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Comment by peter_l_downs | Hacker News Reader

Why would the US be involved in this issue? I would think that it's FIFA's fault for choosing the location.

IMO you are spot on that its FIFA's fault for choosing the location. The Cup will be moved to the winter and will affect European football due to league play.

The US was runner up and should have been awarded the World Cup in 2022. The 1994 Cup in the US was one of the most, it not the most, profitable World Cup.

The infrastructure is in place in the US to host the World Cup.

Can you imagine what political ramifications there would be if the World Cup hosting rights were taking away from Qatar and awarded to the US.

Do you have sources for it being so profitable? For who? Everything I understand about events like the World Cup and Olympics is that they are massively wasteful, corrupt, publicly funded economic disasters. Is that just the Olympics?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_the_FIFA_World_Cup

It was one of the most profitable World Cups, take into account that it was in 1994.

The most comprehensive source (and most recent, and only source about the economics I can still find) to this page suggests that it was an economic catastrophe that "showed a cumulative loss of $5.6 billion to $9 billion."[1] It's the same argument politicians use to swindle taxpayers into publicly financing stadiums for billionaire sports owners.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/07/opinion/la-oe-coates...

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