Football World Cup 2010 in South Africa

Diplomarbeit von Matthias Moll

Introduction:

‘The government will leave no stone unturned to ensure that everything is done to host a tournament that meets the expectations of billions of football fans across the world…. Together we will ensure the resounding success of the first FIFA African World Cup’.

With these words, the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, promised football fans all around the world an amazing sporting event after his country was chosen to be the host of the Football World Cup (FWC) 2010. In its almost 80-year history, it is the first time this enormous sporting event will be held on African soil.

Because of the big media interest and the increasing requirements of infrastructure, the FWC is a big challenge for the whole host country and especially the venues. But on the other hand the tournament offers great opportunities for the cities and municipalities to gain more international prestige and to become popular travel destinations. Such a huge event attracts millions of people from all over the globe, who come to support their team or just to enjoy the entire atmosphere around the event.

Currently, nine South African host cities are busy at work to demonstrate to the whole world that their country is able to arrange an outstanding tournament. They have taken on a heavy burden, in order to bear comparison with the former host country Germany. The president of the FIFA, Sepp Blatter called the very successful football event in 2006 ‘the best World Cup of all time.’ Actually, the well organised ‘German Football Party of 2006’ is not South Africa's main problem at the moment. The workers that are building the stadiums were on strikes a few months ago. The Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth was even dropped as a site for the Confederations Cup in 2009 because construction has fallen behind schedule. The crime rate in the country is extremely high and the poverty in certain areas is still a big problem. If that were not enough, a former professional football player from Austria was killed on a golf course in Durban, during the FIFA draw and a few weeks ago, the media report on xenophobic attacks in local townships. Unfortunately, all this bad news overshadowed the anticipation concerning the big event. In any case, South Africa is a country that has much to offer tourists from all around the world. The vast majority of the South Africans are friendly people that live in a country with beautiful landscapes, beaches, mountains and vibrant cities. Since the end of Apartheid, the country has developed to a premier tourism destination. But is the country really ready for hosting one of the biggest events on earth? This paper is not able to provide a general answer to that question, but it seeks to investigate topics concerning the tourism marketing.

The first three main chapters of this thesis provide an insight into the closely linked relationship between events, sport and tourism.

Based on the acquired knowledge, the marketing of tourism, especially the destination marketing, will be contemplated in the fourth chapter of this paper. Located in the southern part of the republic, Port Elizabeth is one of the venues of the FWC. By the example of this host city, the thesis presents planned and current marketing activities concerning the huge football event. For this purpose, written interviews with responsible experts in South Africa were conducted.

The fact that the FWC will take place in the African country provokes many discussions among the supporters of one of the world's most popular sports. Because of that, it is important for a sport event destination to know about the expectations, travel motivations and preferences of the fans. Further to this, a survey was conducted to gain this important information from the German football tourists. Chapter 5 discusses the analysis and the interpretation of this survey.

The aim of this thesis is to find out if Port Elizabeth meets the expectations of the German football tourists. To understand the possible gaps between their expectations and the performance of the host city, it is necessary to compare the planned activities and the results of the survey. Chapter 6 covers this topic and its aim is to deliver recommendations for the future.

Table of Contents:

Text Sample:

Chapter 5.5, Determination of the Data Collection Method:

In the third step, the researcher has to check if there is already appropriate information (secondary data) available that could help solving the defined problem. Those data can be contained in business reports, studies or any other historical records. If there exist no necessary statistics or facts, new data have to be collected and analysed (primary data). In the majority of cases, to collect primary data is more expensive and time-consuming than it is to get secondary data. Churchill defines primary data as follows: ‘Information collected specifically for the investigation at hand.’ In the case of the present study, there were not enough secondary data available. Therefore, it was necessary to collect primary data about German football tourists and their perceptions concerning the FWC 2010. Primary research can be conducted by using techniques such as interviews, observations or surveys.

Design of the Data Collection Forms:

In order to do research in this field, it was decided to use a survey in form of self-administered questionnaires. This means that the respondent had no contact with the researcher while filling out the form. The advantage of this technique was that the ‘interviewer’ could not bias the respondent.

