OTTAWA — The Canadian economy saw only a modest boost from the FIFA World Cup in June, with some tourism-related industries even edging down slightly for the month, new figures released Friday showed.
Despite the influx of tourists and fans for the international soccer competition, accommodation services like hotels fell 0.7 per cent in June, Statistics Canada said.
Air transportation also recorded a small contraction for the month, slipping 0.5 per cent compared with May, the agency said.
Other hospitality and tourism-related industries reported small gains in June, with food services and drinking places — such as bars and restaurants — posting 0.6 per cent growth, according to Statistics Canada.
Canada hosted 13 World Cup soccer matches split between Toronto and Vancouver over the course of the tournament, 10 of them being in June.
The latest economic figures cast doubt on the argument that hosting the World Cup would be a sweeping economic win for the country, sports economist Moshe Lander said.
"It was never going to be an economic boom for Vancouver and Toronto," the senior lecturer in economics at Concordia University said in an interview from Montreal. "That was always a myth."
International sporting events like the World Cup often end up displacing other tourists when they are held in big cities, he said.
"Toronto and Vancouver are two of the hottest tourist destinations in the summer," Lander said. "For anybody who's coming to see the World Cup, they're effectively displacing somebody who would have been coming for other purposes."
He added: "This was really just an exercise in one set of tourists cancelling out the other."
Hosting the World Cup could still benefit the country as a nation-building event though, uniting Canadians in the face of tariff threats and separatist movements, Lander said.
Meanwhile, Statistics Canada said an increase in transit ridership in June coincided with fans attending soccer games, with the urban transit industry rising 1.7 per cent month-over-month.
Overall strength in the spectator sports industry drove 1.1 per cent growth in the arts, entertainment and recreation category in June.
One notable economic boost tied to the World Cup was an 8.6 per cent jump in radio and television broadcasting stations, the largest growth rate since the Olympics in February.
"Advertisers are willing to pay top dollar to get space on that (broadcast) because they know that there will be eyes on the event and therefore, eyes on their product," Lander said.
