You’d better be prepared to pony up when FIFA comes to Vancouver and Toronto next summer for the World Cup, because it’s leaving taxpayers with a massive bill.
FIFA is bringing the 2026 Men’s World Cup to Canada, the United States and Mexico.
Of the 104 games that will make up the tournament,
. Vancouver is set to host seven, with the remaining six Canadian games slated for Toronto.
But hosting those 13 soccer games isn’t cheap.
Taxpayers may be on the hook for more than a billion dollars.
The Vancouver leg of the tournament could set taxpayers back up to
, while in Toronto, the costs are pegged at up to
.
Even after factoring in projected revenues, Vancouver’s games are expected to come at a net cost to the taxpayer of $85-$145 million, according to the B.C. Government’s own
. Ontario hasn’t been transparent enough with taxpayers to provide those kinds of net cost breakdowns.
And even if you don’t live in British Columbia or Ontario, your tax dollars are still bankrolling the tournament.
The federal government is also getting in on the action, subsidizing the games to the tune of
.
The federal government is giving Vancouver $116 million to help pay for the tournament. It’s also shelling out over $104 million to Toronto to offset costs for things like fan festivals and police motorcades for FIFA delegations.
All three levels of government are spending money on these soccer games. The federal government is giving cash to the municipalities as a
. Most of the provincial money is being spent on provincial services for the games, like
in B.C. and provincial police officers in
.
Here’s the real kicker: most British Columbia and Ontario taxpayers don’t even want to host the World Cup.
Polling from Leger shows that
of British Columbians and
of Ontarians don’t think the soccer games are worth the cost.
And who can blame them?
According to the B.C. government’s own
, the games are going to come at a net cost of up to $145 million for taxpayers. That means the province is going to be losing money on these games.
How the money going to these games is being spent should raise eyebrows. FIFA bigwigs are demanding preferential treatment, funded by taxpayers.
FIFA’s
with Vancouver demands the “VIP/VVIP,” treatment from taxpayers, for any “individuals nominated by FIFA.” Those very and very, very important people will be met at the gate and taken to “special” immigration, customs and security screening points. They will have access to exclusive waiting rooms, special luggage collection and even VIP parking, according to the contracts signed with Vancouver and Toronto.
In fact, Toronto and Vancouver councils even promised police escorts and road closures for anyone nominated by FIFA.
Why would soccer executives need to cruise around Toronto or Vancouver with a police escort on closed streets? Why did our politicians promise to use taxpayer money to pay for that kind of excess?
And FIFA’s ethics record would make a tin-pot dictator green with envy. Dozens of former FIFA executives have been
and criminally charged over the years, with fraud, money laundering and corruption.
When an international soccer organization has a
long track record of corruption
and mismanaging its own money, why are we spending more than a billion dollars of our money to host a FIFA tournament?
It’s important to read the fine print in the contracts. The host cities “unconditionally and irrevocably accepts as final and binding any decision by FIFA,” reads the
. “FIFA may, during the term of this host city agreement, unilaterally specify, modify, reduce and/or enhance the obligations of the host city.”
Vancouver and Toronto’s contracts give FIFA control over how taxpayer money is spent on the tournament. Expensive goodies like road closures, fan zones, exclusion bubbles around the stadium and security protocols are all under FIFA’s control.
Those clauses give FIFA the final say over various aspects of the tournament. If FIFA doesn’t like the fan festivals that Vancouver or Toronto put on, it can demand more. If FIFA isn’t happy with the VIP suites at the stadium, more luxurious ones are built — which is exactly what happened in
.
And the price tag to attend the games freezes out most Canadian families whose taxes are paying for them. Tickets
start at $2,500 for a single match and go up to $15,975 for a package that includes all the games in either Vancouver or Toronto.
The same Canadian soccer fans who are footing the bill with their tax dollars are being priced out of attending the tournament.
Enough is enough. Not a dime of taxpayer money should be spent on the World Cup.
It’s time the Swiss soccer executives to pay for their own motorcades. If FIFA wants to put on a tournament, it can do it without taxpayer subsidies.
Carson Binda is the B.C. Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
National Post
