Toronto and Vancouver are blowing $1 billion on a World Cup party and they’re doing it on the taxpayers’ dime
The 2026 World Cup was sold to Canadians as a manageable public expense with major economic benefits. Instead, Toronto and Vancouver are now staring at more than $1 billion in combined costs, while taxpayers are once again being told the overruns are worth it.
When Toronto’s city council originally considered a World Cup bid back in 2018, they were told it would cost no more than $45 million. That figure is now $380 million. Vancouver’s story is no different. Despite an original price tag of $240 million, it’s now expected to cost $624 million.
None of this should surprise anyone, least of all the politicians who signed off on it. Governments consistently understate costs and overstate benefits. From roads to recreation centres, international sporting events are no different.
Initial estimates are kept low to make projects politically palatable. Then, once the commitment is made, costs escalate and budgets bloat. That isn’t bad luck. That’s government.
Costs have gotten so out of hand that the federal government, having already committed $220 million to support the tournament, recently announced another $145 million, plus a further $100 million for impacted federal departments. That’s on top of what Ontario and British Columbia have already kicked in.
All told, what was supposed to cost a few hundred million dollars has metastasized into more than a billion dollars in public spending.
If FIFA came to Canada, covered its own costs and ran its operation like any other private event organizer, that would be one thing. But that’s not the arrangement.
Host countries are expected to foot the bill, promised that tourists will flood in, hotels will fill up, restaurants will overflow and GDP will surge. The historical record shows those promises of economic invigoration are consistently, embarrassingly wrong.
Before the 1994 World Cup, U.S. host cities were promised a $4-billion economic boost. Instead, they ended up with losses between $5.5 billion and $9.3 billion. South Africa spent $6 billion on the 2010 tournament, notwithstanding a $650-million budget, generating revenues of $513 million despite projections of $900 million. Brazil paid $15 billion to host the 2014 edition, promising huge economic gains, only to experience negative economic growth in the years that followed.
Yes, restaurants will be busy and hotels will fill, but that doesn’t make the country any better off. Much of that spending is money that would have been spent anyway elsewhere in the economy, and none of it comes close to justifying a $1-billion public outlay.
Which raises the question: why do politicians keep agreeing to host these events? The answer has less to do with economics than with optics.
Hosting an international tournament comes with its fair share of political perks. For ambitious politicians looking to boost their status or cement a legacy on the world stage, the ribbon-cuttings and photo ops are simply too tempting to pass up.
Of course, if they actually wanted a legacy, they could start with the basics: homes people can afford, transit that actually runs, communities that are safe to live in. Yet somehow, despite these long-standing issues, which governments have failed to address, they still managed to find a $1-billion budget for their political vanity project.
And make no mistake about who is actually paying for this. Every Canadian taxpayer, including those who will never attend a game, is subsidizing an event that primarily benefits FIFA and its corporate sponsors, the hospitality industry in two specific Canadian cities, and the affluent who can afford $1,000 tickets to watch 90 minutes of soccer in the middle of a workday. There are few more regressive uses of public money than that.
But with kickoff weeks away, there’s no stopping it now. All we can do is remember exactly how we got here: politicians who couldn’t resist the spotlight, governments that couldn’t stay on budget, and a public too swept up in the excitement to worry about the bill.
Conrad Eder is a policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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