The World Cup Economy Explained: Winners, Losers, and Taxpayer Costs

The 2026 FIFA World Cup promises billions in economic benefits, but do the numbers hold up?

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is finally here, and Canada is on a roll! But as the excitement builds on the pitch, we’re asking the tough questions: will this massive event actually deliver the economic win that was promised?

In this episode of Classonomics, Mike Moffatt and Sabrina Maddeaux dive into the real costs of hosting the world’s biggest party. They break down the billion-dollar price tags, FIFA’s business model, and whether taxpayers are getting stuck with the bill while others reap the rewards. (Producer note: This episode was recorded on June 5th, 2026.)

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Below is an AI-generated transcript of the Missing Middle podcast, lightly edited.

Sabrina Maddeaux: The World Cup kicks off June 11th, and Toronto and Vancouver are two of the 16 host cities. There’s been a lot of hype, a lot of controversy, and a lot of very optimistic economic projections flying around.

Mike, before we get into the weeds of who really wins when the World Cup comes to town, give me the basic overview of how these big projections are usually built and why economists tend to be pretty skeptical of them.

Mike Moffatt: Well, before I get into the economics of it all, which, to be frank, are really brutal, I think we need to acknowledge that there may be all kinds of hard-to-quantify non-economic benefits around, national pride, getting kids interested in sports, things like that.

I still remember being a kid in the late 1980s and all the excitement around the Winter Olympics coming to Canada. You really can’t put a price tag on that. And I really wish politicians and advocates of bringing events like the Olympics and the World Cup to Canada would focus on that side of the discussion, instead of engaging in this kind of dubious economic math.

Sabrina Maddeaux: There are some benefits. It’s not all bad news.

I also think of when the Raptors started to really surge and have success, and basketball became huge among youth in Canada, especially as a sport that’s not expensive to get into. It’s relatively accessible. That’s amazing. And the same thing will hopefully continue to happen with soccer. We’ve seen some of that already with, for example, TFC in Toronto and more kids playing soccer.

The other benefit I’d say is that these cities are actually undergoing the maintenance, repairs and upgrades they need, not just in terms of sports facilities. Being located in Toronto, I see it firsthand: the transit systems, the sidewalks, and how the city looks is finally being cleaned up when a lot of it was left to basically rot for years.

Now, the downside of that is we shouldn’t have to wait for a major event like the World Cup to come to town to get these things done. So it puts into perspective that we could probably be doing this on the regular, but it takes a major event to actually get politicians to act and get necessary things done.

Mike Moffatt: Absolutely. And I don’t want to downplay all the sort of importance of sports. I grew up in the 1980s, and a lot of us Canadian kids who were born in the late 1970s ended up becoming baseball obsessives. The Montreal Expos were good. The Toronto Blue Jays made the playoffs in 85, went to the World Series in 92 and 93. And that’s defined a large part of my personality and my life. So I think all of that’s important.

But what I think is problematic is this economic math. You hear these numbers up front like, FIFA’s claim that Canada is going to see $3.8 billion in positive economic output, but these come from economic impact assessment studies that are commissioned by the event organizers themselves and, frankly, are complete nonsense. Peer-reviewed research, which we’ll link to in the show notes, showed that the actual value of these events in economic terms is negligible and in some cases actually even negative.

Sabrina Maddeaux: That’s really interesting. Negligible is one thing, but negative is a completely different story. The public is skeptical. Tell me more about that.

Mike Moffatt: Well, it really goes to what’s measured. So, how the commissioned studies work is that they measure total spending. So every dollar that’s even remotely associated with the event- spending at bars, every hotel booking, every jersey sold and so on- it all gets counted. But the problem is they don’t measure the counterfactual. What would have happened anyway? Because we know that Toronto and Vancouver in June and July are already peak tourism season, and a lot of those visitors are going to displace other tourists who would have come but didn’t because they thought it might be too expensive or too crowded.

So we might actually get less tourism out of this because you’re chasing away a lot of potential tourists who hear that the World Cup’s going, they don’t have any interest in that, and go, “Oh, that’s going to be really busy.”

But at the end of the day, the World Cup amounts to 13 games in Canada. To put that into perspective, the Toronto Blue Jays play 81 games in Canada each year to similar-sized crowds. So it’s not that many seats that are getting sold. And there’s a lot of potential disruption around that.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Toronto’s definitely always busy this time of year. Hotels are booked up, restaurants are full, patios are crowded, and then you think about sporting events, concerts, and festivals. There’s already so much going on that you have to think: is it really worth this major cost for a handful of games? And, filling up hotel rooms that might have been filled up anyway?

