Hoping for a little extra cash, Toronto is moonlighting as a parking-lot scalper trying to flip a hot ticket.
Driving the news: The City of Toronto quietly bought over 3,500 tickets for its six FIFA World Cup matches and has been reselling them at an undisclosed markup as a “revenue generation strategy.” The city has sold all but 70 of the tickets and has already turned a profit.
In addition to selling seats to corporate buyers, city officials said tickets have been sold to “the passionate supporters of the countries playing in Toronto.”
Why it matters: Between Toronto and Vancouver, over $1 billion in taxpayer money will be spent to host 13 matches. The fact that Toronto has resorted to scalping tickets to “ensure a return on its investment” doesn’t inspire confidence that there will be a real economic benefit from the tournament.
If history is any indication, it won’t be easy for Toronto and Vancouver to come out ahead. One study found that since 1966, only one World Cup host city has turned a profit (Russia in 2018).
Zoom in: While Canada’s hosting duties have been bankrolled almost entirely by taxpayers, other host cities, like San Francisco, used mostly private funding to finance their World Cup games.
The Bay Area also applied a $6 surcharge to ticket sales to generate revenue for the city (which neither Toronto nor Vancouver negotiated in their FIFA deals) and refused to allow any public funds to be used for stadium upgrades, which has been one of the largest hosting costs for the Canadian cities.
Our take: Toronto might need to earn a little extra cash after splurging to host the Cup, but it's pretty ironic that the city is upselling soccer fans right after Ontario passed a law banning the resale of tickets above face value.—LA
