A Guest house close to Johannesburg city centre and MTN Nasrec Expo IBC I.B.C. International Broadcasting Centre: Gold Reef Place

Guest House / B&B, 6 kilometers from Nasrec Expo Centre ( 10 minutes drive). This venue is the closest of all the accommodation establishments to the media hub for the 2010 soccer world cup. Tel: +27 (0) 11 6803452 or email for bookings.
Transfers can be arranged. Click HERE for pictures and info about this accommodation.

Johannesburg, South Africa

MTN has agreed to partner with the Johannesburg Expo Centre to create a state-of-the-art media hub, the International Broadcast Centre (IBC), for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

IBC is the culmination of a multi-million rand development plan for the World Cup, and will host thousands of broadcasters from around the world for the duration of the six-week tournament.

IBC will house some of the most cutting-edge IT and mobile network equipment in Africa. The cumulative television audience for the soccer tournament event is projected to reach 30 billion people.

During the previous World Cup tournament, held in Germany, the IBC set up in Munich hosted 13,400 accredited TV commentators, camera crew members and technical staff. The Munich centre broadcast images and reports via more than 120 television and radio stations in 190 countries to over 26 billion people across the world.

"IBC will be the pulse and the nerve centre for all TV operations during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Through a sophisticated network it will link the venues in South Africa to the rest of our football family all over the globe. This way it will also create a legacy, far beyond the event in terms of telecommunication infrastructure for the country,” said FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter at the announcement of the IBC launch in April of last year.

The Nasrec hub houses the Expo Centre and Soccer City, making it a prime multi entertainment area, providing soccer fans with a safe, attractive and central venue.

The MTN centre will also serve as the mobile service provider’s hospitality site during the World Cup. “We will be inviting key customers to be guests of MTN for all Johannesburg-based games where they will be entertained and will watch games on a big screen,” said Serame Taukobong, MTN Chief Marketing Officer

The entire precinct is a flagship improvement node being developed by the Johannesburg Development Agency to bridge a planning gap between the south Johannesburg and the centre of the City that resulted from apartheid. Nasrec covers 420 hectares and currently accommodates Soccer City, the Johannesburg Expo Centre and the Crown Mines Golf Course.

“We wanted a partnership that would give unbelievable experiences to lovers of sport, music and cultural activities. We are certain that in MTN we have found such a partner,” said Craig Newman, CEO of the MTN Expo Centre

Fast-paced, frenetic JOHANNESBURG has had a reputation for immorality, greed and violence ever since its first plot auction in December 1886. Despite its status as the largest and richest city in the country, it has never been the seat of government or national political power, allowing it to concentrate fully on what it has always done best: make money and get ahead. Those priorities have, over the years, cut across political and racial lines: only in Jo'burg would ambitious black Africans like Nelson Mandela have been able to train in a white law firm; only in Jo'burg would creative hotspots like Sophiatown and Alexandra exist at all; and only in Jo'burg would white liberalism have been given any intellectual recognition in the dark days of apartheid.

Even so, the divisions of the old South Africa are as apparent here as anywhere else. Ridiculously opulent white mansions in leafy suburbs are protected by high walls and razor wire, only a mile or two from sprawling shanty towns housing millions of intensely poor blacks. As the new political dispensation sees formerly white areas administratively yoked with the black townships, so the city struggles to cope with massive pressures on housing, services and law and order. Nowhere is the new tension more in evidence than in the previously all-white central business district, where an influx of poor blacks, and a soaring crime rate, has caused a mass exodus of shops and restaurants to the northern suburbs.

As the centre readjusts, so the fringes expand: there will be a continuous ribbon of development between Johannesburg and Pretoria, originally 50km apart, within a decade. Meanwhile, the black middle class, much more evident in Johannesburg than anywhere else in South Africa, is moving from township to suburb, while tens of thousands of immigrants from elsewhere in Africa flood into inner-city suburbs like Hillbrow and townships like Alexandra.

Click the link below for directions from the guest house to Nasrec Expo centre,
the 2010 soccer world cup media and broadcast centre.