New York City Mayoral candidate and Democratic primary winner Zohran Mamdani has come out against FIFA’s ticket pricing model for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. MetLife Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, N.J., will host eight matches, including the final.
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You’ve probably heard by now that New York City mayoral candidate and Democratic primary winner Zohran Mamdani is leading a petition against FIFA’s ticket-pricing practices for the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup.
If you’re less clear on what that variable pricing model actually means for fans, well, no one entirely knows just yet.
The only concrete information we have for 2026 prices is that they will begin at a range of $60 (for some group stage games) to $6,730 (for the most expensive seats at the final). We know theoretically that future prices for those games could fluctuate upward or downward based on early ticket demand. And also that FIFA has pledged to keep some ticket categories at fixed prices, according to the New York Post, though the exact details have not yet been disclosed.
But it can be inferred that matches in larger, wealthier markets with easier international travel access and higher profile teams involved will eventually become more expensive to attend than games where those factors are lower.
And it’s reasonable to expect those pressures could drive prices particularly high in the metro area of New York, the United States’ largest city and one of the closest for many international travelers. (MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., but New York and New Jersey are both considered host jurisdictions.)
What Mamdani Is Proposing
In response, here’s what Democratic NYC mayoral primary winner is calling for, published first in a story by The Athletic:
- FIFA end variable pricing on World Cup tickets.
- FIFA reinstates a cap on ticket resales.
- Set aside 15% of tickets for local residents at a discount
For American sports consumers, all three of those demands may feel far more controlled than our typical domestic pro sports market, where there has been a long acceptance of ticket resales. In World Cup terms, they actually represent a return to long-established norms.
Primary sale price points at all previous World Cups have been fixed. And while FIFA has permitted ticket resales at previous World Cups through its official platforms, those sellers were only earning a refund from their initial purchase (minus a resale fee). Reselling tickets elsewhere for profit was strictly prohibited, rather than expressly encouraged by a FIFA platform, which appears to be Mamdani’s biggest complaint.
But blackmarket resales, particularly through sophisticated third-party brokers, have still been pretty common at previous tournaments.
It’s not the first time FIFA has ever used variable pricing: It was employed for the FIFA Club World Cup held in the United States over June and July, and in some cases actually benefitted fans who were able to purchase marked down tickets because of the number of unsold seats.
But that tournament had far less visibility globally than the World Cup. And FIFA’s variable pricing model for the World Cup had already drawn a lot of criticism prior to Mamdani’s announcement.
Do Americans Really Need A Discount?
The most interesting angle may be Mamdani’s request that a portion of tickets be held specifically for local residents at a discount.
This has been a common practice at every World Cup since 2010, in terms of providing a discount to citizens of the host country, but with two major caveats:
- Those discounts don’t appear to pertain specifically to local regions, just overall host nations.
- Those host nation economies were either far less wealthy or (in the case of Qatar) far less populated than the United States, and designed to mitigate the wealth or populastion gap between local citizens and foreign travelers.
By contrast, when the tournaments were held in relatively wealthy Western European nations like France in 1998 and Germany in 2006, there were tickets reserved specifically for domestic citizens, but not at a discount.
Here is how the United States compares to other host economies in which a local market ticket discounts were provided at a discount, according to numbers published by World Population Review. (Median income numbers are from 2020, while GDP per capita is from 2023.)
- USA – median income: $19,306 | GDP per capita: $82,769
- Qatar – median income: unavailable | GDP per capita: $128.919
- Russia – median income: $5,504 | GDP per capita: $44,120
- Brazil – median income: $4,559 | GDP per capita: $21,107
- South Africa – median income: $1,624 | GDP per capita: $15,194
Markdowns in other countries were very large, sometimes to as low as 20-25% of the price paid by international fans. And in South Africa, FIFA distributed an additional 120,000 free tickets to residents of poorer local communities, a figure that makes up about 3.8% of the total attendance of 3.18 million fans over that tournament.
It’s perhaps fans in co-host Mexico (which will host 10 matches total) who should feel most aggrieved by FIFA’s lack of plan to offer discounted tickets to host citizens. The Mexican median income ($3,315) is lower than all but South Africa on this list, and GDP per capita ($24,790) lower than all but South Africa or Brazil.