FIFA World Cup Pushed Regular Tourists Out Of Vancouver And Toronto, Was It Worth It?

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Okay, so if you're in Vancouver and Toronto, get ready for the traffic nightmare that's going to stick around for a couple months. Road closures have started in both cities and there's still plenty of tickets available in Vancouver. I haven't checked Toronto yet. Prices have gone down, but it's still like minimum $600 a ticket in the upper bull for Canada versus Qatar. I don't know who was going to pay that.

[00:00:19]Now, most of us watching right now, we don't care about the ticket prices cuz we're not going. But the thing that we do care about is are these games going to be worth it and how much are we going to be paying for it? We already know that Canada is going to be on the hook for a billion dollars. And when I say Canada, it's the taxpayers. What you're looking at right now is a report from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. And when I'm looking at the line item for Vancouver, it says 578 million. I'm pretty sure these numbers are going to go up because if I recall, Vancouver hasn't even announced how much the security costs are going to cost us.

[00:00:49]Which leads to my next question. Is all of this worth it? I did state in my last video about the FIFA World Cup that during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, yes, it cost us a lot of money and we're still paying for it, but we got something out of it. So, the biggest question I still have is what are we getting out of the FIFA World Cup?

[00:01:04]What's going to be the lasting infrastructure that we can talk about in 16 years and say, "Yep, this came from the FIFA World Cup." Our government officials keep talking about how this is going to bring tourists and visitors into Vancouver and Toronto. But I actually question, is it really? So, in this video, we're going to do something a little bit different. Instead of you guys hearing me speak, we're going to hear from Professor Wayne Smith from the Toronto Metropolitan University instead.

[00:01:26]And he's also going to give us a bit of insights in terms of all the interviews that he's doing. I mean, last year he said he did a thousand interviews. So, I'm very happy that he's able to spend some time on my channel. All right, let's get started.

[00:01:38]Hello, GTL and the fabulous Cardiff community. GL and I were talking on the Discord one day and we were thinking about, okay, what could we do sort of together that might be a little bit of fun, but so today I thought I'd make a quick little video with you just showing what it sounds like behind the scenes.

[00:01:54]In this case, this was done on Sundance on Global National. And it's kind of a follow-up of the work I've been doing sort of last week and on CBC, CTV, and a couple other places. And so what happens is when you get quoted once, what the immediate picks it up and all of a sudden you start getting phone calls time and time and time again. In this case, Sean called me up at about, you know, 10:30 in the morning and said, "Wayne, can you do the story?" I've done stories with Sean before. He's a cool guy. He had my direct phone number, obviously. So, it's a really kind of a fun thing. But I said, "Okay, I'm out for breakfast with a really good friend.

[00:02:26]Can I do it at 12 12:05?" And it was like, "Fine, that works." because you got to know that they have to have the story in and done by two o'clock for the six o'clock news. So, it takes them a little while. So, you got to kind of be mindful of what their deadlines and how you work on them. And the funny part about this is you'll see this is a we had a 20 minute 20 to 30 minute conversation. I can't remember exactly how long it was. Some of it was chitchat, some of it was normal talk, some would talk after the camera um stopped recording and then and then we um the story ran. But you'll see it's like 10 seconds worth of stuff out of a 20 minute conversation. So which is kind of how it goes sometimes. So let's watch this and I'll see if I'll do my best detail impression and see if I can >> capture the attention of two Canadian cities when the FIFA World Cup kicks off next month. Thousands will travel to Vancouver and Toronto to watch games in person. And then there are others who change their minds.

[00:03:22]>> There's a whole bunch of tourists that decided, you know what, I think I'd rather watch it from the comfort of my couch. Recently, FIFA released its bookings for >> what was really kind of funny there is I did it Friday interview with Mosh and it was really good and if you get a chance go into the CBC look at the mornings and you'll see that interview he was made a lot of really good points on that interview. He's an economist, so he's taken very much an economist perspective. And you'll see my perspective is slightly different, but it was really interesting to listen to him and hear his insights.

[00:03:50]>> For thousands of hotel rooms in the two cities >> when they held the rooms that long, it's going to be hard for those to backfill those rooms, especially at a aggressive rate.

[00:04:00]>> In Toronto, hotels usually run at about 80% of capacity through June and July.

[00:04:05]It's expected that number will hold.

