to his family, yet regardless of that, the money paid out. Is being given to local companies, which in turn are recycling it in the local business market.
The execution of a mega sporting event helps in developing infrastructure, generates employment, secure inflow of foreign capital, generates players and athletes, and thus contributes significantly to the economic development of a country. Therefore, it can be said that the impact of sports on economy and society is multi-dimensional. Today sport emerges as an important component of Socio-economic development of a country. The active participation in sports improves community health and productivity, reduces medical expenses, imbibes discipline in character, generates great leaders, and enhances social cohesion. it can also be static multiplier measures of the degree to which the sectors in an economy are interrelated. Sectoral multipliers measure the impact in total economic activity generated by a one-unit change in one sector. The value of a sectoral multiplier is determined by the links on the one hand and the leakages on the other hand within an economic system. Sectors with strong relations to the rest of the domestic economy and few imports report high multipliers. If an impulse to a sector is hardly transferred to other branches or leaves the country (imports of intermediate goods), the multiplier barely exceeds its minimum value of 1. The study shows that smaller Member States have significantly lower mean sectoral multipliers than larger Member States.
The highest multipliers are found in the construction branch and in sectors related to tourism (hotels, air transport). Education has a relatively low multiplier as it requires only a few intermediate goods compared to its wages, but it is an important sector in the whole network of value creation in sports, especially in the Nordic and Baltic countries that the impact of sports on economy and society is multi-dimensional.
These analytical aggregates of the economics of sports being fully applicable to any country around the world, it is allowed to believe how significant the developmental sports infrastructures portfolio of AGIC constitute the ultimate driving force of a socio-economic transformative agenda of concrete action for growth and prosperity in favour of the good people of Sierra Leone.
TOGETHER, AS A UNITED DRIVEN FORCE, LET US BUILD NOW THE SIERRA LEONE FOR THE FUTURE GENERATION.
