Rural Thai city emerges as sporting Camelot
Backwater to boom town
BURIRAM, Thailand, June 8, (AFP): A ‘godfather’ of Thai politics is using cash and contacts to transform his once poor, forgotten rice-farming fiefdom into an unlikely sporting Camelot, complete with a football stadium and racetrack set to host the MotoGP.
Newin Chidchob, a 58-year-old native son of Buriram in Thailand’s agrarian northeast, has enticed super-rich investors into his vision of a sports hub amid the rice fields.
The swaggering former MP has already delivered two venues that now dominate Buriram, a sleepy town whose 30,000 population could be seated more than three times over in them.
First, in 2011, came the imposing ‘Thunder Castle’, a mega millions football stadium purpose-built for leading Thai Premier League side Buriram United.
It was followed three years later by a $58.9 million racing circuit, the first Formula One certified track in Thailand.
According to Thai sports authorities the circuit secured the rights this week to stage a leg of the prestigious 2018 MotoGP, a personal coup for Newin who has been lobbying hard to bring the event to his flagship venue.
The motorcycling extravaganza would pour millions of dollars into Buriram, which was once among Thailand’s poorest provinces.
Thanks to the sporting makover, Buriram is a rare pocket of economic vibrancy in northeastern Thailand, a farming region whose development lags far behind Bangkok and the tourist destinations of the beach-streaked south.
Locals are the first to say that none of it would be possible without Newin, known by some as the ‘Baron of Buriram’. Much of Thailand is carved up into the domains of influential families who dominate local political and economic life. Buriram is no different. Patronage, power and ruthless decision-making have shaped Newin’s rise to the top.
Before making his mark with sport, Newin spent two decades in Thailand’s bear-pit political arena, trading favours and switching teams just in time to land on the winning side.
Newin was later banned from politics for vote-buying and retreated to his power base in Buriram, bringing his passions -- football and big bikes -- with him.
He bought a small football club based near Bangkok, moved it to Buriram, and housed the squad in a gleaming stadium which towers above the ramshackle, one-storey homes common to the area.
Seven years on, Buriram United is one of the kingdom’s top teams -sponsored by a Who’s Who of Bangkok’s business elite -- with five league titles and regular appearances in the Asian Champions league.
Newin, often seen cruising through town on his Ducati, also drew on wealthy Bangkok friends to erect the 1,400-acre racing circuit.
The track is named after its top sponsor Chang Beer, a booze giant owned by one the kingdom’s richest and most influential billionaires.
Newin says sport not politics has brought the boom to Buriram.
Newin boasts of the speed in which his stadiums were built -- a contrast to the delays that hobble governmentbacked infrastructure projects.
Even without an official post, “Newin has the type of power that means if he suggests how things should be, people listen,” Chotikavanik added.