FIFA has cancelled reservations at hotel rooms across Toronto

FIFA organisers have cancelled a whole whack of hotel room reservations across Toronto, creating a lucky break for soccer fans still looking for somewhere to stay.

Toronto is preparing to welcome 300,000 soccer fans for the 2026 FIFA World Cup games this summer, but as it turns out, one of the biggest hotel room bookers has been FIFA itself. At least, they were: the association has just gone on a massive room-cancellation spree, releasing thousands of hotel rooms in host cities across North America.

Related: Toronto hotel prices will jump by 78 per cent during the World Cup

Toronto has been hit by that wave too, according to the Globe and Mail, but it’s not known exactly how many rooms have returned to our market. In Vancouver, however, FIFA’s drawdown came to 15,000 nights’ worth of hotel stays, and in Philadelphia, some 2,000 rooms of the 10,000 booked by the organisation were released, reports ABC.

Related: Airbnb is paying Torontonians to rent their homes to World Cup fans

While the numbers are surprising, this is standard practice for FIFA, which tends to overbuy hotel rooms for technical staff, teams, referees and players early on. Then, when it has a better sense of who needs to be where, it trims its reservations accordingly.

For their part, Toronto’s hoteliers seem confident they can fill the spots before the games begin: Greater Toronto Hotel Association president Sara Anghel told the Globe that demand for rooms in June is 30 per cent higher than normal.

FIFA’s strategy is understandable: for an event of this size, it has to be harder to secure a new room at the last minute than to cancel a few ahead of time. The same could be true for tourists who, late to the party, thought they waited too long to make a booking. That makes FIFA’s cancellations great news: soccer fans, their rooms are free for the taking. Get them before they’re gone!