Sports and underdevelopment

I love sports, playing them, watching them, arguing about them. I would watch the world cup of nearly anything because I like to watch national teams play against each other. After all, how often can we see a nation of three or four million dominate one of 1 billion, or in the case of the US 330 million (depending on what figure you want to use)? But the latest out of Qatar (http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jul/28/qatar-world-cup-migrants-not-paid-building-office) and other reports from Sochi, Brazil, and South Africa make it clear that international sporting events do not foster development, especially in the case of nation-states somewhere on the development spectrum (this is worthy of probably 1,000 blog posts if not more alone). This issue, the high costs of international sporting events in financial, social, and environmental measures is well known so I am not breaking any ground there (eg. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brazil-world-cup-fails-to-score-environmental-goals/). What I still don't understand, and I have tried, is why states think that hosting these events indicates some amorphous development goal. In essence Brazil or Russia or Qatar host these events to 1. line the pockets of builders, etc. who are friends with the bidders but more importantly 2. TO ANNOUNCE TO THE WORLD THAT THEY HAVE ARRIVED. This type of thinking, essentially a middle school sensibility, is akin to the 13 year old who needs the newest athletic shoe, video game, and whatever else. Hosting these events embraces old, and hopefully soon outmoded, concepts of state legitimacy. As long as "developing/global south/you get the idea) states are compelled to arrive via developed world measures they will be behind. And actually, does anyone view S. Africa or Brazil differently after they hosted the World Cup without any major disasters (which is pretty much all we are evaluating)?
New models of nation-state achievement can look to the 1960s and 1970s non-aligned movement for cues and clues.