It's not just the price of tickets: Another cost-related controversy swirling around the 2026 FIFA World Cup involves the tournament's official fan festivals and viewing parties.
New York/New Jersey is one of 16 host cities during this summer's tri-hosted World Cup in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and our region made some form of history by becoming the first host to charge fans looking to attend an official World Cup "Fan Festival."
Meaning, you're not paying to attend a match, but instead shelling out $12.50 to stand in a crowd in a big public space to watch a live game broadcast on a big screen, with that price not inclusive of any food, drinks, or merchandise you might be compelled to buy while you're standing out in, say, Liberty State Park on a steamy summer afternoon.
The aforementioned Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey, plus the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens, and Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan are the three official locations for FIFA-sanctioned fan events this summer.
Liberty State Park is already selling those $12.50 tickets for its Fan Festival, and the tennis center in Willets Point, Queens, is expected to soon do the same for the select group-stage watch parties scheduled to be held inside the 14,000-seat Louis Armstrong Stadium. According to Front Office Sports, the NY/NJ host committee "should make several million dollars" from selling Fan Festival admission.
In the other host cities across the United States, though, fan festivals are open to the public and free to attend. Philadelphia, for example, recently rolled out the details of their Fan Festival planned for Lemon Hill, with the city taking a minor victory lap on Twitter over the fact that their event is free while "other cities" charge for admission.
New York is one of those pay-to-Fan Fest cities, insult to injury considering the eight matches scheduled for MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, might be some of the toughest and most expensive tickets to get during the 2026 tournament, a tournament consistently and globally excoriated for its exorbitant ticket prices and convoluted, complicated process for acquiring tickets.
AFCON comes to Surrogate's Court
Local New York/New Jersey soccer fans priced out of matches and even Fan Festivals may have help on the way from Zohran Mamdani, New York City's new Mayor.
The soccer-obsessed Arsenal FC fan turned Mayor hard-launched his own version of a big soccer viewing party for the final of the 2026 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), with Mayor Mamdani taking over Surrogate's Court on Chambers Street in lower Manhattan to host a viewing of the wild, drama-filled meeting between Morocco and Senegal on Sunday, January 18.
Clad in a suit with an Arsenal kit over his dress shirt and tie to show he's the ultimate Soccer Mayor, Mamdani enlisted familiar faces to New York City FC fans, The Cooligans, to serve as his event's emcees. The gathering and pulled together a good number of fans willing to spend hours together on a Sunday afternoon inside a historic circa-1907 courthouse to watch a champion of Africa be crowned.
While covering the event for The Guardian, Alexander Abnos wrote that Mamdani administration officials viewed the AFCON final viewing party as the first of "many more watch parties for major soccer events, including this summer’s World Cup." According to The Guardian, the Mamdani administration is also "investigating ways to make it easier for neighborhoods to put together their own gatherings."
The AFCON party will not, apparently, be a one-off, so it looks like the City of New York will become a consistent source of counter-programming to FIFA's fan events held during this summer's World Cup.
Mamdani's battle with FIFA
News of Mayor Mamdani-led soccer viewing parties shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to anyone who followed his statements about soccer and the upcoming World Cup during his mayoral campaign and during the early days of his time in office.
Mamdani made the high cost of tickets to the World Cup, and the lack of any carve-outs giving fans in host cities like New York access to discounted tickets, an issue during his campaign, launching a whole "Game Over Greed" initiative that called on FIFA to, among other things, end the use of dynamic pricing, which allows ticket prices to soar for the most in-demand games like, say, the World Cup Final scheduled for July 19 at MetLife Stadium. Taking on the most expensive World Cup in history seemed to fit seamlessly into Mamdani's overall focus during his campaign on the high cost of living New York City residents face in their day-to-day lives.
While Mamdani campaigned on opposing FIFA's pricing choices, now early in his time in office, he's still talking about it.
On January 5, while signing three executive orders meant to crack down on "junk fees" tied to memberships, subscriptions, and ticket purchases, Mayor Mamdani again talked about dynamic pricing and the World Cup, saying "I continue to voice my opposition to the use of dynamic pricing here for the soon-to-come World Cup and the necessity of it being a more affordable experience for all. And I look forward to the conversations, ones that have already begun, both internally and externally, in making that case."
The Mayor says there are conversations to be had, but FIFA might take some serious convincing to budge on ticket pricing, since part of the agreement "New York/New Jersey" signed with FIFA to become a host city for the 2026 World Cup gives soccer's governing body full control over the stadiums and the tickets that get sold to put people in said stadiums for the tournament.
Public pressure did get FIFA to exclude certain categories of tickets from dynamic pricing, and to make a very small percentage of tickets available for $60 and designated as being for "Supporters" of certain competing nations.
Those are minor ticketing changes, and they're likely not going to be enough to get more local people easy access to any World Cup games held at MetLife Stadium, where ticket prices can range from $200 to $8,000 depending on the match and the category of ticket.
Since going in person will be a tall task for many, Fan Festivals and watch parties get a lot more relevant. FIFA doesn't appear to want to make those free or open access for all New Yorkers, but the city's new soccer-loving Mayor might just use the power of city government to get it done instead.
Oliver Strand