[00:04:07]>> Okay, there's a couple things here that I want to make a point. one, if you think about this a little bit, if Toronto's already 82%ish, that's sort of where we normally are in June.

[00:04:20]How much more can you actually get? See, that's the thing. This is what people don't understand about the World Cup is that you have major events in Toronto during this time. You have the Pride, you have the Blue Jays, and in this case, the Jays are playing the Yankees, which would be a major tourism draw anyway. And then you have um July 1st, the Canada Day events. So once again, this is a very good chance that you're going to take people who would have filled the city anyway and then they look at the hotel prices, they see they're high because they're trying to get the World Cup premium and then decide, "Oh, I don't want to go to Toronto." And so these are things you have to think about a little bit when you do this kind of analysis.

[00:04:55]>> And this is the part I've been talking about on my channel in the previous World Cup videos. the the people that want to actually go to Toronto in Vancouver, like myself, I want to go back home to Vancouver to visit my family and friends. But the problem is the hotel prices are jacked up and I'm not paying like $500 a night for like a two or three star hotel. Now, for me, I'll I'll go back regardless. I mean, it's just a matter of waiting for the FIFA World Cup to end and hotel prices to go back to normal. But for others who might not be from Vancouver or Toronto and they do want to visit for non-World Cup reasons or going to the Pride Parade or any event that's in Vancouver and Toronto, we've essentially priced them out in terms of visiting. Now, the trade-off is that we got the World Cup.

[00:05:32]But is it going to make up the difference for all of those international tourists that actually wanted to come to Vancouver and Toronto but decided no steady and not go up? Experts say many travelers are staying home as ticket prices are the highest in World Cup history and still available in resale markets. For many, it's all too much.

[00:05:50]>> In the process of booking, they drove hotel prices up. It's supply and demand.

[00:05:56]>> And those high hotel prices may keep visitors from attending other summer events like Toronto's Pride Festival and Major League Baseball.

[00:06:03]>> You have to worry about what's called displacement where people who normally would have came for Pride, normally would have came for the Yankees, look at the hotel prices and say, "No, I'm not going to do that.

[00:06:11]See, once again, I never remember what I say in these things, and I never watch them back because quite frankly, if you actually want to really hurt your feelings, watch yourself on camera. Oh boy, does that look hair. I'm even looking at the background of my of my kitchen here. Oh boy, I need to clean up a little bit better before I did the interview.

[00:06:27]>> This kind of reminds me of the movie Inception. I mean, it's like an interview within an interview, except this time, the guy doing commentary on somebody's video is himself. Don't see this very often. Um, but a couple of different points I want to make here is one, there is a price sensitivity here.

[00:06:43]So, you have to understand that if I'm come for Pride every year and I've come every year for Pride and I'm used to paying $2.49 for a hotel room and now that same hotel room that I was looking at is now looking at $5.99. I'm not going to pay that. It's not going to be worth it to me and I'm going to look at the sticker and get sticker shock and not want to go to that place. So these are things that you have to kind of think about as you go and you think about this and how you build the destination. So when you look at the economic impact, you have to look at it from the fact that we're going to be at 82ish% anyways. So if we get up to 86%, so the FIFA is only going to give us that 4% increase plus the price increase difference. And that's really what the economic impact is where you see a lot of the FIFA numbers coming out. While they don't put out their methodology, they look like they're taking for all the tourism that comes in when we would have been just incremental gain anyway.

[00:07:40]>> I'm calling it right now. All the tourism officials and the FIFA officials, they're going to say the World Cup is a success and it's gone up x amount in terms of tourism money. But how much of that money is just regular tourists that are going to Vancouver and Toronto that want nothing to do with the FIFA World Cup? I'm going to guess the mayor of Vancouver is going to take credit for it. Seems like something he would do.

[00:08:00]So, it's kind of a double whammy in this case.

[00:08:03]>> Politicians have made big promises about the legacy effects of the World Cup.

[00:08:07]>> In the 5 years following, we're expecting more than a million people uh to come and visit from out of province inspired by the event.

[00:08:14]>> For the moment, >> there doesn't seem to be excitement in the city. Like, when you're downtown, you you don't feel like this is about to happen, right?

[00:08:22]>> Yes.

[00:08:22]>> In Vancouver, World Cup related road closures have started and will last until the end of July.

[00:08:28]As for hotel prices, >> the two and three stars I think are going to have to write their prices with the first World Cup game in Canada less than 3 weeks away.

