FIFA unveils outrageous parking prices for Vancouver World Cup games
If the cost to get into one of the seven FIFA World Cup matches coming to Vancouver next month wasn’t enough, wait until fans see the cost of parking.
On Friday, FIFA unveiled the official parking plan for the upcoming tournament games, which allows fans to pre-purchase a spot outside BC Place for $74.99.
Fans were quick to react online after the prices were released.
“It’d be cheaper to park illegally and then pay the parking ticket,” one user wrote on X.
“Someone would have to be full-on nuts to play these ridiculous prices,” another added.
There will be seven matches played over three weeks at BC Place, starting with Australia vs. Turkey on June 13. Canada will play two of their three matches in Vancouver ā their second match against Qatar on June 18, and their final group-stage game against Switzerland on June 24.
Every match has the same $74.99 parking rate regardless of demand.
To put that into perspective, it is roughly double what fans typically pay to park in the same area for a BC Lions or Vancouver Whitecaps game.
FIFA noted that parking passes cannot be resold and must be purchased using the same email address tied to the fan’s World Cup ticket. Fans are limited to buying one parking pass per customer, and no passes will be sold on match day.
The cost of parking for the Toronto games, Canada’s other World Cup host city, is the same as in Vancouver.
And compared to some American host cities, Canadians may be getting off easy.
Official parking in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which are a lot less accessible by public transit than Vancouver or Toronto, has spots listed between US$203.45 and $299.99; in both cases, it would still require a walk to the stadium.
That makes paying $75 in Toronto or Vancouver to park somehow sound like a bargain.
Of course there will be other options. There are numerous other parking lots in the surrounding area, they’ll just require a bit longer of a walk to the stadium.