Can’t we think of anything better to do with $1-billion taxpayer dollars?

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The good people of Salt Lake City are preparing to fork over half a billion dollars, and maybe more, to subsidize a major professional sports league.

At least they’re getting an NHL team in return.

What’s Vancouver getting for roughly half a billion bucks? It’s buying – sorry, renting – seven soccer games. Six hundred and thirty minutes of football. Plus, injury time. Call it 700 minutes. That’s almost $1-million per minute of soccer.

Ah, the beautiful game.

Vancouver and British Columbia this week unveiled the latest estimates for the cost of putting on seven matches at World Cup 2026. The tournament is being jointly held in 16 cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada. Toronto is the other Canadian host, and its costs have also exploded – but we’ll come back to that in a moment. Let’s start with Vancouver.

The budget for 700 or so minutes of football in Vancouver is now between $481-million and $581-million. That’s more than double the estimate from early 2023. The bill is to be shared among the taxpayers of Vancouver, the province and Canada.

Lana Popham, B.C.’s minister of tourism, said this week that she’s confident the new budget can be adhered to, and in any case, “we’ve made it very clear that it’s not a blank cheque.”

In gambling, they call this a tell. In psychology, it’s a Freudian slip.

It sure looks like B.C. and Vancouver – and Toronto – made out a cheque to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, leaving the amount to be filled in later. There have been repeated surprises about costs, and FIFA’s demands.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has said that if she could pull out of the arrangement signed by her predecessor, she would. Toronto’s budget for six World Cup games has ballooned to $380-million. The original 2018 estimate was $30-million to $45-million.

But Toronto and Vancouver are locked in, even as costs have risen to a combined total of almost $1-billion. It’s as if you agreed to buy a house, price TBD – and regardless of that final price, you also agreed to be legally bound to go through with the deal.

If that’s not a blank cheque, tell me what is.

The politicians holding the bag have been left to put the best face on what’s in the bag. Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said that the seven soccer matches will be “a month-long commercial” for his city.

“Over a month-long period, you gotta figure a lot of people are gonna fall in love with our city when they see it.”

And can anyone put a price on love?

Destination British Columbia, the Crown corporation responsible for tourism promotion – getting people to fall in love with B.C. – had an annual budget last year of $55-million. That’s less than the cost of one soccer match. Vancouver’s 700-minute World Cup “commercial” will cost as much as a decade’s worth of the province’s tourism marketing spend.

Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, taxpayers are on the verge of forking over serious cash to subsidize the Utah Name Pending, the new NHL team built from the parts of the currently dormant/possibly defunct Arizona Coyotes.

Name Pending’s owner, Ryan Smith, also owns the NBA’s Utah Jazz, and he wants a better arena for his two teams. It’s unlikely he would have shelled out US$1.2-billion to buy into the NHL had he not been confident local taxpayers would oblige.

Utah recently passed legislation allowing Salt Lake City to introduce a 0.5-per-cent sales tax, if the funds go to the arena and the district immediately around it.

Mr. Smith plans to take the existing Delta Center, which was designed for basketball, and overhaul it to be fit for the NHL. It has just 12,000 unobstructed seats for hockey. After a couple of years of renovation and expansion, Mr. Smith says it will seat more than 17,000.

A 0.5-per-cent sales tax is expected to generate US$33-million to US$54-million a year, for up to 30 years. The net present value – what it’s worth today – is more than half a billion dollars.

Salt Lake City has not yet signed on the dotted line, but it seems almost inevitable that its taxpayers are going to shell out significant public money to subsidize a billionaire’s private business. At least they’re getting a team in return – 41 regular-season games, preseason games, maybe playoffs, year after year.

Canadian taxpayers, in contrast, are renting 13 soccer matches. They’re playing; we’re paying. The two-city budget is now just shy of $1-billion. Don’t we have any better use for that much money?