Zohran Mamdani secures cheap World Cup tickets for New York residents

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is already a greedy, price-gouging mess. It’s bad enough that ticket prices for for group stage tickets in New York are over $1,000, but even transportation to the game has soared through the stratosphere. A normal round-trip ticket to travel by rail from Manhattan to MetLife Stadium, typically $12.90, will cost $105 during the World Cup — and that came only after outcry pressured NJ Transit to reduce the price from $150.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani stepped up this week to try to provide a little relief for his soccer-loving citizens who have been completely priced out of the World Cup. A total of 1,000 tickets have been secured by Mamdani, and will be distributed via ballot, only to residents of New York City. The grand price: $50 each, and they include round-trip bus fare to the stadium.

The tickets, which range from the group stage to the semi-finals, will be the cheapest tickets publicly on offer for this World Cup and come after Mamdani reached an agreement with FIFA president Gianni Infantino after being highly critical of FIFA’s price gouging of fans in his city. Mamdani spoke to The Athletic last October and outlined his concerns over the astronomical prices of tickets.

Mamdani said FIFA’s unprecedentedly high World Cup ticket prices “threaten to price out the very people that make this game so special.” He said he considered intervention by politicians to be necessary, adding that “it is the place of leaders to step up when we see profit as the only motive, to an extent where so many who used to attend these very events can now not even conceive of doing so”.

This is the kind of leadership we need from politicians when it comes to monitoring the accessibility of sports. With the majority of NFL stadiums being multi-use arenas, it has created a live event monopoly in many markets. It would be one thing if organizers and stadium owners didn’t ask for special treatment from lawmakers, but they routinely request tax breaks, public financing, or special treatment from government — then turn around and screw over the very citizens who allow their businesses to flourish.

A total of 1,000 tickets is more of a gesture than a solution, but it’s nice to see someone, somewhere challenge unfair pricing as a means to hold sporting organizations accountable of creating an economy where only the wealthiest individuals have a chance of seeing once-in-a-lifetime events in person.