With the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicking off, millions of soccer fans around the world will be following the tournament taking place across 16 host cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Like other mega sporting events, the World Cup requires major public investment and regulatory changes. To meet FIFA’s requirements, Toronto, Vancouver and other North American cities have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, suspended bylaws and reorganized infrastructure to stage just a handful of matches each.

Municipal governments are often slow to act on changes residents demand. However, hosting mega-events like the World Cup reveals that it is not always financial and legal constraints that cause municipal inaction, and that the reasons cities routinely cite for inaction are often political choices.

It turns out, when municipal governments want to act, they can move quickly.

Read more: Soaring ticket prices could help FIFA pull in $15B this World Cup cycle — where does the money come from, where does it go?

Hosting the World Cup is expensive. Toronto has committed $178.6 million, while Vancouver has committed more than $320 million. Both figures come directly from municipal budgets.

Across all levels of Canadian government, public spending works out to over $1 billion, or roughly $82 million per match. These figures, of course,........

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