By Soccer
Are the new stadiums built for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa - a country where football jostles with rugby and cricket for audience - destined to become white elephants after the month-long tournament?
That's the R12.1-billion question - the cost of five new stadiums in Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Nelspruit and Polokwane.
The "white elephant" spectre is one that has come to haunt World Cup and Olympic Games hosts.
A little more than a year after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China is struggling to find a real purpose for its $450m showpiece Bird's Nest stadium, while one of Germany's 2006 World Cup stadiums in Leipzig also struggles to attract more than a few thousand fans to third-division games.
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With six months to go until kick-off in Johannesburg, South Africa is faced with the possibility that some of its new venues will be gathering dust beyond July 2010.
That the country needed a raft of new and improved stadiums is not in doubt.
The country's existing football stadiums were too small and shabby by World Cup standards.
But some of the stadiums are controversial nonetheless.
Cape Town and Durban already had decent rugby stadiums of more than 50 000 seats, which some say could have been expanded to host eight World Cup games each and two semi-finals.
Both cities opted instead for new stadiums.
Wedged between Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Town's new 68 000-seat Cape Town Stadium has an undeniably stunning backdrop.
But locations like that comes at a price - an extra R1.2bn in site-specific costs to be exact, says Cape Town's 2010 spokesman and manager Pieter Cronje. By the time it's finished, Cape Town Stadium will have cost R4.5bn, more than Beijing's Bird's Nest and more than double the initial estimate.
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