Mike Moffatt: Exactly. The displacement here is really important. So if a local spends money at a FIFA fan zone, that’s money that they’re not spending at the neighbourhood bar down the street or going to watch a Jays game. So you’re moving dollars around more than you’re generating new ones. You’re going to the bar to watch a World Cup game instead of watching a Jays game. And keep in mind, a lot of that activity would still happen if the World Cup were somewhere else. If these games are still in the United States, I think a lot of Canadians would be going to their local bar and watching them anyway.

So we have to kind of understand that a lot of what they’re adding in would have happened anyway, regardless of where the World Cup was being held. And there’s both a countrywide effect and a local one here.

A study of the 1994 World Cup, which was held in the United States, actually found that cities that hosted World Cup games had worse economic outcomes than similar cities that did not. And that was, in part, due to the investments that these cities had to make, but also to that kind of displacement effect going, “Well, I’m not going to go to that city because the World Cup is happening. It’s going to be too busy. I’ll go somewhere else instead.”

Sabrina Maddeaux: That’s really interesting that a lot of the economic benefit might have happened anyway, but it could also be actually taking away from whether that’s certain restaurants and bars or even just the downtown core. I think about being in Toronto, and there’s so much fear around the traffic situation during World Cup days, because our traffic is already terrible and you can’t get around in certain areas of the city, which might just come to a standstill. So people might not be going to businesses in those areas or just coming downtown to other areas because they don’t want to deal with it.

There’s talk of offices being closed on those days or people working from home, so maybe they’re not buying lunch or their coffee from the local cafe. There are all these knock-on impacts that we’ve yet to see.

Mike Moffatt: Absolutely. There are these things that aren’t getting measured that governments don’t talk about and so on, but they affect the economic outcomes.

Sabrina, you’ve written a lot about the gap between what governments promise and what they actually deliver. So when you hear that Toronto has set a $380 million budget for this tournament, Vancouver’s bill is somewhere in the $500 to $600 million range. And the parliamentary budget officer puts the combined public tab at over $1 billion. What goes through your mind here?

Sabrina Maddeaux: This is a pattern we know really well. Governments announce a big number with big promises attached, costs balloon, projected benefits get revised quietly downward, and the public only finds out years later.

And what’s especially galling is the structure of who pays and who profits in this situation. The federal government is covering 145 million in security costs. Provinces are on the hook for even more. Cities are scrambling. Toronto raised its hotel tax to claw back $95 million of its share, and Vancouver had to add a 2.5% accommodation tax that runs for seven years.

Mike Moffatt: And this really bugs me. As a housing guy, I find it incredibly frustrating to constantly hear from municipalities and cities that they can’t possibly reduce development charges or other housing-related taxes, but all of a sudden they have this money to spend on soccer. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Sabrina Maddeaux: And meanwhile, FIFA is projecting 11 to 13 billion in revenue from this tournament. And host cities get essentially none of it, which I’m not sure the average person realizes. So ticketing, broadcasting rights, and sponsorships all flow back to Zurich.

And one legal analysis of these host city agreements literally described FIFA’s model as: You Do, You Pay, We Take. And that’s because the people who actually live in these cities aren’t being asked whether this is a good use of public money. They’re just being handed the bill. And there’s very little true transparency around what that bill is.

Mike Moffatt: Absolutely. So even if we ask the general public, they’re not given the information that they need in order to make an informed decision.

Sabrina Maddeaux: So let’s dig into that FIFA revenue model just a bit more, because I think most people don’t realize how it actually works. All those broadcasting rights, sponsorships, ticket sales- that’s all going back to FIFA in Switzerland. So what do host cities actually get?

Mike Moffatt: It’s pretty wild that FIFA gets the revenue, but the host cities, municipalities, and governments get the costs. They’re responsible for stadium upgrades, security, transportation, fan zones, and all the public infrastructure that comes with a tournament of this scale.

In Toronto’s case, BMO Field needed to be expanded to meet FIFA requirements. That’s a real cost. Vancouver’s BC Place needed significant upgrades, and ultimately that was paid for by taxpayers at the municipal, provincial, or federal level.

So what cities get in return is the economic activity that happens around those games. Again, the hotel stays and restaurants spending and so on. But there’s a catch here: FIFA’s contracts actually restrict what cities can do commercially in their own territory. So Vancouver has to maintain a commercial exclusion zone of around two kilometres around the stadium. That means that local businesses outside of FIFA’s approved sponsor network can’t advertise or promote themselves anywhere near the action.

