Welcoming the Cricket World Cup

Sealey charged that big companies from outside will be the ones taking the biggest slice of the CWC2007 economic cake.
Sealey asked: “What opportunities are there for modest operations, for small businesses etc.? … it is further compounded when we hear that an Australian company had to design the logo and we have several fine Arts students throughout the Caribbean … where an Australian firm is doing the clean-up work at Kensington. We hear of outside interests benefiting, then we have to reflect on who are the real beneficiaries.”
Sealey continued: “This is important, because I would have thought that if you are talking about an event that is going to be a bonanza, then surely the economic benefits should be for all.”
In the case of St Vincent and the Grenadines there is as yet no plan in place for the use of the facilities beyond the warm up matches despite comments to the contrary. There is also the matter of the LOC seeming to have accepted just about everything that the ICC placed before it almost without question.
The number of tents of the overlays here seems to be more that there is in neighbouring Grenada. If that is the case then there is need for some explanation given the cost of the overlays.
Fazeer Mohammed makes the point: If all of this is partially justified by the economic value of television exposure, how different is it going to be from the cumulative effect of 17 years of "live" coverage of international cricket? What new audience, outside of the hundreds of millions who have watched cricket in the West Indies from 1990 to 2006, is the World Cup going to attract? I'm not talking only about the established cricket nations, for West Indian cricket has been viewed "live" for years by fans in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia (in other words, most of the planet) for years. What reliable figures are there to show that such prolonged exposure has significantly improved the tourism influx?
He also notes that “I'm still left to wonder if, after all the cost overruns, hasty quick-fix measures and governmental intervention to expedite stalled projects, we'll be left with a debt that could not be jus
tified by the expected long-term revenue-earning potential of the nearly two months of constant global exposure.”