Can 2010 legacy equal Barcelona's 15-year employment boom?

“The world cup provides tremendous opportunities for our country. We want to ensure that the tournament leaves a proud legacy that our children and our communities will enjoy for many years to come, and which contributes to the long term development of the country,” he said.

What will it take to make president Zuma's wish come true and create a long-lasting economic legacy that will maximise the return on the 2010-related investments? To answer this question, it is worthwhile casting our eyes back to one of the most successfully leveraged international sporting events of the past 20 years.

Lasted almost 15 years

The 1992 Olympics, held in Barcelona, Spain, which saw South Africa welcomed back on to the international stage, created an economic legacy that lasted almost 15 years and led to a boom in tourism and employment for the host city.

Historically, Barcelona's economic base centered upon the docks and manufacturing industries; their decline in the 1980s - and the decay of the city's waterfront - caused the regional government of Catalunya to develop an urban regeneration plan that complemented the bid to host the Olympic Games and became a central goal in hosting the games.

Coincidentally, the introduction of the European Union Single Market in 1992 facilitated Barcelona's role in connecting the markets of northern Europe to the Iberian peninsula, enabling the city to become an attractive location for inward investment, especially by those companies engaged in the expanding European services sector. The investment made between 1986 and 1992 proved critical to Barcelona's subsequent economic success.

The Olympics-related infrastructure investments focused upon coastal recovery, telecommunications, housing, office development, sports and cultural facilities, and roads and transport. The transformation of the city's economy has since been led by growth in the services sector, which rose from below 40% of employment in 1986 to 82% in 2006. This was key in transforming Barcelona's economy to specialise in financial services, business services, real estate, health care, public administration and education. In the decade since 1995, the demand for office space has grown by 500 000m² per annum.

Significant investment in infrastructure

Similar to 2010, the 1992 Games represented a significant investment in infrastructure - over three times the sum spent upon the event itself. The cost of the games was distributed across the public and private sector (Spanish government 12%, Catalunya regional government 15%, Barcelona 2%, Spanish private companies 22%, foreign private companies 11% and Spanish public companies 14%).

Thanks to the astute marketing of the organisers, the Barcelona Olympics netted a record US$543 million in television rights, almost double the amount of the subsequent 1996 Olympic Games held in Los Angeles, and generating an operating profit of over US$300 million.

The impact upon employment in Barcelona was sustained in the decade following the 1992 Games. Labor market trends in Barcelona and its surrounding region between 1986 and 1992 revealed a significant decline in unemployment, with the unemployment rate almost halving from 18.4% to 9.6%.

The Barcelona Games is cited as one of the most successful in leveraging the Olympics for tourism. In fact, total Olympic output was able to delay the local economy from suffering the effects of the economic downturn that affected Europe in the early 1990s. This downturn provided opportunities for Barcelona in the domestic market and among Europe's tourist market which was looking for alternative - and more affordable - destinations. Barcelona's tourism growth averaged nearly 20% until 1995, with capacity of beds increasing by 35% between 1990 and 1992, and occupancies increasing from 54.5% in 1994 to over 80% in 1998.

Become a magnet

Most recently, Barcelona has become a magnet for Europe's young professional elite. In 2007 alone, more than 7 million people came to visit Spain's metropolis on the Mediterranean - and more than half of them went there for business rather than pleasure, among them Woody Allen who spent six weeks filming his latest movie in the city's harbor quarter Barceloneta.

During the same year, Barcelona's city council allocated 200 hectares of industrial wasteland in the working-class district Poble Nou to becoming a thriving digital village. Setting its vision on becoming Europe's pioneering center for biomedicine, the regional government decided, along with municipal leaders and private companies, to create a so-called “bio-region.” Incubators have been set up to help found startup firms. Modern industries such as media, IT, communications, energy and biomedicine are forecast to create up to 150 000 new jobs.

With less than 400 days to go to the 2010 kick-off, is South Africa ready to emulate Barcelona's economic legacy success and turn the 2010 investments into sustainable job opportunities for new and expanding industries?