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Johannesburg. Too small for cricket and passed over by rugby, the stadiums that cost South Africa more than $1 billion for this year’s World Cup already appear to be turning into white elephants.

Both rugby and cricket are more commercially successful than football in South Africa, and both sports need to move into the new stadiums — built and renovated for Africa’s first World Cup — to keep them alive financially.

On Tuesday, South African Rugby Union president Oregan Hoskins told members of parliament in Cape Town that there had been no discussions between Durban city officials and rugby representatives before the $400 million, 70,000-capacity Moses Mabhida Stadium was built, and now it did not have enough suites to accommodate the local Sharks rugby team’s suite holders.

Hoskins said that the Sharks, who could offer near year-round use, would have a “massive problem” when it moves to the new stadium.

“What we are discussing today should have been discussed before we built the stadiums,” Hoskins said.

“It is tragic for us as a nation that we have to act in reverse.”

The situation in Cape Town is just as bad, according to Hoskins, because of the deteriorating relationship between the local Western Province rugby union and the Green Point Stadium operators.

So the iconic Green Point Stadium, set in the shadow of the famous Table Mountain, could now be rarely used and is set to cost more than $6 million a year just to maintain.

Cricket South Africa chief executive Gerald Majola added that the pitches at the stadiums were too small to host cricket games, and blamed this on the failure of cities to consult cricket authorities before construction.

Hoskins said the hype generated by the recent World Cup also hid many of the issues, leaving the stadiums now struggling to bring in income.

“In 2007, before the new stadiums were built, I wrote to the minister of sports and said I foresaw major problems coming and I asked for the intervention of the ministry,” Hoskins told the committee.

“Unfortunately, we were all taken up by the football World Cup and in the hype we forgot we should have been talking to each other.”

In July, South African Football Association chief executive Leslie Sedibe conceded to the same parliamentary committee that football faced a major challenge to keep the stadiums in use and profitable — largely because of traditionally low ticket prices charged at local matches and the high cost of running the world-class arenas.

Sedibe’s observation came just 10 days after the World Cup ended, and after South Africa spent an estimated $1.3 billion building and upgrading the 10 stadiums used for the tournament.

It was hoped rugby and cricket would help out, but the assessments of Hoskins and Majola paint a bleak picture for the stadiums’ long-term future.

Majola also pointed to a lost opportunity for cricket to move to World Cup stadiums in the northern cities of Rustenburg, Polokwane and Nelspruit, which are likely to struggle because of their remote locations and lack of major sporting teams nearby.

“Historically, our game had not been played in some of the areas where some stadiums were built,” Majola said. “We saw an opportunity, but unfortunately we were not part of the designs of the stadiums.”
 

Associated Press