Cape Town's $479M Facility Built For '10 World Cup Hoping To Attract Sports Teams, Nightclubs

Cape Town Councilor Grant Pascoe said that the city is "hoping to attract sport teams and nightclubs to the rarely used, loss-making stadium it built" for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, according to Chris Spillane of BLOOMBERG. Spillane: “We are looking at an anchor tenant, which will be one of the bigger sports, so that’s rugby. We’re also looking at the possibility of some nightclubs to be accommodated within that precinct, which will help lower the cost of the stadium.” The local Cape Town council is "trying to find tenants and uses for the 68,000-capacity Cape Town Stadium," which cost 4.5B rand ($479M) to build and hosted eight World Cup matches, including the semifinal between the Netherlands and Uruguay. Pascoe said that Cape Town Stadium cost 56M rand ($5.9M) to operate in its most recent financial year and generated income of 14M rand ($1.5M). Pascoe added that "even if the city gets regular tenants for the stadium, it will probably still be unprofitable" (BLOOMBERG, 5/20).