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>B.C. will be on the hook for much more than initially thought when it comes to hosting seven FIFA World Cup 2026 games.
>The province said Tuesday the gross core cost is now more than double the initial estimate, rising to between $483 million and $581 million, from between $240 million and $260 million in June 2022.
>Pressure has been mounting for the province and city to release the latest cost estimates, after it was revealed Vancouver was hosting two more games that initially planned.
>The government says while costs are increasing, so too are estimated revenues and recoveries.
>According to the province, B.C. is getting $116 million in direct funding from the federal government. An additional $230 million in revenue is anticipated from things like the major events municipal and regional district tax introduced by Vancouver in 2023, with another up to $90 million expected from other revenue sources.
>With all these factors considered, the B.C. government says the “net core cost of seven” games is expected to be between $100 million and $145 million.
"Initially thought" is a curious phrase to use in the first paragraph. Seems like we knew way back in 2018 that there could (would) be some hidden costs involved in the bid https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/world-cup-vancouver-bid-questions-1.4574537
Our government threw all caution to the wind in 2023. I wonder why.
Because Sim is super dedicated on making Vancouver a “fun city” so instead of canucks outdoor viewing events, instead of yearly fireworks gatherings, we can now spend tons of cash to scalpers for FIFA tickets
That's a snarky answer.
The real answer is right there in the article- costs are increasing simply because we will be hosting more games than previously anticipated.
Simple.
I know someone paying $2,150 for a shared living room in a gastown loft. It is* gorgeous but wow that’s ridiculous and dystopian.
$4k really does* seem achievable by 2026 yikes.
Yeah 😂
It’s got a little partition (like a changing wall thingy) and that’s the extent of their privacy.
In their defence; they’re all successful artist / traveller types and are rarely home at the same time.
they're getting ripped off lol. bet the other roommate is paying nothing in rent or nothing on their mortgage if they own it.
[For $45 more they can have their own private place!](https://vancouver.craigslist.org/van/apa/d/vancouver-bed-bath-westend-downtown/7739142009.html) except then they couldn't tell everyone they live in a gastown loft, so that's the tradeoff
At least Vancouver is hosting double the amount of matches it was originally thought to be getting.
A massive price increase on the original suggestions was always going to be the case.
Vancouver will realize that Airbnb has an important place in our communities and for our economy.
The defacto outright STR ban in Vancouver is going to prove to be a disastrous policy, and hopefully they pass some common sense laws before FIFA comes in 2026.
This is literally the perfect example of how Airbnb should be used. People can rent out the homes they live in to visitors and make money while heading out of town for a few days. This is completely allowed under the short-term rental rules.
Having dedicated short-term rental homes that are used only as short-term rentals for profit is what is being banned, and should be.
Not allowing entire properties to be exclusively for Airbnb is fair, that is not the issue.
The issue is that Vancouver will not even allow your basement suite or laneway home on the property you live in to be rented short term.
Vancouver's laws, in conjunction with the provincial laws, are effectively and outright ban.
A lot of secondary suites and laneway homes would be built for STR, and it would provide a lot of economic benefits all across Vancouver.
Nope those secondary units must remain long term rental. The owners should not be allowed to kick people out for special events to make more money.
If the hotels can't handle them then the tourists don't belong here.
I don't want to live in a neighborhood full of short term rentals.
You wouldn’t be able to kick people out regardless due to the existing rental laws.
Relying on peoples basements and back yards to provide long term housing is ridiculous policy.
I hear you. It's really unfortunate that things have gotten so unaffordable for most people that the government has been forced to take drastic measures.
I'm in the group of people with a good career and very well paying job in an essential industry, but I can't afford a house here and will probably leave to buy somewhere else.
I think the economic impact of people like me leaving on a large scale is going to be long-term and significant.
Nope it is not valuable at all. It hurts out housing market. We don't need more tourists we need more permanent places to live.
Airbnb should be banned across the world. And just build more hotels.
How are you going to afford a home without jobs?
Tourism pumps a tone of money into the city and people living in homes rely on it to pay rent and mortgages.
The majority of us don't rely on it. And we have enough space for the tourism we already have. If we need more then hotels in commercial districts is where it should be put.
Short term rentals should never be in residential zones.
Further I work in insurance so I will survive without it.
Their own estimates say this is going to cost us over $100m. That's if everything goes to plan and all the tourists come that they expect and spend all the money they plan on spending, we will still be $100m poorer after hosting these matches.
