A new survey finds most Canadians say it won’t be worth the cost for Vancouver and Toronto to host FIFA World Cup 26 games next year.
The Angus Reid Institute found 71 per cent of Canadians say it wouldn’t be worth hosting the games if the cities lose money on them.
One-in-five said it’s not worth hosting the event, whether there are revenue gains or not.
Fewer than 10 per cent said it’s a valuable event if the host cities end up in the red.
Vancouver is one of 16 host cities across North America for the tournament, and one of only two Canadian locations, along with Toronto. Seven games are set to go ahead at Vancouver’s B.C. Place next June and July.
An estimate from the B.C. government earlier this year said the total cost for hosting the seven matches in Vancouver could range from $532 million to $624 million.
The federal government is also set to contribute $116 million to support the events.
The province said the net cost for B.C. and municipalities could be as high as $145 million.
FIFA estimates preparing for and hosting the tournament could add as much as $1.7 billion in economic benefit for the province, including boosting GDP and labour income.
The majority of B.C. residents who responded to the survey said they won’t pay close attention to the World Cup or weren’t interested at all. Fewer than 40 per cent said they were interested or planned to follow the tournament closely.
The overwhelming majority of B.C. residents said tickets to the tournament are too expensive for them to attend, including 83 per cent of Metro Vancouver residents.
More than half of Canadians said if they were given a pair of tickets, they’d probably resell them for cash.
Soaring resale costs for tickets to World Series games between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers prompted calls in Ontario for legislation to ban predatory pricing by resellers.
Premier David Eby said Monday his government isn’t looking at bringing any new legislation to cap ticket resale prices.
B.C. introduced some regulations in 2021 to improve transparency for live-event ticket sales, including banning bots that mass-buy tickets for resale.
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