CONCACAF proposes Caribbean confab on sports tourism

CONCACAF, the football confederation that embraces North and Central America and the Caribbean, is seeking to bring governments and sporting associations of the region to the discussion table with a view of further exploring sports tourism as an income earner.

President of CONCACAF Jeffrey Webb says with its enormous potential the Caribbean region lags behind other places in institutionalising sport, and football in particular, as a tool to bridge social gaps, generate economic growth and to be a pillar in overall nation building.

“Sports tourism is huge and all over the world it continues to grow... I don’t think that the Caribbean, from a sports and government standpoint, have sat down to create dialogue and engage each other, to see how best sports can assist governments, and nations within the Caribbean and CONCACAF... and that’s one of the things that lies ahead from an opportunity standpoint,” Webb told the Jamaica Observer in an exclusive interview in Kingston recently.

The first move, noted the Caymanian, is to have all the relevant players sitting around the same table with an open mind to explore the possibilities.

Webb said CONCACAF has already proposed a meeting for October this year, with a specific date and place to be announced.

“We are inviting the sports ministers to a conference in October this year. We will have the presidents and general secretaries (of football bodies) and then we will create some dialogue between government representatives and sporting associations, “ he said.

Webb, who is also a FIFA vice-president, said the proposed meeting will seek to, in part, project sport and football to another dimension above and beyond the field of play.

“We will also present some of the best practices throughout the region and the world to show that football is not just physical education, but football helps so many from an educational standpoint.

“It also helps a lot from a health standpoint to fight hypertension and obesity and so forth... for us it’s more collaboration to ensure that the clear values are established that sport and football can help nation- building,” he noted.

Webb, who heads FIFA’s Anti-racism and Discrimination Task Force, said parallel to efforts to help enhance the agenda of sports tourism in the region must be an equally robust programme that will develop the football product in the Caribbean.

“We have to look at the development of Caribbean football from a grassroots standpoint and also from a club standpoint... I would like to do an analysis and establish a working group to look at club football throughout the region from a professional perspective,” Webb told the Observer.

He said this drive to build on the grassroots and to develop a professional club structure region-wide to target bringing the Caribbean game up to par with their North and Central American counterparts will require “some real analyses".

“We have to conduct feasibility studies as we look for sustainability of professional club football in the Caribbean and this is something that we must discuss,” said Webb, who is one year in the job as CONCACAF president.

He has reiterated with every opportunity that while there are pressing matters facing CONCACAF which is on the rebuild following the cash-for-vote scandal and allegations of corruption against former top executives,” improving the game” in every area is also integral to the work of the confederation is.