Tens of thousands of soccer fans from around the globe are preparing to descend upon the New York area for the World Cup, and they are expected to spend lavishly. But they are apparently balking at paying nearly $100 for a 17-mile round-trip train ride from Manhattan to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Only about 11,900 train tickets had been sold as of Friday, at $98 a pop for the journey. Fans appear to prefer the much cheaper option, riding a bus from Manhattan for $20. Organizers have sold roughly 20,000 of those tickets, according to the office of Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York.
There is also a third option, parking in a lot at a mall a 15-minute walk from the stadium for at least $225. Fewer of those spots have been sold, about 7,700 spaces, officials said.
The pricing for transit to the stadium has been the subject of considerable interstate friction between New York, where most of the spectators are expected to stay, and New Jersey, where the matches are being held. There is virtually no parking at the stadium itself for the matches.
Tickets for the buses, which New York State is offering, were initially priced at $80. But last week, Ms. Hochul and the World Cup host committee slashed the price to $20, after the state arranged to rent a fleet of yellow school buses. Between 12,000 and 18,000 bus seats per match will be available. The buses will run from the Port Authority Bus Terminal near Times Square, a location near Grand Central Terminal and a location just west of Central Park. Twenty percent of the tickets are reserved for New York State residents.
New Jersey’s state-run transit agency, NJ Transit, which is running the train service, initially announced last month that round-trip train tickets from New York City to MetLife would cost $150. It reduced the price to $98 after criticism from fans and local officials, though the fare is still more than seven times as expensive as the typical $12.90 for the trip, which includes a shuttle train. Forty thousand train tickets per match — about half the stadium’s capacity — will be available.
“These numbers don’t lie,” Justin Brannan, the senior director of major event operations for New York, said in a statement. “Governor Hochul’s stepping in to ensure there was a low-cost shuttle bus option, and prioritizing affordability and accessibility for New York fans, was a sound economic investment.”
The bus tickets went on sale weeks earlier than the train tickets, but the “lion’s share” of the bus sales came after New York dropped the price on May 13, Mr. Brannan said. That is the same day the NJ Transit train tickets went on sale.
“We’ve sold just shy of 12,000 tickets in just a little more than a week, which is not insignificant,” a spokesman for NJ Transit, John Chartier, said in a statement. “We expect that pace will continue to increase as FIFA distributes their match tickets to those who purchased them and fans continue to learn that the train ride is the most convenient transit option to and from the match at just ~35 minutes from Penn Station New York to the doorstep of the stadium.”
There will be eight World Cup matches played at MetLife over five weeks, starting with Brazil vs. Morocco on June 13 and ending with the final on July 19.
Andy Newman has reported from the New York region for The Times for more than 30 years.
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