World Major Events

Fifa World Cup

Fortaleza: World Cup City 2014

Fortaleza ("Fortress", in Portuguese) is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. The Northeast of Brazil is renowned for its magnificent beaches, attracting tourists from all over Brazil and the World; besides Fortaleza, FIFA chose three other cities in the Northeast to host matches of the World Cup 2014: Natal, Recife and Salvador.

Fortaleza has the big advantage of being the city nearest to Europe and North America, and with a huge number of direct flights to and from the area. Many Europeans especially Portuguese, Italians and Spaniards have a second residence in Fortaleza and other neighbourhoods in the region. Also many people from the UK are beginning to take an interest in Brazil because places like Fortaleza can offer a life-style to them that exceeds what they may get in places like France, Spain and Italy.

In Fortaleza, matches of the Cup will take place at the stadium Castelão, which is under substantial refurbishment so that can cope with massive crowd that will watch the live game being played in its true championship form.

This is going to be one of the biggest stadiums of the World Cup and is capable of holding 60,000 spectators and there is a good chance that it will stage important matches of the final rounds before a true champion is found.

Olympics

Brazil host to Olympics 2016

The next six years are going to busy ones for Brazil. Not only are they hosting the World Cup in 2014 but are following with the Olympics two years after in 2016. Like every country that has had an opportunity to host one of these events (let alone both in succession), Brazil is spending vast amounts of money on its infrastructure to be able to meet the building demand in the intervening years.All major cities within Brazil have huge stadiums and the northeast is no exception where some qualifying games will take place, especially in the town of Fortaleza.Brazil is also a large country with a sizable population and a growing economy; all of which takes money to support in its own right.

In order to support the rigours of these two major sporting events, Brazil is looking at wide-ranging projects including upgrading roads and power grids, building hotels, improving airports, and generally just adding "more" infrastructure to its country.  Granted that the sporting events will be concentrated in or near major cities, there will need to be a strong infrastructure stretching into the hinterlands to bring in supplies.  The bill just for Rio's Olympics’ will be at least $14 billion.

The economic impact of Olympic games and the financial benefits to Brazil will come directly from visitors to the games - participants, spectators, sponsors and media - as well as broadcast revenues and corporate sponsorship.Income from the sale of television rights has become the biggest earner, followed by sponsorship, ticket sales and memorabilia.The other side of the financial bonanza is money spent on infrastructure in the build up to the big event.

From this there is likely to be a multiplier effect, which includes games-related employment, purchasing by local companies, foreign investment as well as the impact of everyday household spending by employees of the companies benefiting from increased sales.