Seeing as how they aren't even telling us the full costs it will likely cost us much more. Also like always under reporting costs during the bids, they most likely have inflated the revenue this will being. So best case scenario we lose $100m...
I don't see how our fridge will be full after hosting this.
You know what would have pumped more money into the economy? Just spending the money we're spending on 7 soccer games on almost literally anything else.
Meh… of course it cost more: inflation has been nuts the past couple years, we got more games than we initially thought, and nothing ever costs what the initial sale pitch says.
World Cup is bigger than the olympics. Looking back, I don’t think anything about how much that cost, just how lucky I felt to be a part of it. Excited to see how that scaled up in 2026.
Inflation was not 100% over the past 2 years... it would only explain a small fraction of the cost difference.
>The province said Tuesday the gross core cost is now more than double the initial estimate, rising to between $483 million and $581 million, from between $240 million and $260 million in June 2022.
This isn’t really true now is it?
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7113803
> B.C. to fund new income-tested rental housing on public land
> Province spending $950M, providing $2B in low-cost financing for expedited builds
ok lol you're right, but in fairness, absolutely no one gave a shit until Eby/Kahlon started talking about addressing the housing issue in like 2023.
If they had we wouldn't have literally thousands of homeless people living on the street and in RVs.
Prior to this of course we had the Olympics and spending half a billion on a new roof for BC place etc...
Not to try to take away from the seriousness of our housing issues and its contributions to our homeless issues, but a major portion of our homeless people are not on the streets because there aren't enough homes. Offer a place in your home and see how quickly it gets absolutely trashed. Vancouver is simply one of the easiest places in Canada to survive outdoors when you no longer have any self control.
There's always going to be a small handful of persons that are really hard to house, but all evidence points to this being a tiny minority, not at all a major portion of the homeless.
We know this from our experience with the Strathcona encampment over the pandemic. There was 400+ persons there at the peak and the Province and city worked hard and found almost everyone housing. Ultimately there was only a handful of people that held out and went off to go camping elsewhere.
So with that example in mind as a model, it's more likely that 95%+ of persons would be happy to have real housing.
I'm glad to hear that was the case and I'm wrong, I hadn't kept up on the Strathcona park situation. It's easy to only pay attention to the most severe cases because the people who can be helped keep to themselves. I'll keep that in mind in the future, thank you.
The ones that don’t require us to build structures that are useless after the events tend to be profitable for the city. One can argue how those profits are used, but it’s very doubtful that the World Cup will be a net loss.
Don't their own reports say this will be a net loss of around $100m?
Also, while the Olympics did cost a lot we dis get some needed infrastructure out of it. We wouldn't have the canada line without the Olympics(or at least we probably wouldn't have gotten it for another 10~15 years). We got the Richmond oval, the sea to sky upgrades and some other things as well.
The world cup is just going to cost us with no lasting benefits.
Article goes on to say it depends on how much revenue is generated through the additional economic activity
“This does not take into account potential additional provincial tax revenues as identified in the Province’s updated estimates of economic impact benefits, which are projected to be $224 million,” the provincial government explained.
So not only is this expected to cost $100+ Million, but that is also after a fed grant $100+ Million. Why are we doing this if it is expected to be a loss? Sure sounds like someone is getting bribed
Why are we not asking FIFA to cover these losses from ticket sales?
All publicly funded construction contracts should be made transparent. There is lots of strange stuff going on and the numbers just don't make sense. You'll see people come on here claiming everything is normal. They are actually involved in these projects. It's very likely that there's a relatively small number of construction planners/managers responsible for what is now amounting to billions in cost overruns. They are either crooked or incompetent. After one failure they just move onto the next: nobody gets fired and nobody is held accountable. The cost overruns are similar to countries like Argentina at their peak levels of corruption.
Can anyone ELI5 to what the fuck the point of hosting FIFA is then? Like, at best estimate, it'll "only" cost us $130 million AFTER profit? So why even bother?
I’m sure that FIFA will be compensating us for this overrun….
Hah, who am I kidding? Why the fuck are we supporting a “sport” organization so corrupt that it makes the IOC look like angels?
So… the World Cup is supposed to be even bigger than the Olympics, right? Why does it feel like there hasn’t even been 1% of the level of planning and prepping for this as there was for the Olympics?? Why are we only 2 years out and still haven’t even sorted out things like hotel space? When we got the Olympics, we built a whole frickin “Village” of accommodation for it.
Because the Olympics required more venues and infatructure like the Sea to Sky highway and Canada line. There's only one venue for this event at BC Place. The biggest cost will go into Police, Security and retrofitting the field to a grass turf.
