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  • 48 hours - The difference between Toronto hosting a Women's World Cup and not


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    That's a pretty nice picture above. Chris Hazard does good work.

    In it, hundreds of crisp, Voyageur flags flying in the south end of BMO field. There too, a sprinkling of Support Local Soccer flags - brought from those who were there when this new wave of national team interest began a few summers ago. If you look up at the top, you can see the man in the red suit looking over it all - aka Jamie McLeod, the person largely behind the national team's growing supporters culture.

    That being, specifically on this day, a sea of red in a sold out Toronto stadium, tuned into every play like it was the Olympic semi-finals.

    All of it is framed in that photo by an advertisement for the World Cup 2015.

    That's where the bottom drops out.

    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]

    Toronto, of course, will not be there in 2015 when Canada hosts the Women's World Cup. The Canadian Soccer Association instead went with Moncton, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver. Toronto, according to the CSA, didn't even apply. It's pretty hard for a governing body to include you when you didn't bother to apply. As for the selections they made - some good choices, some great, some very meh - they will undoubtedly put on a fantastic display of what soccer support in Canada is suppose to be.

    This is not a column on why Toronto should be in - any rational, thinking person can look beyond regional differences and see it would be a benefit, in terms of ensuring home support. Instead it's a column about how someone in Toronto colossally fucked up this fantastic opportunity to bring a world class tournament to Toronto.

    Let me take you back.

    Around the time that applications were being accepted by the CSA, a rumour began to float in Toronto soccer circles that the Centre of the Universe would not be applying. The story, as it went then, was that Tourism Toronto had signed away the city's exclusivity rights to the Pan AM games in 2009, when they bid for and won the 2015 Games. That was accurate, to a point. The Pan AM games, like the IOC, requires the host city to ensure that they don't undertake any other events during the time that the Games are on.

    Teddy Katz, the Director of Media Relations and Chief Spokesperson for Toronto 2015, recently filled me in on the specific rules.

    "We have to follow the rules of PASO, which is the body that governs the Pan American Games, just like the IOC has similar rules for Olympic organizing committees," Katz said when asked about the exclusivity agreement. "Basically PASO states the Organizing Committee and Host City should ensure that no other important meeting or event, national or international takes place in the host city itself or in the other competition sites, during the Pan American Games or in the week prior or following the event."

    A week prior or following the event.

    Some quick facts:

    The Toronto Pan AM Games will take place July 10 - July 26, 2015.

    The Toronto ParaPan Games August 7 - August 14, 2015.

    The Women's World Cup 2015 will take place June 6 to July 5, 2015.

    The original bid tabled by Toronto 2015, pegged the cost at $2.4 billion, the highest ever for a Pan AM Games. With the province and feds covering 70 per cent of the cost, that still puts Toronto on the hook for about $720 million.

    Host cities in the 2015 Women's World Cup, who have varying level of soccer infrastructure, estimated the cost of hosting at $12-$35 million per city.

    In 2011, ESPN hosted the Pan AM games. It drew an overall rating of 2.0.

    In the same year, ESPN broadcast the Women's World Cup. The Women's World Cup final set a record at the time, as the most watched soccer game ever on the channel, drawing 13.5 million viewers.

    So, forget for a second that Toronto could have hosted just a group stage and it would have been a month out from the Pan AMs.

    Forget for another second Toronto could have just hosted a round of 16 (June 20), a quarter final (June 26) or even a semi-final game (June 30) and it still would have been well within the terms of the Pan AM exclusivity agreement.

    Realize that, Tourism Toronto, in its infinite wisdom, decided to pass up the gift of hosting two major international competitions - one that will cost significantly more and deliver significantly less, another that will cost next to nothing and already has a built in audience and established returns - all over the small matter of 48 hours.

    Nothing in the exclusivity agreement would have prevented them from hosting anything but the very final game.

    And yet, passing up that kind of oppurtunity, in a city that is struggling to reduce its spending, while trying to attract more tourism dollars, made sense?

    Now that is quite the picture.

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