Seldom can so much have been paid by so many to so few: Ukraine spent €8 billion to get the country ready for co-hosting the Euro 2012 football tournament, but the paltry flow of football fans – a maximum 80,000 came – means the country will have splashed out a staggering €100,000 on each single visitor.
Ukrainian director for Euro 2012, Markian Lubkivsky, in the run-up
to the tournament put the expected number of visitors at 1.5m, without
revealing the source of the figure. But with the group phase ending and
Ukraine knocked out, a ring round of embassies of visiting countries
produces a generous total figure for visiting fans of at most 80,000.