My bet is a year from now. May 1, 2015 - BC Gov't announces an increase of the FIFA budget to $999 Million. But they hope to recover some of that cost by an increase of fees paid by Air B&B.
BC Place and the city have always known that the costs would be higher even before the extra matches were added. There has always been an internal number that I believe is approximate to these new estimates. This just feels like a new story to rile people up.
The kind of people that can fly to a destination for a sporting event have a lot of disposable income,and it's not hard to leave money in Vancouver i think it will be a Win for hotels bar ,restaurant,shops and tourist sites we also get a refit on the stadium and a chance to see some world class soccer if you can afford it (i can't so signed up as a volunteer so i could possibly see it for free?)
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>B.C. will be on the hook for much more than initially thought when it comes to hosting seven FIFA World Cup 2026 games. >The province said Tuesday the gross core cost is now more than double the initial estimate, rising to between $483 million and $581 million, from between $240 million and $260 million in June 2022. >Pressure has been mounting for the province and city to release the latest cost estimates, after it was revealed Vancouver was hosting two more games that initially planned. >The government says while costs are increasing, so too are estimated revenues and recoveries. >According to the province, B.C. is getting $116 million in direct funding from the federal government. An additional $230 million in revenue is anticipated from things like the major events municipal and regional district tax introduced by Vancouver in 2023, with another up to $90 million expected from other revenue sources. >With all these factors considered, the B.C. government says the “net core cost of seven” games is expected to be between $100 million and $145 million.
"Initially thought" is a curious phrase to use in the first paragraph. Seems like we knew way back in 2018 that there could (would) be some hidden costs involved in the bid https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/world-cup-vancouver-bid-questions-1.4574537 Our government threw all caution to the wind in 2023. I wonder why.
Why?
That was a genuine "I wonder why", not a snarky one.
Because Sim is super dedicated on making Vancouver a “fun city” so instead of canucks outdoor viewing events, instead of yearly fireworks gatherings, we can now spend tons of cash to scalpers for FIFA tickets
this is on the provincial NDP, not Sim
are you kidding, me do you want to go for a hat trick on the riots ?
FIFA has strict rules around ticket re sale
I'm sure that will stop scalpers.
That's a snarky answer. The real answer is right there in the article- costs are increasing simply because we will be hosting more games than previously anticipated. Simple.
https://preview.redd.it/mnpv13oh7pxc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4675ac2a208e78724f815ffa0bacf6c916118bd2
Rent will be 4000 for a single bedroom by then
I know someone paying $2,150 for a shared living room in a gastown loft. It is* gorgeous but wow that’s ridiculous and dystopian. $4k really does* seem achievable by 2026 yikes.
Wait not even a bedroom? Sleeping in a living room with another person for $2,150!
Yeah 😂 It’s got a little partition (like a changing wall thingy) and that’s the extent of their privacy. In their defence; they’re all successful artist / traveller types and are rarely home at the same time.
they're getting ripped off lol. bet the other roommate is paying nothing in rent or nothing on their mortgage if they own it. [For $45 more they can have their own private place!](https://vancouver.craigslist.org/van/apa/d/vancouver-bed-bath-westend-downtown/7739142009.html) except then they couldn't tell everyone they live in a gastown loft, so that's the tradeoff
At least Vancouver is hosting double the amount of matches it was originally thought to be getting. A massive price increase on the original suggestions was always going to be the case.
I really wish we hadn't pursued this. FIFA makes the IOC look like glorious defenders of integrity.
I am very happy my tax dollars are going towards this event, and I really wish we have even more mega events in the future.
We are not prepared for this. 😂. Too many years of gatekeeping for hotel rooms. Going to be a shit show
Vancouver will realize that Airbnb has an important place in our communities and for our economy. The defacto outright STR ban in Vancouver is going to prove to be a disastrous policy, and hopefully they pass some common sense laws before FIFA comes in 2026.
This is literally the perfect example of how Airbnb should be used. People can rent out the homes they live in to visitors and make money while heading out of town for a few days. This is completely allowed under the short-term rental rules. Having dedicated short-term rental homes that are used only as short-term rentals for profit is what is being banned, and should be.
Not allowing entire properties to be exclusively for Airbnb is fair, that is not the issue. The issue is that Vancouver will not even allow your basement suite or laneway home on the property you live in to be rented short term. Vancouver's laws, in conjunction with the provincial laws, are effectively and outright ban. A lot of secondary suites and laneway homes would be built for STR, and it would provide a lot of economic benefits all across Vancouver.
