Quite a long time to go with at least two years of construction works and Zenit’s future stadium is again estimated to cost well more than expected. It’s already among most expensive ones in history.

Glavkosekspertiza, company overlooking the project documentation, has lately updated their records. Although there is no financial estimation made, or at least none public at this point, media in Saint Petersburg write about further cost increase of the 69,000-seater.

A few weeks ago it was speculated that final price tag might reach RUB 44 billion (€1.1 billion). Those claims were dismissed by Vyaczeslav Semenenko, head of the construction committee. But latest update again brings a similar number in the media, this time RUB 43 billion.

In any of these cases Zenit’s new arena may only be comparable to Wembley in terms of cost in Europe, which is hardly a reason to be proud of, with both projects being well over early budget predictions. Currently official data gives the Russian venue’s cost at RUB 35-40 billion, compared to initial amount of RUB 13.5 billion. Even this summer it was suggested to be within the 33-billion mark.

As we wrote, in late August prime minister Medvedev expressed his outrage with the way this project is being managed and announced it will not receive any further grant from the federal authorities. This leaves the half-way done stadium with only local government funding.