So it’s a bit like being asked to throw a party at your house. You pay for all the food and drinks, but you’re told that you can’t invite your own guests or sell anything yourself. But I get to sell tickets to go to your place. I capture the revenue. So it’s a real imbalance where FIFA gets the money, the cities get the bill.

Sabrina Maddeaux: And there’s also a tax element to this I want to get into. What exactly does FIFA demand from host countries in terms of tax treatment? And what does Canada have to give up here?

Mike Moffatt: This is where it gets even more wild that FIFA itself is organized as a nonprofit association in Switzerland. So that means they pay no income tax on the revenues that they earn from the World Cup. But on top of that, hosting a World Cup requires the host country to extend its special tax treatment to FIFA’s commercial ecosystem. So that’s the national associations under FIFA, the broadcasters, the sponsors and so on.

For example, the United States negotiated a deal allowing qualifying teams to apply for an exemption under charitable organization tax rules. So we’re treating them the same as groups that are trying to end homelessness or whatever, which is a bit awkward when FIFA is generating an estimated $11 billion in revenue from this.

Mexico is hosting some games. They went the furthest. They’ve enacted a comprehensive federal exemption for FIFA and all its corporate affiliates, basically creating a tax-free commercial zone for the tournament.

Canada, luckily, we took more of a targeted approach. We focused more on customs and event-related tax relief rather than a blanket income tax exemption. So it’s not quite as egregious, but it’s still foregone revenue that we could have used for something else, like housing.

So once again, FIFA captures the commercial upside, but they pay no taxes on it and then require the host nations to give a bunch of specialized tax relief. So it really is a complete transfer of risk and reward from the public, subsidizing this private organization that essentially gets non-for-profit, and in some cases, charitable status.

Sabrina Maddeaux: That is wild. Because there’s the cost of that headline number that cities and countries are paying to host these events. But when you talk about tax relief, it is a subsidy. So that should be added to the total, in my opinion.

Mike Moffatt: Absolutely. And once you do add it to the total, it makes the economics of these events look even worse.

We’ve talked a lot about the government, but let’s talk about what it means for the actual people on the ground. The regular people living in Toronto and Vancouver right now. So that’s you. I’m here in Ottawa, so that’s not me. But, for folks like you, beyond the kind of public balance sheet, I've got to imagine there are real quality-of-life effects hitting middle-class folks and working-class residents. So what are you seeing and hearing in Toronto?

Sabrina Maddeaux: There are a lot of impacts. Hotel rates in downtown Toronto and Vancouver are projected to spike 200 to 300% during match week. So a room that normally runs $200 is hitting $600 plus. That impacts anyone who wants to do a staycation in the city or have family or friends visit.

Airbnb ran a campaign offering Toronto homeowners $1,000 to sign up and rent out their places during the tournament. So on the surface, that might sound like a nice income boost, but tenant advocates flagged it immediately because some landlords will just use this as cover to push out long-term tenants or to cash in on short-term rentals. So there’s an issue there, too.

And then we have the transit question. Transit systems are going to be extremely busy and overwhelmed during this period. Boston actually hiked their train fares to the stadium to $80 USD on game days. New Jersey’s transit authority inherited a $48 million bill to move fans and got nothing from FIFA to cover it. New Jersey’s governor literally tweeted that FIFA should pay for the rides. Ontario and Toronto said they’d hold fares steady and increase service instead. And that’s a good call. But there’s still a cost to that. And wear and tear on the system. And the fact that some cities are pricing out local commuters of their own transit network to subsidize fans going to a privately run mega event is a pretty sharp illustration of who gets treated as the priority.

And then you talk again about all the traffic and the ability to just get around your own city for everyday life: for work or for seeing friends during a time of year - we only get three months of summer. So, people are eager to get out, and a lot of them might be trapped at home - especially if you’re not someone who’s lucky enough to escape the city and go to a cottage during that time period.

So there’s that through line here with a lot of what we cover on the show. The benefits of a big economic event are flowing to property owners, hotel chains, and investors. And then the costs and disruptions land on renters, middle-class workers, small businesses outside the FIFA commercial zone, and people who just need to live their lives.

But I want to come back to the historical record here because I think it’s really important context. South Africa, Brazil, Russia, and Qatar all made big promises about the economic legacy of hosting their World Cups. Do you know how those actually played out?

Mike Moffatt: One of the biggest expenses here, and one of the things that really affects the numbers, is the cost of the stadium infrastructure, which is often cited as one of the benefits of hosting, but it’s also a real cost, as multiple World Cup host countries ended up with what economists called white elephants. Large stadiums that cost enormous amounts to maintain but sit mostly empty after the tournament.

