Sports + Jamaica = Economic Opportunity

Well it’s D-Day for the big state planned home coming for the Jamaica athletes who were the stars and no doubt the talk of London 2012. Let me just say out front and early, the Government gets a poor mark on this one in my book.  If you can imagine this, it’s almost three months since the games ended; the memories that thrilled us all have been replaced by the reality of crime and violence, no money for student loan bureau, sliding dollar, declining net international reserves et al; yet we are about to spend $57m of tax payers money on a one-off event.

When I wrote, “What they still don’t get…. Jamaica” on September 3 donovangwhite.blogspot.com I was on a flight heading to the eastern Caribbean and couldn’t resist the need to share my thoughts about how short sighted we have been as a nation in providing the means to truly celebrate the achievements of our sportsmen and women and reward their commitment, not with a few dollars or some homecoming party but by stepping out of the box and thinking big about how we truly harness the blessings that have been bestowed on Jamaica so that we multiply the benefits for all.

With that as the background, it struck me and seemingly most Jamaicans were at odds with this when it was announced that the Government with some private sector support will invest $37m out of a total of $57m in the organization and execution of a national homecoming for the athletes, managers and coaches that represented the nation at the London 2012 Olympics.

This doesn’t need an economist to tell us that while the amount of money isn’t that large in the scheme of a national economy, it is the wrong message to send both domestically and internationally to our citizens, investors and lenders that we use our resources with such scant regard for hardship and suffrage of its’ people.

The response by an overwhelming amount of Jamaicans were stunned and most that I saw on social media or spoke to, gave solid alternatives to the use of $57m for a feel good experience that have no chance of creating long term benefit for the country or the athletes. Some of the ideas shared ranged from, the creation of a athletes pension fund, to health and life insurance to the provision of land and financial aide as part of a structured development program for our athletes. Nonetheless, to date these ideas have fallen on deaf ears because the celebrations are still going ahead as planned.

I want to raise again the points from my September 3 blog because I received so many private calls and messages telling me why they can’t or won't work. Beyond the short sightedness of a few it makes me wonder how many persons are afraid to step out in front and state their opinions irrespective of whose ego maybe bruised. Well friends I am sorry, if you read what I write and you have an opinion, please leave your comments and let the world know what you think, ‘Jamaica Land We Love’ is ours not theirs, hence we are all vested in its growth and development and by the way, it's our right to do so.

This is not a bashing of the Government of the day because their predecessors did the same thing in 2008, yet our athletes and sports people continue to struggle to make ends meet and they give their heart and soul to make us proud every time the bright lights come on; isn’t that reason enough for us to see the writing on the wall?

So here we go with my top five long-term suggestions to jump-start the development of sports in Jamaica and the perspective for which each should be viewed initially.

• A national policy for the development of sports in all major discipline tabled in parliament by January 2013

1. All major discipline in the Jamaican context refers to: Track & Field, Football, Cricket, Swimming, Golf and Boxing all other sports in my mind are secondary.
2. Policy should address the need for sporting academies, the first of which should be GC Foster College and later should address the conversion of curriculum for some of the small teacher’s colleges to sports institutions for advance studies, research and scientific developments.
3. The policy must see to the urgent development of world-class facilities – large and small, which will prevent our patch of golden brilliance from becoming another period of brief appearances.
4. The policy must address issues concerning the need to nurture, protect and care for our men and women who choose sports as their way of representing Jamaica. To do this we must address the need for their health care, pension fund (especially for those without super talent), special tax relief on their incomes from competing etc.
5. Oversight committees made up of the best minds on: health, infrastructure development, finance, domestic planning, international relations, tourism, marketing all galvanized behind a single-minded proposition: Creating Economic Growth through Sports.  
6. The policy must be factored into the national budget at the expense of some of the pork barrel spending we now carry as albatross around the neck of Jamaican taxpayers.

• Creation of a Centre of excellence in speed training that is marketed around the globe for clubs, institutions and individuals to come to Jamaica for off-season and/or specialized training.

1. This is our gateway to immediately bring much needed spending in our overall economy through sports tourism.
2. Usain, Shelly-Ann, Mills & Francis should all be the standard bearers of this Centre.
3. This should be the place where sportsmen and women from around the world come every off-season to take advantage of our climatic conditions and superior technical depth in speed training.

• We are yet to realize the true value of GC Foster College as an institution and yet we continue to pay lip service to it; is there no international investors that want it? Heck we could give it to them free in exchange for them to re-develop the institution and it’s infrastructure and make it marketable internationally to students wanting to study sports in many and varied facets.

1. Already I indicated this should be a centerpiece of the national sports policy and the reasons are self-evident. The next Glen Mills or Stephen Francis is waiting to be educated and trained.
2. This facility houses one of maybe three Olympic size swimming pools in the entire English speaking Caribbean; guess what it has never been used because it was never made operational.

• Three major international track & field meets per year; we already have one in Jamaica International Invitational, Gibson Relays can be upgraded similar to Penn Relays and there is no reason we cannot have a Diamond League/Grand Prix Meet if we seek a partnership with North America and strike the right sponsorship deal. Here is where the big ideas really start crystalizing if we think out of the box.

1. The USA is looking for opportunities to leverage the sport and bring funding via sponsorship back into it. Jamaica is perfectly positioned to host two-diamond league (early and late season) competition.
2. Between global TV rights, sponsorship, direct revenues, tourist inflows from North America and the Caribbean, this would be the single largest step we would have taken to use brand Jamaica as a major revenue earner for the country.
3. Penn Relays is probably the single largest T&F event on the US calendar annually, without the Jamaican support it falls flat on its face. Why can’t we leverage this pull with USAT&F to get a greater influx of US and Caribbean High Schools to come to Jamaica in February for Gibson Relays?
4. The cost and format of Gibson Relays would change but the long-term benefit to our domestic development would out weigh the costs, and I am sure the Kingston College family of which I am apart and who are organizers of the meet would not mind revolutionizing the meet for the greater good.

• Commence a plan to make a serious bid for either the 2023 Commonwealth Games and/or 2021 World Track & Field Championships. In between it would be great if we could get the World Netball Championships and the World Junior Championships to return to our shores.

1. This requires a task force to look at the potential in its totality, understand the cost and evaluate the benefits physically, strategically and economically.
2. We keep hearing there are investors wanting shovel ready projects to set up shop in Jamaica, why not use sports as the vehicle to economic prosperity by putting regular Jamaicans back to work?
3. We will need to build new hospitals, houses, roadways, new public transportation system, hotels, entertainment venues, offices and maybe even a Kingston waterway. These as you can see are major legacy projects that would be wise investments for the next 100 years.
4. If we are looking for an economic boost to get people back to work, reduce crime and violence and alleviate human suffrage; this is definitely a rallying point.
5. These may all be primarily track & field events, but having the facilities in place readies Jamaica to bid for just about any global and/or regional event in any of the major sporting disciplines.

Of course, these initiatives should not be seen as a replacement for other ideas that may have already been in the works if in fact there are ideas being worked on. The Government should be encouraged to move speedily to create this framework for the creation of venture-capital opportunities out of what has evolved as probably our most marketable natural resource at this time in our history and is capable of supporting a mass overall of our physical landscape and in the process effect positive economic change.

Only through bold action by the Government will private enterprises both domestic and international will see how these ideas can flourish to the benefit of an entire nation.

One Love!

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