New York City offering $50 World Cup tickets for residents
NEW YORK: New York City will offer its residents a chance to snag $50 tickets to World Cup games in New Jersey this summer, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Thursday, with 1,000 affordable tickets up for grabs through a lottery system. The discounted tickets come with free round-trip bus transportation to the stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey and will be split across five group-stage and two knockout games, with 150 tickets available per match. “We are making sure that working people will not be priced out of the game that they helped to create,” Mamdani told a press conference in the city’s Harlem neighborhood, quipping that the $50 price tag was the equivalent of five coffees in New York City. Starting on May 25, residents will be able to enter a lottery for a chance to purchase the tickets, which will be non-transferable and distributed to winners at the bus boarding location in an effort to prevent scalping. Ticket affordability has been a key issue for the tournament being co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico. According to TicketData, a ticket price tracking platform, the average “get-in” cost for a group-stage match in New York as of Wednesday was $864.
