A thousand lucky New Yorkers will get to experience the World Cup at MLS prices, first-year Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Thursday.
Alongside US men’s national team players Tim Weah and Mark McKenzie, Mamdani told a crowd in Harlem’s Little Senegal neighborhood on Thursday that the city will get about 150 tickets per game for seven of the eight World Cup matches being played at MetLife Stadium. The recipients of those tickets will be determined by a lottery, which can be entered by any of the city’s roughly 8 million residents.
The best part: Lottery winners will pay just $50 for their World Cup tickets.
‘To put that into perspective, that is five lattes in New York City,’ Mamdani told the crowd in Harlem.
More accurately, the $50 tickets will represent a roughly 97-percent discount over the next cheapest World Cup tickets at MetLife, which are currently hovering around $1,800 for the Norway-Senegal game on June 22.
Somehow, not everyone was on board.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani poses with a World Cup Trophy alongside Ezequiel Cecchi
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, center, joined by, from left, US soccer star Tim Weah, Maya Handa, and council member Yusef Salaam, makes Thursday’s announcement
‘9MM people in the city, and this dude is parading around on social media for 1000 tickets,’ one critic wrote on X. ‘Great use of time.’
‘They will all go to Muslims only,’ another wrote, baselessly accusing the Shia mayor of discrimination. ‘Was it even legal to do this with taxpayer money?’
In many cases, the critics were misinformed.
First, New York City did not buy the tickets. Rather, they were donated from a pool of tickets allotted to the New York-New Jersey host committee, according to Mamdani’s office.
Many others claimed the tickets would quickly be resold on the secondary market, but Mamdani’s office has thought of that as well: All tickets will be non-transferrable.
‘We are making sure that working people will not be priced out of the game that they helped to create,’ Mamdani said.
What’s more, the city has ways to verify residency for lottery participants, said Mamdani, who explained that passes will be distributed as lottery winners arrive at the bus. And speaking of the bus, ticketholders will also get free transportation to and from the game.
MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey is being prepared for eight WC matches
Despite the tickets and transportation, some Mamdani critics remained unimpressed.
‘You didn’t get cheaper tickets for New Yorkers, you started a contest to win cheaper tickets,’ one critic wrote on X. ‘What kind of narcissistic BS is this?’
However, others were more supportive.
‘Somehow MAGA is gonna find a way to hate on this,’ one Mamdani supporter wrote on X. ‘Best mayor in generations, exactly the kind of leadership this city needs.’
‘Bloody communist helping improve his city for those that live in it,’ a fan joked about the self-described democratic socialist. ‘Disgusting.’
One fan described Mamdani’s move as ‘what football should be about.’
‘Making World Cup tickets affordable for regular fans instead of only corporations and resellers is a huge win for the city,’ they wrote.
The lottery begins on May 25.
