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REUTERS<\/p>\n
A night shot of the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. South Africa is developing a Sports Tourism Strategy to bring more global events to the country and make use of stadiums built for the FIFA 2010 World Cup.<\/p>\n
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The government is spending more than R60 million for Durban to host its share of the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) soccer tournament, which kicks off in January next year. <\/p>\n
Vusi Mazibuko, the eThekwini municipality\u2019s head of Afcon preparations, said the city had set aside a budget of R20m, while the province would contribute R15m. <\/p>\n
The national government has committed R17m, in addition to R11m to host the Afcon draw that took place at Durban\u2019s International Convention Centre last month. <\/p>\n
Mazibuko explained the Afcon finances at a media briefing in Durban on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe money from provincial and national government for hosting Afcon is not in our coffers yet. However, they have made the commitment and will pay,\u201d Mazibuko said. <\/p>\n
Speaking to The Mercury, he said it was \u201cmoney well spent\u201d considering \u201cthe profile of the event as a continental soccer showpiece\u201d. However, he said more needed to be done to market the tournament, which was less than two months away. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have the luxury of having four to five years to prepare, like we did for the 2010 World Cup. But we still want to deliver a high-profile event for Africa,\u201d Mazibuko said. <\/p>\n
The government had realised that things could be done within the available resources. Internal staff resources within the municipality and province were being used to co-ordinate and prepare for Afcon. <\/p>\n
Last week the Afcon 2013 local organising committee (LOC) also announced it had cut more than R100m off its allocated budget of R430m after \u201ctightening a few belts\u201d and a review of its costs. <\/p>\n
Deputy Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene, the chairman of the organising committee\u2019s finance panel, has pledged to cut \u201cany form of extravagance\u201d. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Mazibuko said that Durban, being Bafana Bafana\u2019s base camp for the tournament, would increase its marketing campaign around the event and boost ticket sales. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe made the case to the Confederation of African Football and the SA Football Association to have Group A of Afcon 2013 based in Durban, and we promised them Moses Mabhida Stadium would be full on all match days with 50 000 fans,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe want the stadiums full whether Bafana Bafana is playing or not.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sales of Afcon tickets have been slow, with only 40 000 of the 500 000 available tickets sold. <\/p>\n
\u201cTickets can be bought at the Spar, over the phone and via the internet. But we are speaking to the LOC to open a ticket sales outlet at Moses Mabhida Stadium as well as launching mobile ticket sales units that can be taken to different communities in KwaZulu-Natal where marketing activations can also be done,\u201d Mazibuko said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
REUTERS A night shot of the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. South Africa is developing a Sports Tourism Strategy to bring more global events to the country and make use of stadiums built for the FIFA 2010 World Cup. The government is spending more than R60 million for Durban to host its share of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-16887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}