ABSTRACT
When the hosts of the 2002 Football World Cup Finals were announced, it was a double surprise: first, because two countries (Japan and South Korea) were chosen to co-organise the event and, second, because these countries had not traditionally been considered as homes to football. As occurred in 1994 in the United States, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) implemented a world-wide development strategy by assigning its major event to two countries with strong economic potential but weak football cultures. The shift from the 1998 World Cup organiser, France, to Korea in 2002 provided an opportunity to examine a major transformation in the structure of collective sports that has been underway for the past 20 years. In an increasingly deregulated world, the companies that produce spectator sports championships are being concentrated and privatised under the pressures of strong market growth. This movement toward globalisation has been the impetus for new location strategies that affect all the various parties involved in sports: private and public investors, governing bodies, public authorities (local and national), the general public – and the leagues themselves.
