Russia Cut World Cup 2018 Budget by £340m

Russia has cut its budget for the 2018 World Cup by £340 million as part of cost cutting prior to the tournament. The World Cup budget was cut by Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev and hotels and other facilities will be reduced.

 A decree by the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, published on Monday reduced the World Cup budget, including both government and private expenditures, by 29.2 billion roubles. The total planned cost is now 631.5 billion roubles (£7.4bn).

“Of course it’s a question of optimising the preparations. We’re primarily taking out the excess hotels,” the sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, told the state news agency R-Sport on Monday.

Mutko said Russia was cutting “redundant” construction projects and had agreed with Fifa to reduce the number of hotels and other facilities planned for the World Cup. The number of training facilities at each stadium will now be three rather than four, he said.

“This is a reflection of the difficult economic situation but it should not have a negative effect on the event itself,” Dmitry Yefimov, a Fifa representative in Russia, told R-Sport.

Even before the reduction there were doubts that Russia could meet its World Cup budget, since the cost for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics grew exponentially during construction, eventually reaching an estimated $50bn.