True Patriot Love - Is World Cup Costing Canada Too Much？ ft. Moshe Lander

00:00:00.000 FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world.

00:00:02.760 You can rank them alongside the IOC and the Trump White House,

00:00:06.300 and whichever order you want, I would probably agree

00:00:09.680 that you have it in the right order.

00:00:12.640 FIFA is not offering the World Cup as an act of altruism.

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00:00:52.720 Today on True Patriot Love, we have back our friend, Moshe Lander,

00:00:57.760 a senior lecturer from concordia university for economics uh how are you doing i'm well thanks

00:01:04.860 good good so fifa we're gonna talk a little about uh the cup and two days away and everyone's

00:01:13.240 getting excited soccer fans are getting excited i don't know are you a soccer fan i am i'm a huge

00:01:18.300 sports fan in general but uh you know i love watching national soccer not as much at the

00:01:23.060 club level but i'm getting a little more into it with each passing year but yes i will be watching

00:01:26.780 actively oh good good okay so bosnia canada kicking it off on friday three o'clock you know

00:01:33.620 we're i'm here in toronto um you're in montreal i think and and i'm sure uh big big soccer fans

00:01:42.760 in montreal um of course toronto yeah so so i i wouldn't say it's you're hearing a lot of buzz

00:01:50.660 you know i came in today and i asked everyone i said who's watching the game on friday it was a

00:01:55.160 little less than 50 50 uh you know in my small survey i did coming in but yeah i'm sure a lot

00:02:01.980 of interest you're you know the the tv stations are playing it quite frankly they're promoting

00:02:07.220 the heck out of it i think they're doing a good job trying to get the message out but you know

00:02:11.860 before we did a show and the show was about the cost of the cup and what it was going to cost

00:02:18.040 canada and it it the the parliamentary budget officer came out and said listen this thing's

00:02:24.420 ballooned up it's going to cost well over a billion dollars and I was like wow a billion

00:02:29.520 dollars because I remember uh John Tory um when he was the mayor I remember the conversation about

00:02:35.600 45 million dollars at council that's kind of what recollect then I did a budget show and and we

00:02:41.460 talked about 100 million um and I thought okay I was kind of probably at about 200 million and then

00:02:48.680 all of a sudden I start hearing these numbers ballooning up, you know, transfers. Our mayor,

00:02:55.100 Olivia Chow, was running around saying she was short 96 million. She started buying tickets. I

00:03:01.160 don't know if you remember that one. It was kind of a funny issue. The city of Toronto went out and

00:03:06.820 said, listen, we're short about 96 million. We're having trouble paying for FanFest. We're having

00:03:11.900 all these challenges. We're going to get into the scalper game. So they bought 3,500 tickets. They

00:03:17.920 tried to they have they tell us they've resold most of them but at the same time the province

00:03:23.780 came out and enacted a non-scalper scalper rule which then took that into flux so that was a

00:03:29.900 little bit of a mess but you know we're we're now uh from uh i was looking this morning before the

00:03:36.400 show we're now at about a half a billion dollars from the feds towards this event and then the

00:03:43.860 other half a billion is coming from all levels of government so we've kind of that's from

00:03:48.420 Vancouver to cover to cover 13 games um which doesn't seem like much compared to the 78 for

00:03:56.760 two stadiums uh one that holds now 54,000 and the other one that holds 45,000 so I'm trying to do

00:04:05.640 the math which I'm going to ask you to help me with so I'm to me I'm struggling with that and

00:04:10.920 then i'm trying to figure out okay does this make sense and i'm like okay we well i guess it has

00:04:16.920 some long-term benefits because we spent about 130 million plus on capital expenditures expenditures

00:04:24.020 i don't know where that money sits so i don't know if it's in the billion not in the billion

00:04:28.020 it's hard to figure out as you know there's all these kind of flying numbers that actually do this

00:04:33.440 so I'm thinking to myself okay who makes the money here so who actually I know I know we've

00:04:42.680 spent a billion dollars I kind of do some quick math and I think okay I got let's say average 45,000

00:04:50.720 seats sold I'm hearing rumors that hotel vacancies are still seasonal so basically didn't increase

00:05:00.600 the number of people in hotel rooms. And then I'm hearing all these quotes about how there's

00:05:08.820 still tickets left, but tickets are at an outrageous price. So, Mose, help me understand

00:05:15.900 how revenues flow here, who gets what, and how at the end of the day, does this make any sense

00:05:24.000 for Canada and for our two cities? Yeah, it is a bit of a head scratcher when you start to try

00:05:29.560 and parse the numbers. I'll make it as simple as I can. The vast majority of the money goes to FIFA