[00:08:37]>> Okay, a couple things I want to do. They keep talking about this World Cup, World Cup, World Cup as an economic driver.

[00:08:43]It's actually the wrong way to look at it to be on to be honest with you. This is not something that you should be investing in if you want a return on investment. You're going to lose. That is the way. But the question really then becomes well what is the value of something like that's community building that's community that's building up your community that's having a large event that's having that brings people together so for example in Toronto the diversity of the city you're looking at all this communities coming together watching the games together having that excitement in the city watching everyone's cars drive around with whatever flag they want this is all part of excitement is what is that worth the second part I want to is in terms of soft power. Soft power is very important. So you look at how much Korea puts into K-pop and Kdramas and you look at India with Bollywood and you look at the US with Hollywood and you see that that that cultural expansion really makes a difference in the place of the world. So what's that worth? And then the third point I want to make is the fact that when we look at this is that we have a overall idea of what what Toronto can be in terms of a world stage. And these are things we're not the rally is we're not New York, Paris, London. We're not a top-of- mind destination in the world. We're so we need to do things to get out and this is once again you got to think about this as compounding interest. So the Jays in the World Series last year, add in the fact that Drake did his big release here and he's talking about the city. You add in the World Cup and all these things are starting to compound upon each other to build an image around the world of what Toronto is and where Toronto is going. So these are the things you kind of have to think about. Now the question is when we get into the economic part, is it worth it? Well, I'll leave that for others to decide and leave it for you to decide, but the economic argument is really not that strong here.

[00:10:40]So when we take a look at this, we start thinking about hm what is the value of something? And I always think this is a really interesting question to ask because are we looking always just at the pure economic value? Are we looking the fact that we're not having a return on investment in terms of if you do an Olympics, you know, Vancouver got the see the sky highway done. They got public transportation expanded. They got a lot of things that infrastructure-wise that are going to help the city. When Toronto did the PANM games, which wasn't a really profitable type event, but it got all these recreational facilities upgraded, it got some of the TTC projects moving forward, and they weren't going to be late because there's a deadline due to the event. So, these are things that have value, but how much economic value do they really have? And once again, community, what's community building worth? So, these are all really interesting questions. Back to you, GTL.

[00:11:36]>> Thank you, Wayne, for your help. And to continue on your question, I really do wonder what the economic value is going to be for the FIFA World Cup. I mean, you heard David Eie earlier say that there's going to be visitors coming in for like the next 5 years because of the World Cup, but there's no way to measure that unless you're going to sit at the airport arrivals or the border and ask every single passenger that comes in, did you come here because of the World Cup? Now, putting future tourism revenue aside, what you see on the screen here is what Vancouver got for the 2010 Olympics. And as per Wayne earlier, Toronto got some venues for the Panama games. I'm not really too familiar with that, but my point is that we got something out of it and it's being used by the community every single day. And as Wayne said earlier, if you're going to be hosting these kind of events, you're not going to be profitable. It's going to cost you money and you might as well get something out of it. Which brings me back to the FIFA World Cup.

[00:12:22]What infrastructure and value are we going to be getting moving forward because of these events? All I can really think of is these sign boards if they allow us to keep it. But I also think about it this way, too. after the FIFA World Cup is done. We're still going to have that billion dollar bill.

[00:12:37]And to be honest, I think that billion dollars is going to grow. I'm just a little choked that we don't have anything to show for it after. Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments below and whether you agree with me or not. And also, if you have any questions for Wayne, post them in the comments and we'll see if we can answer them during the next live stream.

[00:12:51]Actually, no, don't post them in the comments though, they'll get buried.

[00:12:54]Send me an email if you have a specific question for Wayne Smith. And thank you again, Wayne, for the assist on this video. To close out this episode, I would like to thank Ian from our Discord server and he posted this photo from Wellsgra's Provincial Park in British Columbia. I want to thank you Ian for adding another new marker on the GTL map. And Belgian and Curious, if you're watching, you can definitely add this one to the map as well. All right, that's all I got for this video. If you found any value in anything I said today, well, anything Wayne and I said, and you want to hear more from a Canadian and international perspective without the US media bias, make sure you hit that like and subscribe button below. that way you'll be notified of my future videos. And also remember to hit the bell notification and select it to all. And if you want to see more of my videos regarding the FIFA World Cup, check out the ones that are going to show up on your screen shortly. Thanks everyone. I'll catch you in the next one.