Soccer fans trying to get to MetLife Stadium from New York City for World Cup matches this summer will have to pay $150 (€127) for a round-trip, according to local transportation officials.
The price is nearly 12 times more than the normal $12.90 fare for a 15-minute trip from Penn Station in Manhattan to the stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Chris Colluri, president and CEO of NJ Transit, said, “We’re going to charge $150 for a roundtrip ticket on our system. So New York to MetLife, MetLife back to New York.”
NJ Transit officials said they planned to spend $62 million on transportation for fans traveling to and from the stadium during the tournament. However, only $14 million of those anticipated expenses were defrayed by external grants.
According to Kolluri, a fare increase was needed to cover the rest.
“This is not a price increase,” he told reporters. “We’re literally trying to recover our costs.”
Driving to the stadium will be even more expensive. According to the Just Park site, there will be limited parking options available at the stadium for disabled fans and at the adjacent mall for other supporters. Prices start at $225 per parking space.
American politicians and FIFA business defect
New Jersey’s recently sworn-in governor Mickey Sherrill defended the state transit organization’s policies on the X, saying that “FIFA put zero dollars toward transportation of World Cup fans.”
He urged international football’s governing body to cover transportation costs. “If that doesn’t happen, we won’t be subsidizing the World Cup ticket holders who are New Jerseyans who rely on NJ Transit every day,” Sherrill said in a statement.
On Tuesday, as initial reports emerged, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also wrote on social media that FIFA should foot the bill for transportation costs to World Cup venues.
However, FIFA’s World Cup chief operating officer Heimo Shiragi said that “setting arbitrarily high prices and demanding FIFA to cover these costs is unprecedented.”
FIFA also reported that other US host cities, including Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston, were maintaining their transit rates.
Boston is a notable exception. Officials announced this week that express buses from various locations to Gillette Stadium, home of the NFL’s New England Patriots, will cost $95.
Fans call World Cup prices ‘insane’ and ‘astronomical’
MetLife Stadium will host eight World Cup matches, including the final on July 19. The group stage matches will feature teams from football powerhouses Brazil, France, Germany and England.
A French “Irresistibles Français” fan organization called the train ticket pricing “complete madness”.
“Every day there are bad news about transport,” said Guillaume Aupretre, a spokesman for the group. “You’d really be surprised how far this madness will go.”
Meanwhile, Thomas Concannon, head of England’s Football Supporters’ Association (FSA), told the BBC: “What’s coming out of this tournament so far is just robbing the fans.”
“The price is clearly very high in terms of what you would expect to pay in a match,” he said. “We didn’t expect the eyes to be cut out.”
Earlier, fan organizations had expressed displeasure over the exorbitant price of World Cup match tickets.
Edited by: Shawn Sinico