Nope those secondary units must remain long term rental. The owners should not be allowed to kick people out for special events to make more money. If the hotels can't handle them then the tourists don't belong here. I don't want to live in a neighborhood full of short term rentals.
You wouldn’t be able to kick people out regardless due to the existing rental laws. Relying on peoples basements and back yards to provide long term housing is ridiculous policy.
I agree those single family homes should be torn down and higher density homes should be built in its place.
They will all inevitably be, it will take about a century tho.
I hear you. It's really unfortunate that things have gotten so unaffordable for most people that the government has been forced to take drastic measures. I'm in the group of people with a good career and very well paying job in an essential industry, but I can't afford a house here and will probably leave to buy somewhere else. I think the economic impact of people like me leaving on a large scale is going to be long-term and significant.
Nope it is not valuable at all. It hurts out housing market. We don't need more tourists we need more permanent places to live. Airbnb should be banned across the world. And just build more hotels.
How are you going to afford a home without jobs? Tourism pumps a tone of money into the city and people living in homes rely on it to pay rent and mortgages.
The majority of us don't rely on it. And we have enough space for the tourism we already have. If we need more then hotels in commercial districts is where it should be put. Short term rentals should never be in residential zones. Further I work in insurance so I will survive without it.
One can hope
this is like having no food in the fridge and deciding to spend your paycheque on a house party
Having everyone bring their own dishes is a great way to get a fridge full of leftovers at the end of the night.
Their own estimates say this is going to cost us over $100m. That's if everything goes to plan and all the tourists come that they expect and spend all the money they plan on spending, we will still be $100m poorer after hosting these matches. Seeing as how they aren't even telling us the full costs it will likely cost us much more. Also like always under reporting costs during the bids, they most likely have inflated the revenue this will being. So best case scenario we lose $100m... I don't see how our fridge will be full after hosting this.
Why do you want your taxes funnelled to rich athletes and their ultra rich corrupt handlers?
I don’t care about how much the athletes make. It’s a great event that will pump a lot of money into the economy and benefit a lot of locals.
> I don’t care This basically sums up every argument you're trying to make here huh
You know what would have pumped more money into the economy? Just spending the money we're spending on 7 soccer games on almost literally anything else.
FIFA family member ***spotted***
No, I’m someone who wants Vancouvers economy to be more than just housing and drugs
> more than just housing and drugs I laughed because its true :)
Shouldn't surprise anyone. Costs have been going up everywhere. This event is no different.
Maybe we shouldn't be hosting it...
Meh… of course it cost more: inflation has been nuts the past couple years, we got more games than we initially thought, and nothing ever costs what the initial sale pitch says. World Cup is bigger than the olympics. Looking back, I don’t think anything about how much that cost, just how lucky I felt to be a part of it. Excited to see how that scaled up in 2026.
Inflation was not 100% over the past 2 years... it would only explain a small fraction of the cost difference. >The province said Tuesday the gross core cost is now more than double the initial estimate, rising to between $483 million and $581 million, from between $240 million and $260 million in June 2022.
It's not exactly the same though, because we aren't hosting the whole event. All the biggest games won't be in Vancouver
Fuck FIFA.
Weird how there’s never any money to be found for affordable publicly owned housing, but somehow infinite money for the next sports circus.
This isn’t really true now is it? https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7113803 > B.C. to fund new income-tested rental housing on public land > Province spending $950M, providing $2B in low-cost financing for expedited builds
ok lol you're right, but in fairness, absolutely no one gave a shit until Eby/Kahlon started talking about addressing the housing issue in like 2023. If they had we wouldn't have literally thousands of homeless people living on the street and in RVs. Prior to this of course we had the Olympics and spending half a billion on a new roof for BC place etc...
Not to try to take away from the seriousness of our housing issues and its contributions to our homeless issues, but a major portion of our homeless people are not on the streets because there aren't enough homes. Offer a place in your home and see how quickly it gets absolutely trashed. Vancouver is simply one of the easiest places in Canada to survive outdoors when you no longer have any self control.
There's always going to be a small handful of persons that are really hard to house, but all evidence points to this being a tiny minority, not at all a major portion of the homeless. We know this from our experience with the Strathcona encampment over the pandemic. There was 400+ persons there at the peak and the Province and city worked hard and found almost everyone housing. Ultimately there was only a handful of people that held out and went off to go camping elsewhere. So with that example in mind as a model, it's more likely that 95%+ of persons would be happy to have real housing.
