New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has secured 1,000 FIFA World Cup tickets for residents, priced at just $50.
City residents can win a chance to purchase these tickets by entering a lottery that’s set to open next week, Mamdani announced Thursday. Each purchase will also include free round-trip bus tickets to New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, where the matches will be held.
The agreement follows negotiations between Mamdani and FIFA President Gianni Infantino, sources told The Athletic. This reportedly included a conversation between Mamdani and Infantino in March about the prices.
FIFA had to approve the agreement, but the reduced price will not cost the organization, since the tickets were pulled from an allocation bought by the New York-New Jersey World Cup host committee, according to The Athletic.
The lottery is set to open Monday at 10 a.m. local time. Residents can enter once a day, and daily entries will be capped at 50,000. Each person’s residency will also be verified during the process. The lucky winners will be notified on June 3 and can purchase two tickets each.
In an effort to stop scalpers, tickets will be non-transferable and distributed to buyers directly at the bus boarding location, according to Mamdani.
“A World Cup is coming to our backyard, and we want to ensure working-class New Yorkers have the opportunity to be part of it,” he said.
The mayor also joked that the $50 price is equivalent to just “five lattes in New York City.”
New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, located just a few miles from midtown Manhattan, is hosting eight World Cup matches this summer, including the tournament’s final game on July 19. The lottery will not include the final match.
This comes amid growing concern about FIFA’s ticket pricing, with some fans seeing tickets go for thousands of dollars. Even President Donald Trump has called out the high ticket prices.
“I would certainly like to be there, but I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest with you,” Trump told The New York Post when asked about the four-figure ticket prices earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Infantino has defended his organization’s ticket pricing.
“We have to look at the market; we are in the market in which entertainment is the most developed in the world. So we have to apply market rates,” he said at a May 5 press conference.
“In the U.S., it is permitted to resell tickets as well. So if you were to sell tickets at the price which is too low, these tickets will be resold at a much higher price,” he added.
