Toronto saw little economic gain during the first two weeks of the World Cup

See World Cup economic impact still hard to find, but at least we’ll always have the “togetherness” by Neil deMause. Excerpts:

"As Toronto’s official FIFA World Cup 2026 hosting duties come to an end, data shows that the city saw little economic gain during the first two weeks of the tournament…

Data from payment processing company Moneris between June 12 and 26 — the first two weeks of the World Cup in Toronto — showed that debit and credit card spending at restaurants and bars in the city rose by just three per cent compared with the same time last year.

A 3% increase isn’t actually terrible in a city the size of Toronto, which can swallow 40,000 or so soccer fans without much noticing. The bigger problem, notes the CBC, is that Toronto taxpayers spent about $380 million on hosting six World Cup matches"

"events like the World Cup generate little or no net economic benefit because FIFA keeps most event revenue while host cities absorb major expenses." 

If Toronto spent $380 million, then dividing that by 14 days means that the visitors would need to spend about $27 million or more per day to make that money back.

The article said it was 3% more than the year before. For that 3% increase to be at least $27 million per day there would have to have been about $900 million spent per day at restaurants and bars in the city during the same time last year. 

The population of Toronto is about 3.2 million. Dividing 900 by 3.2 gets us about 281. I doubt that the average person spent $281 per day at restaurants and bars in Toronto during the same time period last year. 

Wikipedia says Toronto gets 26 million visitors per year.  That works out to about 71,000 per day. That might get the population up to 3.3 million. That would then mean that last year people had to spend about $273 per day at restaurants and bars in the city for the 3% increase to generate the $27 million to cover the cost of hosting the World Cup.

If we divided $27 million by the 40,000 fans we get about $675 dollars. I doubt they were spending that much much per day in the city.  

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