World Cup Expected to Kick Area Economy Onto Higher Plateau
Using superlatives to describe its meaning, Pasadena officials rejoiced this week over the selection of the Rose Bowl to play host to an unprecedented eight games in the 1994 World Cup soccer competition, including the final.
The games, part of a round of tournaments in 24 countries, are expected to generate at least $1 billion for the Southern California economy. Pasadena officials said they expect the city to get all that it can handle of its share of that bounty.
In addition, the city will receive $2 million for use of the Rose Bowl.
Officials said the city’s favorable exposure to a worldwide audience of more than 1 billion people will be just as important as the revenue the games will generate.
Considered by soccer enthusiasts to be the world’s most popular sporting competition, the World Cup games will be held during June and July, 1994, at stadiums throughout the United States. In announcing from Zurich, Switzerland, the selection of the Rose Bowl as the site of the championship, U.S. Soccer Federation head Alan Rothenberg on Monday said the games will be “the greatest celebration of soccer . . . ever.”
Pasadena City Councilman William Thomson, who led the local efforts to attract the games, said the contest will provide marvelous economic benefits as well as immeasurable goodwill and widespread interest in Pasadena for years to come.
Benefits will spread to surrounding communities of the San Gabriel Valley, the Los Angeles area and Orange County as well, he said.
“It’s going to mean that the hotels are going to be essentially full,” Thomson said. “Many of the Pasadena restaurants should certainly see a booming business, as well as the stores in the community.”
Although specific marketing strategies haven’t been developed, “we will be able to do an enormous amount of marketing of Pasadena and Los Angeles together,” he said.
During the past four years, he said, officials from Pasadena and Los Angeles combined their efforts to persuade the World Cup’s organizing committee and soccer’s governing board, the Federation Internationale de Football Assn., to award the games to the Rose Bowl.
Because of that partnership, Thomson said, he is not concerned that Los Angeles will try to lure away all the tourist dollars of soccer fans who come to the contest.
“There’s no way we have enough hotels in Pasadena,” he said. “We have billed this as a Southern California set of gains. It’s not just for Pasadena or just L.A. It’s for Southern California.”
In Glendale, officials applauded Pasadena’s success and welcomed the prospects of an economic windfall from the games.
A new 350-room hotel, the Red Lion, scheduled to open this fall, would enable the city to attract a share of the tourist business, said City Manager David Ramsay.
“We’ll be much better off to participate in the kind of marketing we could do for this event,” Ramsay said. “We’re really excited.”
Beyond the immediate economic benefits are more intangible ones, said Pasadena Mayor Rick Cole. With an expected television audience of more than 1 billion, Cole said, one of every five people in the world will watch the event.
“The implications of that are profound,” Cole said. “You can’t put a dollar amount on the significance of that.”
The selection of Pasadena, Thomson said, was partly based on two factors: The Rose Bowl capacity of 101,000-plus is far greater than most U.S. stadiums, and soccer events held at the Rose Bowl during the 1984 Olympics were successful and popular.
During those games, nearly 750,000 spectators attended the soccer matches in Pasadena. Two of the events were sellouts, and a third was nearly a sellout.
Thomson said the $2-million fee goes to the city’s fund for the Rose Bowl, which is undergoing badly needed renovations. As the facility prepares to play host to the 1993 Super Bowl, a new $8-million press box and luxury suites are being constructed. But an estimated $40 million more in capital improvements are also needed.
City officials said they hope that landing the World Cup will enhance the bowl’s chances of attracting other events and will boost the troubled finances of the stadium.
Representatives of well-to-do neighborhoods to the west of the Rose Bowl, who have expressed skepticism about increased use of the facility, reacted guardedly to the news, saying they only hope the city will do its best to prevent noise, traffic and violence.
Penny York, president of the Linda Vista/Annandale Assn., which represents 1,400 residences west of the Rose Bowl, said she is personally pleased that Pasadena was selected. “My only concern is that we assume and hope the city staff will work with us so that the neighbors aren’t unreasonably impacted,” she said.
Councilman Thomson said the city intends to do what it can to ensure problems don’t occur.
After opening ceremonies in Chicago on June 17, the games will begin in Pasadena and at eight other sites. The championship game is July 17.
To celebrate the Rose Bowl’s selection and to finalize the deal, Pasadena representatives Bob Holden, acting general manager of the Rose Bowl, and Jane Olson, who worked closely with soccer officials during the 1984 Olympics, were part of a small delegation that went to Switzerland Monday.
