SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Dori: Seattle has money for World Cup, but not for cleaning up the city
Jun 14, 2018, 4:58 PM
Jenny Durkan announces Seattle is on shortlist of cities that could host a World Cup game in 2026. (KIRO 7 image)
(KIRO 7 image)
The FIFA World Cup is coming to North America in 2026. Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. will host matches in their major cities. Now they have to decide which cities get to host the games. Seattle is on the shortlist of 17 potential cities, which will get narrowed down to 10.
The City of Seattle had a big press conference yesterday about the city hosting the World Cup. When questions came up about how much this is going to cost, they just skipped over them.
RELATED: Seattle on list to host 2026 FIFA World Cup
Mayor Jenny Durkan and King County Executive Dow Constantine are so cavalier about your money. They talk about what financial difficulties we have, but they are willing to open up the vault to give money to a soccer organization. Jenny Durkan strings words together and says nothing. It’s really surprising that she can use so many words to say so little. She made sure to get the typical liberal buzzwords in though — “inclusive” and “welcoming.” That’s why we should host the World Cup — because we are so inclusive. Yes, we include heroin addicts in everything we do.
I just found out from Dow Constantine why we all are paying six figures per family for Sound Transit. Apparently, it’s all in preparation for the World Cup.
Who is going to pick up the cost? According to Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer, we’re “going to have to deal with this” and don’t know how much this will cost. It’s never cash-positive for the cities and countries that host the World Cup — it’s going to cost the taxpayers.
I’m not a soccer fan personally, but I appreciate the passion of soccer fans and understand people who love the World Cup, the most-watched sporting event in the world. But the governing body, FIFA, is a criminal racketeering organization that extracts billions of dollars from the countries that host it.
When the World Cup was in Brazil, FIFA pulled out $4 billion. The people of Brazil ended up losing billions of dollars. The tourism and economic benefits didn’t come close to what was lost. Also, FIFA does not pay taxes in any of the countries in which they host these events. If there’s a law in the host country that they don’t like, they come in and try to control that law.
That said, FIFA would be insane to pick Seattle as a World Cup city, with the heroin addiction and homeless people sleeping on the streets. Although, since FIFA has that habit of coming in and establishing its own laws, maybe they would force Seattle to clean up its act.