LILLEY: Toronto's World Cup deal proving to be worse by the day

Article content

Former mayor John Tory haunts us still, at least when it comes to the enormous expense and ridiculous moves Toronto is making as a World Cup host city. In addition to a cost of a little more than $63 million per game in costs and the city looking at getting into the scalping game, we are also looking at spending big bucks to install a rooftop bar at BMO field that won’t be ready until after the World Cup.

Yes, you read that correctly, we are paying to install a 1,000-person ticketed bar venue on the roof of BMO field that will open after Toronto has already hosted its six World Cup games.

How on earth does this make sense to anyone except the brainiacs at City Hall that approved this? It all goes back to the far too secretive deal that then-mayor John Tory signed to ensure Toronto was announced as a World Cup city in 2022.

I’m not against big events coming to the city; I’m not against soccer – it was my main sport growing up – but I am against bad deals and bad ideas, and Toronto’s World Cup involvement is just that.

The city will host just six games in 2026 with an estimated cost of $380 million – though taxpayers are responsible for any cost overruns. So, that $63.3 million per game is most likely to go up and rather than tournament organizer, FIFA, Canada Soccer or MLSE — owner of Toronto FC and beneficiary of stadium upgrades — footing the bill it will be you, the lowly taxpayer.

Don’t worry, though, the city is looking to spend $10.7 million to buy up tickets and box suites for the games and then reselling them at a markup. If you think that sounds like the city wants to get into the scalping business, then you are 100% correct — that is what they want to do.

“It’s not without risk and they have no experience in this business,” said one executive with years of experience in large scale events.

The city sees it as a no-brainer and that not buying up tickets to sell them at higher prices would be leaving money on the table. Apparently, part of the reason for wanting to do this is to recoup costs for the city as they skyrocket.

Recommended video

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

Which brings us back to that rooftop bar at BMO.

Earlier this month, the city and MLSE announced a $146 million upgrade to the 19 year-old city owned BMO Field, with $123 million coming from the city and $23 million coming from MLSE. The upgrades will include increasing seating to 45,000, improving locker rooms for players, new video screens, improved kitchen facilities and of course the bar.

“After FIFA World Cup 26™ a ticketed rooftop patio with a 1,000-person capacity will be added,” the city’s news release of March 3 stated.

The renderings of the new stadium look fantastic; even the new rooftop bar looks like it will be a must-visit destination, but why does all of this have to cost us so much?

Will the city really get $380 million worth of tourism benefits over the next few years thanks to hosting six World Cup games? Is the city paying out more than it should when one of the main beneficiaries of the stadium upgrades is MLSE, owned by Rogers, a very well-off company?

If it had been up to Mayor Olivia Chow, then Toronto would never have bid on the World Cup and if she could have canecelled the contract, she would have. It wasn’t possible though, because the deal signed by former Tory didn’t allow that.

The deal signed by her predecessor will bring us the World Cup, that’s a good thing. But it looks like Tory and city officials allowed FIFA and MLSE to write the contract to ensure that taxpayers were footing the bill for far too much of the cost.

And that’s a bad thing.