New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that some residents will be able to buy $50 World Cup tickets for matches at MetLife Stadium, with distribution beginning through a lottery on May 25. The tickets are aimed at New York City residents, the mayor said, and will come with free roundtrip bus transportation to the New Jersey venue.
Mamdani, a Democrat who took office in January, made the announcement Thursday from Harlem’s Little Senegal neighborhood and was joined by U.S. men’s national team forward Timothy Weah. Mamdani said the pricing plan would help ensure “working people” are not priced out of a tournament that he said the city helped create.
Under the program, 1,000 tickets priced at $50 will be made available to residents of a city with more than 8 million people. Mamdani said officials will offer the tickets for seven of the eight matches at MetLife Stadium, which is about 82,000 seats and is located across the river from Manhattan in New Jersey.
The mayor said the allocation works out to about 150 discounted tickets per game for those seven matches. The lone exception is the July 19 final, where he said some seats now cost nearly $33,000, reflecting the higher demand for that match.
Mamdani said ticket holders will get free roundtrip bus transportation to MetLife Stadium. He also said the city would begin distributing the tickets via a lottery starting May 25, and that officials will take steps meant to prevent scalping.
To limit resale, Mamdani said the tickets will be non-transferrable. He said city officials will verify residency through “a variety of ways,” and that tickets will be handed out directly to the fans as they board the buses on game day.
Mamdani framed the effort as part of a broader affordability agenda, saying his administration is not only focused on housing and groceries. He said the push extends to making it possible for “every New Yorker to take part in the things that make us human,” and he described the $50 ticket plan as ensuring people who work will not be priced out.
During his campaign, Mamdani had urged FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, to make the games cheaper for New Yorkers by setting aside 15% of tickets at discounted prices for residents. He also launched a petition calling on FIFA to reverse a plan to set ticket prices based on demand, according to the mayor’s office.
Mamdani said the $50 tickets do not come directly from FIFA. Instead, he said they come from those allotted to New York and New Jersey’s joint host committee for the games, and he said previously FIFA had made some $60 tickets available for every game in North America after facing backlash for high ticket prices.
For the earlier lower-priced tickets, Mamdani said those reduced-price allotments went to the national federations, which then decided how to distribute them to fans. Besides the July 19 championship game, MetLife Stadium is scheduled to host five group-stage World Cup matches and two knockout-stage games, with group matches for teams including Brazil, France, Germany and England beginning June 13.