NEWARK, New Jersey — FIFA has deftly navigated Argentina’s military dictators, Russia’s oligarchs and Qatar’s royal family to get what it wants at previous World Cups. Soccer’s powerful governing body may have met its match this year in New Jersey’s elected politicians.
The state will host the championship match of the world’s biggest sporting event, but instead of welcoming it as a source of celebration, the state’s politicians are treating the tournament and its organizers as villains for burdening local taxpayers and commuters. Piling on FIFA — a Zurich-based nonprofit expected to make $13 billion from the tournament — has become a sport for New Jersey officials of both parties.
The World Cup has landed right on the intersection of familiar fault lines in the Garden State: a new governor pushing back on her predecessor’s legacy, blue-state Democrats against a Trump pet project, Jersey versus the world.
Governor Mikie Sherrill has nixed a weekslong soccer festival in a state park meant to host tens of thousands of fans, announced a $150 fare for ticketholders to get to matches via New Jersey Transit that grabbed international headlines and made FIFA the focus of a sustained pressure campaign on cost-of-living issues.
“This is an event that will give us an opportunity to be on the world stage,” said Democratic congressmember Nellie Pou, whose New Jersey district includes MetLife Stadium, where the final match will take place on July 19. “I want it to be not only a spectacle, but for people coming from all over the world — and for people in my district — to be able to do that in a safe and good environment. And I have expressed deep concerns as to whether that is going to be possible.”
This will not be the first prestigious global import that landed on New Jersey shores and found itself ensnared by the sharp elbows of local politics. A plan to bring an outpost of Paris’ Pompidou Centre to Jersey City was announced several years ago and then picked apart by budget woes, local bewilderment and political infighting.
Now it is the World Cup’s turn.
Nothing matters in this whole wide world
The presence of the World Cup finals in the Meadowlands owes a his-and-hers debt to New Jersey’s last first family, founding owners of the Harrison-based Gotham FC women’s team. Governor Phil Murphy helped lead FIFA officials on a tour of MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands as they made their pitch to host matches, and helped secure the final thanks in part to an assist from President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. His wife Tammy became chair of the New York/New Jersey World Cup Host Committee.
While other American host committees resisted a request from tournament organizers that they stage a tournament-long FIFA Fan Fest under a complex set of conditions, the Murphys committed to one at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, overlooking Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. With tens of thousands of fans attending, the governor said it would be an event “beyond words.”
“FIFA’s been terrific, I have to say, to deal with,” he told the late soccer journalist Grant Wahl in a 2022 interview.
When Murphy was succeeded earlier this year by Sherrill, things quickly changed for World Cup planners.
Sherrill, who played soccer as a girl and has a middle school daughter who plays, said she also has a “deep love” of the sport.
“I would say that my love of soccer does not always transfer to FIFA — that’s a little bit of a difference,” she told NJ.com during an interview about her first 100 days in office.
She was elected after a campaign largely focused on cost-of-living issues and entered office with a multibillion-dollar deficit to tackle. State officials have not been able to say just how much they think it’ll cost to host the event, though Sherrill has asked for budget language that gives her wiggle room to spend “amounts as are determined to be necessary.”
But Sherrill immediately killed the Liberty State Park Fan Fest amid concerns about cost, security and logistics. Instead she backed the creation of a $5 million initiative led by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority in cooperation with the host-city committee to fund community-level activities statewide. That money would be managed by local governments rather than according to the narrow standards demanded by FIFA.
“The NYNJ Host Committee is a bi-state entity working to deliver this once-in-a-generation tournament to benefit New Jerseyans and New Yorkers alike, with the support of all of our partners,” said host committee spokesperson Natalie Hamilton. “We’re collaborating closely with FIFA, as well as city, state, and regional stakeholders, to ensure a safe, seamless, and successful experience for our region. Our focus remains on welcoming the world to New York New Jersey.”