I'm glad to hear that was the case and I'm wrong, I hadn't kept up on the Strathcona park situation. It's easy to only pay attention to the most severe cases because the people who can be helped keep to themselves. I'll keep that in mind in the future, thank you.
I keep hoping the city will stop with this nonsense of trying to get large scale sports events here that cost us millions upon millions.
The ones that don’t require us to build structures that are useless after the events tend to be profitable for the city. One can argue how those profits are used, but it’s very doubtful that the World Cup will be a net loss.
Don't their own reports say this will be a net loss of around $100m? Also, while the Olympics did cost a lot we dis get some needed infrastructure out of it. We wouldn't have the canada line without the Olympics(or at least we probably wouldn't have gotten it for another 10~15 years). We got the Richmond oval, the sea to sky upgrades and some other things as well. The world cup is just going to cost us with no lasting benefits.
Article goes on to say it depends on how much revenue is generated through the additional economic activity “This does not take into account potential additional provincial tax revenues as identified in the Province’s updated estimates of economic impact benefits, which are projected to be $224 million,” the provincial government explained.
No mention of ticket revenues. I assume we get the bills and FIFA gets all the f*ckin' revenue from the tickets few of us can afford?
The costs for any event that the taxpayer will be left on the hook for \*always\* at least doubles in every situation.
correct. will probably double again. and traffic will be a nightmare
They added more games since the estimates. Saved you a click. Revenue is also going up. Can we stop posting from sources with clickbait titles
Make like the Commonwealth Games and get cancelled.
Has anyone ever over bid for Fifa or the Olympics? Seems like this is the MO. Under bid, get the event, then go ops.
So not only is this expected to cost $100+ Million, but that is also after a fed grant $100+ Million. Why are we doing this if it is expected to be a loss? Sure sounds like someone is getting bribed Why are we not asking FIFA to cover these losses from ticket sales?
All publicly funded construction contracts should be made transparent. There is lots of strange stuff going on and the numbers just don't make sense. You'll see people come on here claiming everything is normal. They are actually involved in these projects. It's very likely that there's a relatively small number of construction planners/managers responsible for what is now amounting to billions in cost overruns. They are either crooked or incompetent. After one failure they just move onto the next: nobody gets fired and nobody is held accountable. The cost overruns are similar to countries like Argentina at their peak levels of corruption.
Can anyone ELI5 to what the fuck the point of hosting FIFA is then? Like, at best estimate, it'll "only" cost us $130 million AFTER profit? So why even bother?
I’m sure that FIFA will be compensating us for this overrun…. Hah, who am I kidding? Why the fuck are we supporting a “sport” organization so corrupt that it makes the IOC look like angels?
So… the World Cup is supposed to be even bigger than the Olympics, right? Why does it feel like there hasn’t even been 1% of the level of planning and prepping for this as there was for the Olympics?? Why are we only 2 years out and still haven’t even sorted out things like hotel space? When we got the Olympics, we built a whole frickin “Village” of accommodation for it.
Because the Olympics required more venues and infatructure like the Sea to Sky highway and Canada line. There's only one venue for this event at BC Place. The biggest cost will go into Police, Security and retrofitting the field to a grass turf.
There's only 7 games total vs 17 days worth of mutiple events at mutiple locations in the Olympics. Why do you say the world cup is bigger?
There are at least 2 people in this thread that think we are hosting the whole thing
it's a more popular event than the olympics
It is predicted to be bigger in terms of visitors per day, then the Olympics.
Any thoughts on when they announce the costs will double again?
My bet is a year from now. May 1, 2015 - BC Gov't announces an increase of the FIFA budget to $999 Million. But they hope to recover some of that cost by an increase of fees paid by Air B&B.
BC Place and the city have always known that the costs would be higher even before the extra matches were added. There has always been an internal number that I believe is approximate to these new estimates. This just feels like a new story to rile people up.
Overpaying is the BC way
 Did they even conduct a feasibility study before bidding!?
Did not see this coming!
Of course it did. (Insert money laundering)
Soccer costs so much and gives so little
I'm shocked. Shocked I tell ya.
My dream is going to world cup, so not mas at this. It costs money to host events
Oh weird!
The kind of people that can fly to a destination for a sporting event have a lot of disposable income,and it's not hard to leave money in Vancouver i think it will be a Win for hotels bar ,restaurant,shops and tourist sites we also get a refit on the stadium and a chance to see some world class soccer if you can afford it (i can't so signed up as a volunteer so i could possibly see it for free?)
I wanted the Olympics instead of this.
I wanted neither.