Western Canada: B.C. reveals costs of hosting FIFA World Cup matches has doubled

Good morning.

Wendy Cox in Vancouver this morning.

For months, the B.C. government has been under pressure to release an updated tally for the cost of hosting seven FIFA World Cup games in two years. Efforts to get the contract between FIFA and the City of Vancouver yielded mostly blank pages.

But a redacted copy of Toronto’s contract with the world governing body of soccer was released through access to information in February and taxpayers there learned they are now on the hook for $380-million to host six games. That’s up from a 2022 estimate of $300-million to host five games.

“It is important that we are transparent, that we are realistic, and [in 2022], no one anticipated the rate of inflation of today,” Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow told reporters.

On Tuesday, the B.C. government finally provided some of that transparency for what Lana Popham, minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport, said would be an exciting event. The numbers are a bit of a buzz kill.

Since January 2023, the cost to put on seven matches – two more than originally planned – has more than doubled and could reach even higher, eclipsing Toronto’s tally.

The total cost is now expected to be between $483-million to $581-million, compared to the last figure the province released, $230-million in January, 2023. The increase was blamed on the extra two games, new requirements from FIFA and inflation. Construction upgrades to the hosting stadium, BC Place, were expected but never before tallied.

B.C. estimates the costs are expected to be offset by revenues and a federal contribution, leaving the net cost to taxpayers for the games at between $100-million and $145-million.

Popham said those costs will be paid by the province’s contingency fund, but she noted Tuesday’s estimate does not include the economic benefits the province is expected to reap.

“We’ve made it very clear that it’s not a blank cheque, we have to be very prudent with the numbers and FIFA understands that,” Popham said.

She and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said they were confident costs could be contained within these latest estimates.

Originally, the City of Vancouver was expected to cover the cost of the games through a hotel tax that went into effect in February 2023 and was due to last seven years.

Now, officials at a technical briefing said the costs of the games will be covered by revenues from the hotel tax, a $116-million federal grant and money from facility rentals and other projects.

Sim, who flew to Qatar to watch the previous World Cup shortly after he took office, called hosting the games a “no-brainer” that would be like a “month-long commercial” for tourists around the globe to visit his city.

But Brian Soebbing, a sports economic expert at the University of Alberta, has said estimates for any large-scale sporting event tend to be wrong and claims about economic benefits are often dubious.

Soebbing noted fans coming for the World Cup will push out regular tourist groups or tours that would come to Vancouver and the region at the same time, meaning the economic benefit of sports fans is balanced out by the loss of other groups.

“Part of the idea of economic impact is you’ve got these visitors who are coming for the sole purpose of going to the World Cup. But Vancouver in and of itself is a very good tourist city in any year, right?

“There are going to be people who were going to go to Vancouver but are not going to go to Vancouver because of the World Cup.”

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.