New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has secured a rare concession from FIFA after negotiating 1,000 tickets to matches at the upcoming World Cup finals priced at $50, which will be distributed by ballot to local residents.The 1,000 tickets will be split across games played at MetLife Stadium in neighboring New Jersey, including five group-stage fixtures, a round of 32 tie and a round of 16 game, but not the final on July 19. It is the only citywide access program of this kind that has so far been announced for the tournament, which will be hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico this June and July.The $50 seats are the cheapest available for fans to purchase through the primary ticket market at the World Cup. Buyers will also receive free round-trip bus travel to attend.The tickets will be apportioned via a ballot and will only be available to New York City residents, following on from Mamdani’s campaign demand during his mayoral run for locals to be given greater access by FIFA to this summer’s tournament.In an interview with The Athletic in October, Mamdani said FIFA’s unprecedentedly high World Cup ticket prices “threaten to price out the very people that make this game so special.” He said he considered intervention by politicians to be necessary, adding that “it is the place of leaders to step up when we see profit as the only motive, to an extent where so many who used to attend these very events can now not even conceive of doing so”.The Athletic has learned, via sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations, that Mamdani raised the issue directly with FIFA president Gianni Infantino during a meeting at City Hall in Manhattan in March — a meeting in which Mamdani, a lifelong fan of new Premier League champions Arsenal, was also introduced via FaceTime to Arsene Wenger, the former Arsenal manager and now FIFA’s chief of global development.MetLife Stadium will host eight matches at the 2026 World Cup (Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)On the face of it, Mamdani and Infantino may be deemed unlikely bedfellows, with the mayor running on an affordability platform, while Infantino has often boasted publicly of the $11 billion revenue which FIFA will drive from this summer’s World Cup — although he justifies this by saying the bulk of the money is to be redistributed across global soccer.Here, The Athletic outlines how these $50 tickets will be allocated and how the negotiations played out between Infantino and Mamdani.Which tickets have been secured?The 1,000 tickets will be shared pretty evenly across the seven aforementioned games, but the bundle does not include any seats for the World Cup final on July 19. The tickets are in the upper tier of MetLife Stadium, and are the equivalent of Category 3 tickets, which are the cheapest seats, apart from a very small allocation of $60 Category 4 tickets which FIFA released after receiving a huge backlash against its initial ticket pricing.The $50 cost, therefore, is considerably lower than the recent pricing for group matches at MetLife that FIFA set out in mid-April for Category 3 seats. For example, the game between Brazil and Morocco was priced by FIFA at $315 for a Category 3 seat, while it was $355 for Ecuador against Germany. The Category 3 seats were priced at $255 for England-Panama and France-Senegal, while it was $220 for Norway-Senegal.The round of 32 game had Category 3 seats at $280 and the round of 16 one was at $415. Those prices, however, are only for those fortunate enough to navigate their way through FIFA’s primary ticketing portal, with the resale market often much more expensive.As such, the $50 seats represent a vastly significant reduction.The tickets, it should be said, will not come at a direct revenue cost to FIFA itself. This is because they have been released from the allocation purchased by the joint host committee for New York and New Jersey, but FIFA, which had initial reservations about the concept, still had to sign off on it because these allocations are not usually permitted to be resold to the general public.While Mamdani has secured an allocation for New Yorkers, it is not the same for residents of New Jersey, where it was not requested by political leaders. The region’s host committee has, however, provided substantial financial support to help New Jersey commuters impacted by World Cup disruption during the tournament.Mamdani campaigned for New York residents to be given greater access to the 2026 World Cup (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)Who will the tickets be available to, and how can people apply? The World Cup tickets will be available solely to New York City residents. Those who secure the tickets will be required to show evidence they live there. Any resident over the age of 15 will be permitted to join the lottery, and winners will be drawn at random.