The average South Korean stadium from the 2002 World Cup hosted events that totalled under 200,000 fans across an entire year. And the economic research shows that the World Cups that have the most positive economic benefit are the ones that require the least amount of new infrastructure. Or, creating infrastructure that will get used over and over and over. So the World Cups in France and Germany, relatively speaking, did well rather than ones like Qatar, where you’re building all of these stadiums and infrastructure that largely doesn’t get used after that.

To be fair, Toronto and Vancouver aren’t building from scratch. They look a little bit more like France and Germany. They’re upgrading existing venues that have genuine long-term use. And, 16 cities across three wealthy countries, Canada, the US, and Mexico. It’s a different risk profile than Qatar or parts of Russia. But I’d say the broader lesson from every past World Cup is that the economic projections tend to be somewhere between optimistic and just outright fiction.

Sabrina Maddeaux: It’s interesting because spreading it, though, across so many cities means that every city is getting fewer games. And especially with expanding the pool of teams that qualify this year, a lot of those games are considered not very good games to watch. So there are a lot of unsold tickets. There are questions around how many people actually pay the huge price tag for this, and what the benefit will be when it is so spread out.

But at the end of the day, it’s all about the fans. Or at least it should be if you believe the marketing. So let’s end on the fan access question, which has been a big one. And I think it’s the most visceral symbol of the class dynamics at play here. Who actually gets to go to these games, and what does that experience look like when you get in there?

Mike Moffatt: This is where it gets really stark. So FIFA introduced something called dynamic pricing, which is actually what my PhD thesis is on. I designed some of these algorithms, so I might be partly at fault here, but I changed my career, changed my ways.

They’ve introduced dynamic pricing in this tournament for the first time, meaning that ticket prices adjust algorithmically based on demand. So for some of those games that don’t have a lot of interest, those prices are going to go down. But for the games that people actually want to go see in cities like Los Angeles, we’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars on FIFA’s own resale platform two months out.

FIFA is also getting a code of not just sales, but resales. At the final at MetLife Stadium, there were resale listings as high as $2 million a seat. If you wanted to follow your national team from the group stage to the final, through the official supporter route, it would cost you about seven grand per person, and that’s over five times what it was in 2022. But if you’re doing it, having to buy these tickets through unofficial channels is going to cost you a lot more than that.

FIFA is also nickel and diming people even more than they have in the past. For example, there’s this thing called fan zones. And these were traditionally free public watch parties that are close to the stadium. Traditionally, they had been free. Now some cities are going to be charging. So there’s a lot of backlash here.

Sabrina Maddeaux: All of that is why we wanted to do this episode. We talk a lot about housing and infrastructure and economic policy, and an episode on a major sporting event, The World Cup, might not seem like a natural fit for The Missing Middle, but when you’re talking about investments this big and events that bring so many people to them, there are all of those ripple-on impacts. And they do impact the average worker in the middle class.

A sporting event that has always had, at least an aspirational connection, to working-class culture - The People’s Game, as they call it - is being repriced as a luxury product. The stadiums, filled with corporate hospitality packages and VIP guests and then the ordinary fans who followed their teams their entire lives, are watching from living rooms.

And, in the host cities, the economic gains from their presence flow to property investors and hotel chains. While the public picks up the security bill, waves the taxes and absorbs all the costs we’ve talked about. The civic costs are socialized, the financial gains are privatized, and the cultural experience is more and more commodified. (Boom! Mic drop)

Thank you, everyone, for watching and listening. And to our producer, Meredith Martin and our editor, Sean Foreman.

Mike Moffatt: And if you have any thoughts or questions about the 1981 Montreal Expos and how they created a generation of Canadian baseball fans, please send us an email to the [email protected].

Sabrina Maddeaux: And we’ll see you next time.

Additional Reading/Listening that Helped Inform the Episode:

BMO Capital Markets -- Canada World Cup GDP boost (up to $6.5B):

The World Cup is expensive, but it’s our turn to pick up the tab

ProPublica -- ‘You do, you pay, we take’: how FIFA’s host city deals work:

FIFA estimates $3.8 billion benefit for Canada as 2026 World Cup co-host

BNN Bloomberg -- Why economic impact on Vancouver and Toronto may never be known:

Bloomberg Tax -- FIFA 2026 World Cup tax demands on host countries:

CP24 -- Toronto holds transit fares steady; NJ Transit $48M bill; Boston $80 game-day fare:

ESPN -- World Cup ticket sticker shock and dynamic pricing:

Victor Matheson / Holy Cross -- The Economics of the World Cup (academic; stadium white elephants, tourism overestimates):

Funded by the Neptis Foundation

Brought to you by the Missing Middle Initiative