Fifa Packages

I read with quite a lot of interest, this article that said that Over $115m (about R 1.1bn) worth of 2010 World Cup hospitality packages have been sold to South African companies.

I don't think I'm in any position to question the figure, although in my head it doesn't add up.

In my head, we're in the middle of a massive global financial and economic crisis - for SA to be ahead of sales in Germany (for the equivalent period ahead of the previous World Cup) doesn't sound right.

What concerns me though is that these are sales to SA corporates and business. The point of the World Cup was to bring in foreign revenue and rich Americans and Europeans with their hard currencies to buy SA products and services and support the local economy.

Obviously we're still 18 months away from the event, so it will be impossible to get a figure on that, but it would be interesting to know how many foreigners are going to come into SA and spend their money and how well the overseas marketing of this event is going...