Russia has increased the budget for the 2018 World Cup by $600 million, to according to a decree published on the government’s official site. The decree said that the overall cost for the preparations for the tournament will rise by 5.4 per cent – from 643.5 billion rubles to 678 billion rubles.
Russia’s federal budget will allocate 390 billion rubles, while 91.9 billion rubles will come from the regional budget. The rest will come from companies and sponsors named as “legal entities” in the decree. Russia already increased the World Cup budget in May by 4.7 billion rubles after slashing it by 30 billion rubles in June 2015 in the wake of the economic crisis.
Russia will be hosting the FIFA World Cup for the first time in its history between June 14 and July 15, 2018. The games will take place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Saransk, Sochi, Volgograd and Yekaterinburg.
The 2014 World Cup held in Brazil cost an estimated $15 billion, while South Africa reportedly spent $3 billion on the event in 2010.
