No Mr. Mamdani, You Can’t Lower World Cup Prices

Zohran Mamdani, the current Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, has recently put out a video on social media calling on FIFA to abandon the practice of dynamic pricing and provide cheaper tickets to the citizens of New York City for the 2026 World Cup. Mr. Mamdani might have good intentions, but a quick look at economics shows us that regardless of Mamdani's efforts, everyone pays the same price. Literally.

Envision that Mamdani gets his way. FIFA agrees to set a price cap on tickets at $100, ensuring people can get tickets at a cheap rate. Tickets sell instantly and no seats are left for FIFA to sell. Great, right? People who otherwise could not afford tickets to the World Cup can now attend the once-in-a-lifetime event. True, but at what cost? People who agree with Mamdani would say $100, but this is further from the truth.

One thing has plagued mankind since the beginning of time: scarcity. It would be impossible for every single New Yorker to physically sit at a World Cup match. MetLife Stadium, which will host some matches, can accommodate approximately 82,500 fans, while the population of New York City is about 8.48 million. Quite impossible for everyone to get a seat at a match. With such an extraordinary event, demand for a seat will be high, and so too will the prices. This is called the market price: what an individual is willing to pay for a scarce good, in this case, a seat at the World Cup. Say the market price of our $100 ticket has rocketed to over $2,000. Mamdani's intention is that setting a price cap would allow for people who otherwise could not afford the $2,000 price tag to still attend the World Cup. What actually happens is the attendee who lucked out by getting $100 tickets is faced with a choice. They can take the ticket, sell it at the market price, and walk away with $2,000. Or they can walk into the stadium, use the ticket bought for $100, enjoy the game or not, and miss out on the opportunity to have $2,000 in their pocket. It doesn’t matter what price the person bought the ticket for, it only matters what the ticket is worth. By using the ticket, the fan missed out on the opportunity of having $2,000, hence paying the full price of $2,000 per seat.

Underpricing tickets also leads to another tradeoff. FIFA relies on ticket sales to pay staff, rent facilities, and make the event better. If tickets sell for less than what people are actually willing to pay, that money is lost, money that could have gone back into improving the World Cup. FIFA’s use of dynamic pricing mitigates this by trying to match prices to demand, making the whole event more valuable.

Mamdani’s call for cheaper tickets ignores the reality of scarcity and how markets work. Seats at the World Cup are limited and demand is enormous. Whether FIFA sets the price at $100 or $2,000, the market always decides who gets in and at what cost. A price cap does not make the event more accessible, it just hands money to scalpers and leaves FIFA with fewer resources to put on a better tournament. Even if Mamdani bans second hand reselling, a tradeoff still exists. The people he made the tickets accessible to had the opportunity of $2,000 taken from them, still effectively having them pay $2,000 and having a worse off World Cup experience. Leaving the free market alone, tickets go to those who value them most, and the money goes back into making the World Cup possible. No matter when you buy your ticket, everyone ends up paying the same price. In economics, there are no solutions, only trade offs.