Russia Spent $10.6bn to Organize Soccer World Cup, Final Figures Say

Russia spent about 700 billion rubles ($10.6 billion) to organize the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the chairman of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) Russia-2018 Arkady Dvorkovich has said, according to Sport-Express.

The Monitoring Council of the Russia-2018 LOC gathered for its last session in Moscow on Wednesday.

“A sum of about 700 billion rubles was spent on the organization of the world championship,” Dvorkovich told journalists after the session. “The larger part of this sum was allocated from the federal budget.”

Other reports previously suggested additional costs for the event brought the bill to $14 billion.

Last summer Russia hosted its first-ever FIFA World Cup, a global soccer event of enormous popularity worldwide. The championship kicked off in Moscow with a remarkable opening show at Luzhniki Stadium on the evening of June 14 and ended with a spectacular final match, played also at the Luzhniki Stadium, where France confidently defeated Croatia 4-2 to win the much-coveted World Cup Trophy.

Russia selected 11 host cities as the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they were Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, and Samara.

The organizing committee said in October the World Cup brought 952 billion rubles ($14.5 billion) into the Russian economy from 2013 to 2018.

In the five-year run-up to the World Cup, 315,000 jobs were created every year and earned income grew by a total of 450 billion rubles. Small businesses also saw profits spike by almost 800 billion rubles.

Tourism development brought an estimated $3 billion into the economy, surpassing previous football tournaments in Brazil, South Africa, and Japan but falling short of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the Vedemosti business daily reported.