MOSCOW _ Organizers of this summer’s World Cup predict the total impact on the Russian economy could hit nearly $31 billion.
A new report on the economic impact of the tournament says the boost for the country’s GDP could amount to between 1.62 trillion rubles ($26 billion) and 1.92 trillion rubles ($30.8 billion) over the 10 years from 2013 through to 2023.
That’s attributed to growing tourism plus large-scale spending on construction.
The report says the total spend on the tournament will be 683 billion rubles ($11 billion), though that doesn’t include some costly new infrastructure and stadiums which organizers say would have been built regardless. Around 220,000 jobs have been created, the report says.
Economic impact figures for earlier tournaments have been hotly disputed, given the difficulty of separating the World Cup from other economic factors.
