They claimed that the Caribbean region will also benefit from the prestige of hosting this event. 2.2 billion people would be watching the Cricket World Cup 2007 on television. No amount of investment in advertising and marketing and sales can capture such an audience for this tourist driven region, or a so dem seh. The football World Cup which will be hosted in South Africa in 2010, after a FIFA decision that it should be located once in turn on the African continent, is expecting a revenue of 6.6 million rands (nearly US$1 million). This should be derived from tourism, building and transport expenditures, an additional inflow of foreign tourists (an income of 16 billion rands, close to 2% of GDP), and 130,000 temporary jobs linked to the event.

Impressive, right? Not really if you take into account that these are very very optimistic projections, you will see that often times the people of developing are sold on a dream. Developing countries are currently struggling with providing adequate security, transport and infrastructure for their citizens. Attempts to host these large sporting events will only emphasize these problems. The local police force would be spread thin across the country thus limiting their capability in providing safety for both fans of the respective games and citizens alike. The renovation and/or construction of new facilities will leave the countries with 'white elephants' after the events are finished(for all Jamaicans see the Greenfield Stadium in Trelawney). From an economic point of view, the cost of building a new stadium is not best described by the amount of money needed to build the facility but rather the value to society from the same amount of capital spent on the next best public project. The fact that the Jamaican government could spend US$105 million on a event, while nation building sectors such as education and health continue to be under funded shows that certain public officials have misplaced the priority of its people.

In conclusion, while hosting sporting events like the World Cup in either cricket or football has benefits such as instant publicity and revenue for the host country or region, only countries who can afford it should be allowed to do so. There should be measures implemented by sporting governing bodies that test the feasibility of hsting certain events in a particular country or region. These measures should be determined by the cost of putting the event against the proposed revenue to be earned. The overall problem is not what happens before or during these high profile events, but in fact the aftermath of such on a developing conutry's society. Unfortunately, the final cost of staging these events may become a weight under which developing countries will ultimately crumble.