00:05:33.940 and everybody else is fighting for crumbs. So we can look at whether it's half a billion here or

00:05:39.200 100 million there. It really is. FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world. You

00:05:44.260 can rank them alongside the IOC and the Trump White House and whichever order you want, I would

00:05:50.260 probably agree that you have it in the right order. FIFA is not offering the World Cup as an

00:05:57.280 act of altruism and i think that was a mistake by john tory uh from the beginning in toronto uh at

00:06:04.080 least uh olivia chow had the the common sense to say i think it was about six months ago we're

00:06:10.800 stuck with this uh which was clearly i didn't ask for this i wasn't mayor at the time but i am mayor

00:06:16.160 now and i can't hand it back so we're just gonna have to keep on keeping on and uh you know whatever

00:06:21.360 happens uh i will at least say i never wanted this in the first place uh the vancouver mayor

00:06:26.240 right now mayor sims uh he continues to double triple quadruple down promising these outrageous

00:06:32.880 benefits uh to the vancouver economy that bear no resemblance to reality and so i i think that

00:06:40.160 if he thinks that he's going to capture some of these billions of dollars uh he's sorely mistaken

00:06:46.080 so when fifa comes to these host countries um what they're really looking to do is prey on your fear

00:06:53.840 so how many times have we seen civic leaders throw money at stadiums arenas um trying to bring a

00:07:01.920 sports team to town for fear of being the one that would allow the sports team to go

00:07:07.200 quebec nordiques left quebec city became the colorado avalanche and the next year they win

00:07:11.600 the stanley cup man wouldn't you hate to be the mayor of quebec city that let that team go and

00:07:17.040 they ended up winning multiple stanley cups in the 1990s where it could have been you being the mayor

00:07:22.400 hosting the parade so what happens then is that fifa has become extremely good at saying to north

00:07:28.000 america are you interested because if you're not i know other people that would be and it almost

00:07:32.640 sounds like this slick used car sales that you would hear from you know the 1970s 1980s that

00:07:37.200 got somebody coming to look at this car at five o'clock make an offer quick

00:07:40.400 and that's the way that they extract uh money when they get you to sign on the dotted line i know

00:07:46.240 that of course there's lawyers that read over it and that the city does their due diligence but i

00:07:51.200 think they discount some of the small print and so when they start realizing wait a second we're

00:07:55.760 responsible for this too you mean we have to pay the full security bill wait we have to rip up all

00:08:00.640 of the grass at bmo field and put in brand new grass that meets the level that fifa expects of

00:08:04.720 us hey it's toronto don't you know we have winter here it's snowy here wait the capacity of the

00:08:09.760 stadium isn't good enough we have to put up temporary uh seating to make sure that we meet

00:08:13.920 the minimum amount necessary these are the types of things that once you get into business with them

00:08:18.480 unless you have the guts to hand it back and say changed my mind i reconsidered you are like

00:08:23.760 olivia chow said stuck with it uh and then what happens is that the costs go out of control the

00:08:28.480 way that i would explain it to a non-sports economist the way to explain it to just i'll

00:08:33.440 say the average person in the street uh which sounds kind of condescending is that if you've

00:08:37.360 ever been through any home renovation there's three things that anybody wants out of their

00:08:42.240 renovation they want it to be on budget they want it to be on time and just for the purposes of

00:08:47.280 symmetry i'm going to call it on quality like you want good work done any home renovation can have

00:08:53.440 two of those three but it's not going to have all three unless it's a pure accident and if it happens

00:08:58.640 you keep that contractor for the rest of your life because you found the golden goose but as

00:09:04.640 the homeowner you can decide which one do you want to sacrifice if you want on budget and on time

00:09:09.040 you give up on quality if you want on time and on quality you give up on budget and if you want on

00:09:14.480 quality and on budget then you give up on time you get to choose but when it comes to fifa and

00:09:19.680 the world cup you don't get to choose you can't go to fifa right before the event begins tomorrow

00:09:25.440 officially and say not ready yet can i have another month no this goes ahead you said the

00:09:31.120 first game in canada's on friday it goes ahead on friday and you can't compromise quality either

00:09:36.000 because fifa says this is our crown event there is nothing that you're going to do that will

00:09:41.280 embarrass us and make our event look less valuable to future hosts uh than what we expect out of you

00:09:48.400 so what has to go out the window the on budget bit so when john tory said you said 45 million

00:09:53.840 i actually remember 30 million which might have been an even earlier estimate so it seems that

00:09:57.600 that he missed a zero in his calculations.

True Patriot Love - June 11, 2026

Is World Cup Costing Canada Too Much？ ft. Moshe Lander

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