Mamdani admin says nil on World Cup plans

The FIFA World Cup is less than four months away, but soccer-mad New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration couldn’t say much Friday about how the city’s preparing.  

Former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has described the World Cup as “eight Super Bowls in six weeks”, with 1.2 million people visiting the region for the games, and the final being played at MetLife Stadium in northern New Jersey. Mamdani’s campaign manager turned World Cup Czar Maya Handa, was pressed on details at a City Council hearing on Economic Development – but had few answers. 

How much revenue can the city expect to lose if it pilots a five-week free bus program during the games? What are the job creation projections associated with the cup? What are the levels of enforcement around labor violations during tournament preparation? Handa said she wasn’t sure or said that conversations were ongoing.

But she did say it would be big. 

“The World Cup will not be felt only inside of a stadium. It will be felt on subway platforms, on buses, on sidewalks, in parks, and on neighborhood commercial corridors across all five boroughs,” she said. 

But take public transit, for example, a major way that New Yorkers and tourists alike will experience the World Cup. 

 “The 2014 Super Bowl at MetLife Stadium is the most comparable recent event, mega event that the New York area has hosted and was widely seen as a logistical disappointment,” said City Council member Virginia Maloney, chair of the committee. “What has [the Economic Development Corporation] or the czar done to examine that event, and what are we going to be doing differently?”

Handa began by referencing new “multimodal options”. But when asked about contingency plans if NJ Transit does not complete its project for expanded rail service and a bus rapid transit line before the games begin, the czar still came up short, despite “feeling confidence about preparedness and also preparation for contingency.” 

The mayor himself is an avid soccer fan who once played on an adult, co-ed recreational soccer team called Talking Headers. His latest budget update added $15 million for World Cup investments, while the city already spent $20 million on advertising, logistics, and transportation under former Mayor Eric Adams, Handa said.

While running for mayor on an affordability platform, Mamdani also made a petition against the dynamic pricing scheme employed by FIFA for the first time for the 2026 World Cup. However, Handa could not comment on how much city investment would go to free, publicly accessible events for those who can’t afford tickets, which range from $1,000 to $3,000 on the official FIFA marketplace.

Leaders from hotel associations, human rights organizations, and community groups have all expressed concerns about not being looped into event planning. Leaders of the NYC BID Association, which organizes the city’s over 70 business improvement districts, said its members have been prevented from moving forward with any programming in public plazas during the World Cup. 

According to Jeffrey LeFrancois, the association’s co-secretary, FIFA has been given priority to choose which spaces they want to use during that time, but they have not communicated their decisions. “What’s unreasonable is that it’s March, and we don’t yet have an indication of what FIFA even wants to do across the five boroughs,” he said.

The uncertainty extends beyond logistics. The Trump administration announced a travel ban in January on 39 countries, four of which are supposed to play in the cup, raising questions about whether players, staff, and fans will even be able to enter the U.S. Adding to the mix, Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, has said the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations arm will play a “key part” in the World Cup. After ICE agents reportedly impersonated NYPD officers at Columbia University on Thursday to detain a student, controversy surrounding the agency is as high as ever.