Nevertheless, sometimes the probands have problems to understand the questions and that was one reason to carry out a drop-off survey. The researcher handed the questionnaires personally to the respondents and when they had general questions concerning a topic or ambiguities, he could deal with their problems. Another advantage of that method is the opportunity to motivate the respondents to complete the questionnaires. More about the detailed procedure of the data collection is mentioned in Chapter 5.7.

The questionnaires handed out to fans were standardised to make comparison possible. That means that each respondent got exactly the same questions in exactly the same order. It was also paid attention to the phrasing and the length of the questions. Especially the fact that the survey was conducted at a place where 70,000 people stayed, made it very necessary to create a questionnaire that did not waste the time of the respondents. Therefore, the questions were formulated as short as possible. Additionally it was tried to avoid jargons and technical terms. The following two subchapters describe the design of the applied questionnaire.

Content of individual Questions:

The self-administered questionnaire in written form consisted of twelve questions.

Question 1 asked for the participant's previous travel experience concerning South Africa. It was more or less used as a question for breaking the ice, but also to get an overview of the amount of respondents that have already visited South Africa in the past.

Questions 2, 5 and 8 aimed at the travel motivations / demotivations of the probands regarding to a possible trip to the host country of the WC 2010.

Questions 3, 4, 6, 7 and 10 dealt with the preferences of German football tourists in terms of travel preparation and the behaviour during a (potential) trip.

Question 9 was developed to get an idea of the respondents' expectations regarding the SA as the World Cup venue.

Question 11 should determine information concerning the brand awareness of the destination Port Elizabeth among German football tourists.

Question 12 was divided into four different parts. The aim of these four questions was to gather demographic information about the probands.

For further details about the questions see Appendix 8.

Types of Questions:

This chapter presents the forms of questions that were applied in the questionnaire of the present survey. First of all, it is important to explain that all the applied questions were formulated in a direct style. That means the aim of the questions was obvious whereas indirect questions try to get information about opinions when asking things that have seemingly nothing to do with the actual topic.

When asking open-ended questions, the respondent has to write down the answer in his own words. He can not choose between different several given responses. Therefore, it was tried to use as little open-ended questions as possible. But the high expenditure of time was not the only reason for trying to avoid open-ended questions. The analysis of the responses is often pretty difficult, because the researcher has to categorise all the different answers. In spite of it all, Question 12a and 12c were designed as open-ended questions, because in their cases it made sense to use it. Otherwise, the researcher had to offer too many different given responses concerning the age (e.g. 10 to 100 years) and the nationality (about 194 countries worldwide) of the respondents.

Closed questions are the opposite of open-ended questions. This form can be divided in two different subtypes, the dichotomous questions and the multichotomous questions.

As already mentioned above, close questions provide fixed-alternative questions.

Dichotomous questions offer only two given responses to the probands and he has to decide which one he prefers. Question 1 and 12c were dichotomous questions in the present survey. The reason for that is simple: Either a person has already travelled to South Africa or he has not and humans are either female or male. There are only two possible alternatives.

Multichotomous questions give the respondents several alternative answers. In the present questionnaire, Question 2, 4 and 12d are common multichotomous questions.

There can be differences in the provided responses. For example, the researcher can add the option ‘I don't know’ to the other alternatives. It provides a neutral choice to the asked person. By responding to Question 3, 5 and 9, the probands had the opportunity to answer ‘I don't know’. Without this option, some respondents could have made a statement that does not agree with their actual opinion and that would have biased the results.

A mixture of an open-ended and a closed question is a hybrid question. This type consists of a closed question that contains the additional option ‘Others:…’. The respondent is able to choose this alternative when the other fixed responses do not express his opinion. When choosing ‘Others:…’, the proband should write down a response in own words (see open-ended question). This form of question enables the researcher to get detailed information about the opinions of the respondents. In the present survey, Question 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11 were hybrid questions.

Question 11 did not use the option ‘Others’, but it also offered the respondent an alternative to formulate an own answer.

Finally, it needs to be considered that Question 2 was a screening question and not all of the respondents had to fill out Question 3 to 7. The goal of screening questions is to identify the target group and to exclude the other persons.