Is World Cup Costing Canada Too Much？ ft. Moshe Lander
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the True Patriot Love podcast, our friend Moshe Lander joins us to talk about the upcoming World Cup, the cost of tickets, and why the FIFA World Cup is a scam. We also talk about FIFA's sponsorship of the World Cup and how much it's costing Canadian soccer fans.
Transcript
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FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world.
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You can rank them alongside the IOC and the Trump White House,
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and whichever order you want, I would probably agree
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FIFA is not offering the World Cup as an act of altruism.
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Today on True Patriot Love, we have back our friend, Moshe Lander,
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a senior lecturer from concordia university for economics uh how are you doing i'm well thanks
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good good so fifa we're gonna talk a little about uh the cup and two days away and everyone's
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getting excited soccer fans are getting excited i don't know are you a soccer fan i am i'm a huge
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sports fan in general but uh you know i love watching national soccer not as much at the
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club level but i'm getting a little more into it with each passing year but yes i will be watching
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actively oh good good okay so bosnia canada kicking it off on friday three o'clock you know
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we're i'm here in toronto um you're in montreal i think and and i'm sure uh big big soccer fans
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in montreal um of course toronto yeah so so i i wouldn't say it's you're hearing a lot of buzz
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you know i came in today and i asked everyone i said who's watching the game on friday it was a
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little less than 50 50 uh you know in my small survey i did coming in but yeah i'm sure a lot
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of interest you're you know the the tv stations are playing it quite frankly they're promoting
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the heck out of it i think they're doing a good job trying to get the message out but you know
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before we did a show and the show was about the cost of the cup and what it was going to cost
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canada and it it the the parliamentary budget officer came out and said listen this thing's
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ballooned up it's going to cost well over a billion dollars and I was like wow a billion
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dollars because I remember uh John Tory um when he was the mayor I remember the conversation about
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45 million dollars at council that's kind of what recollect then I did a budget show and and we
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talked about 100 million um and I thought okay I was kind of probably at about 200 million and then
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all of a sudden I start hearing these numbers ballooning up, you know, transfers. Our mayor,
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Olivia Chow, was running around saying she was short 96 million. She started buying tickets. I
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don't know if you remember that one. It was kind of a funny issue. The city of Toronto went out and
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said, listen, we're short about 96 million. We're having trouble paying for FanFest. We're having
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all these challenges. We're going to get into the scalper game. So they bought 3,500 tickets. They
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tried to they have they tell us they've resold most of them but at the same time the province
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came out and enacted a non-scalper scalper rule which then took that into flux so that was a
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little bit of a mess but you know we're we're now uh from uh i was looking this morning before the
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show we're now at about a half a billion dollars from the feds towards this event and then the
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other half a billion is coming from all levels of government so we've kind of that's from
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Vancouver to cover to cover 13 games um which doesn't seem like much compared to the 78 for
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two stadiums uh one that holds now 54,000 and the other one that holds 45,000 so I'm trying to do
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the math which I'm going to ask you to help me with so I'm to me I'm struggling with that and
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then i'm trying to figure out okay does this make sense and i'm like okay we well i guess it has
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some long-term benefits because we spent about 130 million plus on capital expenditures expenditures
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i don't know where that money sits so i don't know if it's in the billion not in the billion
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it's hard to figure out as you know there's all these kind of flying numbers that actually do this
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so I'm thinking to myself okay who makes the money here so who actually I know I know we've
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spent a billion dollars I kind of do some quick math and I think okay I got let's say average 45,000
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seats sold I'm hearing rumors that hotel vacancies are still seasonal so basically didn't increase
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the number of people in hotel rooms. And then I'm hearing all these quotes about how there's
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still tickets left, but tickets are at an outrageous price. So, Mose, help me understand
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how revenues flow here, who gets what, and how at the end of the day, does this make any sense
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for Canada and for our two cities? Yeah, it is a bit of a head scratcher when you start to try
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and parse the numbers. I'll make it as simple as I can. The vast majority of the money goes to FIFA
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and everybody else is fighting for crumbs. So we can look at whether it's half a billion here or
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100 million there. It really is. FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world. You
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can rank them alongside the IOC and the Trump White House and whichever order you want, I would
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probably agree that you have it in the right order. FIFA is not offering the World Cup as an
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act of altruism and i think that was a mistake by john tory uh from the beginning in toronto uh at
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least uh olivia chow had the the common sense to say i think it was about six months ago we're
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stuck with this uh which was clearly i didn't ask for this i wasn't mayor at the time but i am mayor
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now and i can't hand it back so we're just gonna have to keep on keeping on and uh you know whatever
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happens uh i will at least say i never wanted this in the first place uh the vancouver mayor
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right now mayor sims uh he continues to double triple quadruple down promising these outrageous
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benefits uh to the vancouver economy that bear no resemblance to reality and so i i think that
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if he thinks that he's going to capture some of these billions of dollars uh he's sorely mistaken
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so when fifa comes to these host countries um what they're really looking to do is prey on your fear
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so how many times have we seen civic leaders throw money at stadiums arenas um trying to bring a
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sports team to town for fear of being the one that would allow the sports team to go
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quebec nordiques left quebec city became the colorado avalanche and the next year they win
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the stanley cup man wouldn't you hate to be the mayor of quebec city that let that team go and
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they ended up winning multiple stanley cups in the 1990s where it could have been you being the mayor
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hosting the parade so what happens then is that fifa has become extremely good at saying to north
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america are you interested because if you're not i know other people that would be and it almost
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sounds like this slick used car sales that you would hear from you know the 1970s 1980s that
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got somebody coming to look at this car at five o'clock make an offer quick
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and that's the way that they extract uh money when they get you to sign on the dotted line i know
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that of course there's lawyers that read over it and that the city does their due diligence but i
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think they discount some of the small print and so when they start realizing wait a second we're
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responsible for this too you mean we have to pay the full security bill wait we have to rip up all
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of the grass at bmo field and put in brand new grass that meets the level that fifa expects of
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us hey it's toronto don't you know we have winter here it's snowy here wait the capacity of the
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stadium isn't good enough we have to put up temporary uh seating to make sure that we meet
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the minimum amount necessary these are the types of things that once you get into business with them
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unless you have the guts to hand it back and say changed my mind i reconsidered you are like
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olivia chow said stuck with it uh and then what happens is that the costs go out of control the
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way that i would explain it to a non-sports economist the way to explain it to just i'll
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say the average person in the street uh which sounds kind of condescending is that if you've
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ever been through any home renovation there's three things that anybody wants out of their
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renovation they want it to be on budget they want it to be on time and just for the purposes of
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symmetry i'm going to call it on quality like you want good work done any home renovation can have
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two of those three but it's not going to have all three unless it's a pure accident and if it happens
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you keep that contractor for the rest of your life because you found the golden goose but as
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the homeowner you can decide which one do you want to sacrifice if you want on budget and on time
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you give up on quality if you want on time and on quality you give up on budget and if you want on
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quality and on budget then you give up on time you get to choose but when it comes to fifa and
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the world cup you don't get to choose you can't go to fifa right before the event begins tomorrow
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officially and say not ready yet can i have another month no this goes ahead you said the
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first game in canada's on friday it goes ahead on friday and you can't compromise quality either
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because fifa says this is our crown event there is nothing that you're going to do that will
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embarrass us and make our event look less valuable to future hosts uh than what we expect out of you
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so what has to go out the window the on budget bit so when john tory said you said 45 million
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i actually remember 30 million which might have been an even earlier estimate so it seems that