On the first Saturday of Vancouver’s World Cup run, Susanna Ng expected a big day at New Town Bakery and Restaurant.
For nearly five decades, the Chinatown institution has served regulars, cruise ship passengers and visitors from across Canada and the US. Even Prime Minister Mark Carney stopped there during a November visit to Vancouver to sample the bakery’s well-known Cantonese pastries.
Summer is usually the restaurant’s busiest season. But this year, Ng said, sales fell in June, something she barely remembered happening in her 46 years running the restaurant. That first match-day weekend was so quiet she sent servers home early.
“Can you believe it? It was a Saturday,” said Ng, who lived through Expo ‘86 and the 2010 Winter Olympics, when visitors moved more widely through the city and Chinatown felt busier. “We usually need a full shift. But on that day, we had no business.”
Ng is among many business owners who say they prepared for a surge after city officials promoted the World Cup as a major economic opportunity. Now that Vancouver’s final match is over, they say the promised boost never happened.
High hopes, low returns
In a May press release, Mayor Ken Sim called hosting FIFA World Cup games “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to generate immediate economic benefits for Vancouver while creating lasting long-term legacies.” Sports bars and venues near Granville Street and official fan areas saw strong traffic, but many others say the surge never materialized.
The economic case for hosting mega-events is often overstated, said Andrew Zimbalist, an American sports economist who has studied major sporting events including the Olympics and World Cup. He said host cities may attract soccer fans while losing regular visitors who avoid crowds, congestion, higher prices or security concerns — a dynamic known as “crowding out.”
“The question is, how many people are deterred from going versus how many people come?” Zimbalist said.
Media reports of sky-high hotel prices in Vancouver kept visitors away months before the tournament, even as rooms remained available.
At Chambar, a well-known Belgian restaurant near BC Place, owner Karri Green said the restaurant even hosted screenings and after-parties tied to Belgium matches. But despite being steps from the stadium, she said the rush never came.
“The danger of the city making economic impact promises is that when somebody promises you that, then you invest,” she said. “Screens — TVs — extra glassware. There’s a lot of investment to scale up when you’re expecting a big influx of people.”
Green estimated Chambar’s revenues were down about 20 per cent compared with a normal summer period. Road closures and traffic restrictions were part of the city’s match-day security planning, but she said businesses often got details late, leaving staff unable to answer customers’ questions about access, parking or taxis.
Two blocks from BC Place, Malindi Taylor, director of sales for Fanny Bay Oyster Bar & Shellfish Market, said staff put up screens, listed the oyster bar as a watch-party venue and scheduled extra shifts after business and industry meetings about expected visitor numbers.
“We did everything they encouraged,” Taylor said. “But we just did not see the push that we were kind of told was coming.”
Part of the lack of rush may have been due to the expected rush itself; Taylor said locals had been warned so often to expect congestion that many avoided downtown. After two quiet weeks, business evened out to something like a normal June, but “there was no big boost from FIFA for our business,” she said.
In an email to Canada’s National Observer, a Vancouver Host Committee spokesperson said hosting the World Cup “was never solely an economic exercise” and was also a chance to bring communities together, celebrate soccer and strengthen partnerships for future major events.
Vancouver’s publicly reported World Cup costs are projected at around $700 million, higher than most US host cities. The committee said rising costs were driven mainly by safety and security, projected at $242 million but partly offset by $100 million in federal funding. The spokesperson said benefits unfold over time through destination awareness, future visits and business opportunities, with final costs and benefits expected in spring 2027.
Provincial estimates projected Vancouver’s World Cup matches would generate about $1 billion in GDP during the tournament and over the next five years.
Moshe Lander, a Canadian economist and senior lecturer in economics at Concordia University, said the response reflects a shift in how officials defend mega-events when immediate returns are harder to prove. “They’re redefining what the objectives were,” Lander said. “They’re moving the goalposts.”
Lander said governments often promote mega-events on economic grounds, then later emphasize civic pride, celebration and long-term exposure. Strong reviews of Vancouver as a host city may help officials point to global exposure, but that does not answer whether the spending delivered the economic return initially promised.
“If they had said eight years ago, ‘This is not an economic exercise, this is just a really cool opportunity,’ I’m all in,” he said. “But they sold us a false bill of goods.”
Economists say the structure of the World Cup leaves host cities with much of the risk: FIFA controls major revenue streams, including broadcast rights, sponsorships, ticket sales and in-stadium advertising, while local governments cover many of the costs needed to stage the event. During negotiations over the tournament in 2018, BC and Vancouver briefly withdrew from the process, citing unclear and risky financial terms in FIFA’s contract.
Celebration without a payoff
On match days, fans filled the route between BC Place, Granville Street and the fan festivals. Business owners said the energy was contagious, even if the sales did not always follow.
Green said the World Cup reminded people of Canada’s diversity and gave Vancouver a rare moment of collective joy.
“What did that do for our communities to bring people together?” she said. “We don’t have economic metrics for that, but it’s pretty priceless.”
Joël Watanabe, executive chef and owner of Kissa Tanto, Bao Bei Chinese Brasserie and Meo, said estimated sales fell by roughly 10 to 50 per cent across his three businesses, though broader economic conditions may also have played a role.
Watanabe said he had been skeptical that the event would deliver economic returns for local businesses, especially in Chinatown, where he felt visitors were being steered away from a neighbourhood that can appear rougher to outsiders but normally does well with summer tourists.
To Watanabe, the promise of long-term benefits sounded more like political messaging than business reality. “I’d much rather you tell me, ‘yeah, this is not going to be great for you economically, but we’re doing it anyway,’ than tell me it’s going to be good for me when the reality is it isn’t,” he said.
Watanabe said Vancouver already draws visitors because of its mountains, beaches, clean water and natural beauty, not because it hosted a handful of soccer matches.
For restaurants already facing high rents, property taxes, food costs and labour pressures, even a short disruption can hurt, Green said.
“The greatest hope is that Vancouver showed off how wonderful it is as a city,” she said. “But I would put an asterisk next to: it was successful for businesses in the city.”
Sonal Gupta / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada's National Observer.
Keep reading
Feds lower carbon capture project targets and offer new subsidies as costs double
- Natasha Bulowski
- Darius Snieckus
- News
- Energy
- Politics
- Climate Solutions
Toronto delays maximum temperature bylaw, leaving its most vulnerable to swelter
- Breanna Milton
- News
- Culture
Raccoons are falling into a new kind of trap: our waste collection bins
- Alexandre Shields — Le Devoir
- News
Source: National Observer