A spokesperson for Murphy declined to comment for this article.
Sherrill is not the only official to rethink the fan festivals — other cities and states have cut back or jettisoned them altogether — but as the region hosting the final, New Jersey’s decision was perhaps the highest profile.
“From my perspective, we saw a lot of cost, no revenue and no real local benefit to the way Fan Fest had been organized,” said Jersey City Mayor James Solomon, a Democrat who, like Sherrill, was elected last year.
A spokesperson for Solomon’s government argued “the previous gubernatorial administration had not put the proper plans in place to make the FanFest a success — including whether the city would be reimbursed for costs.”
It was an early warning for World Cup planners, up against a local political class unwilling to displace parochial concerns for global prestige, and ready to treat FIFA not as welcome dignitaries but invading outsiders.
“The World Cup is coming to our state — and we are going to make sure it belongs to New Jerseyans first,” she said in February.
The bridge-and-tunnel crowd
When cities began competing to host matches after the tournament was awarded to North America in 2018, FIFA required them to provide ticketholders with free match-day transportation. Qatar and Russia had both done so during the two previous World Cups.
By the time FIFA named 16 host cities in 2022, the economics of free rides had changed dramatically. Many North American transit systems were hit by pandemic declines in ridership and faced fiscal cliffs. Many lobbied FIFA to waive the transit requirement, and in 2023, the organization obliged, allowing host cities to charge for stadium trips provided they were “at cost.”
“With the budgets we had at the time, [offering free transit] would risk cannibalizing other services that were important to our daily commuters,” said Kevin Corbett, who led New Jersey Transit during most of the Murphy administration.
The system now has a $200 million structural deficit, which led Sherrill — the closest thing in the U.S. to a governor running a truly statewide transit system — to go further revisiting the World Cup plans. The Biden administration had already delivered more than $100 million to build a temporary bus shed, and the Trump administration allocated another $10 million more to tournament-related transportation costs. The host-city committee contributed several million more, and Sherrill publicly suggested there are continuing conversations with potential sponsors to cushion the costs.
But there’s still $48 million in outstanding expenses to move fans by bus and rail, according to Kris Kolluri, the gubernatorially appointed head of NJ Transit. That includes everything from security to new air conditioners for train cars. Out of other options, Sherrill decided to pass the extra cost onto World Cup ticketholders, introducing the $150 roundtrip fare, with no discounts for senior citizens or children for fans traveling to matches at Metlife.
FIFA, which did not respond to a request for comment for this story, accused New Jersey of creating a “chilling effect” on the “lasting legacy the entire region stands to gain from hosting the World Cup.”
Disputes between international sports bodies and local governments are not unprecedented. After originally agreeing to free travel during the 2024 Olympics, Parisian transit officials eventually doubled the price of Metro tickets during the course of the summer games to 4 euros.
New Jersey Transit is following a broader trend of increasing fares to cover special event operations, according to Jaspal Singh, the senior director for global operations and membership at the International Association of Public Transport.
“They are actually doing a smart thing because they are charging more to the people who will be spending thousands of dollars to visit the stadium,” said Singh, who helped organize discussions between U.S. transit officials and their Parisian counterparts.
In New Jersey’s case, the decision was informed by data collected by tournament planners which shows few of the ticketholders inside MetLife to be New Jersey residents, according to a person familiar with the region’s transportation policy, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the situation.
Street fight
Sherrill’s decision to transfer transportation costs onto World Cup ticketholders has opened up a regional street fight between the area’s politicians and FIFA, whose projected tournament revenue equals New Jersey’s annual spending on public education.
Pou and her colleague Rob Menendez, who represents a neighboring district, wrote an April letter asking FIFA to shoulder the transportation costs. They earlier joined a March letter signed by dozens of members from around the country complaining about high match ticket prices.
In New York, which will share both the logistical strain and economic opportunity that comes with the big event across the Hudson River, officials are criticizing both FIFA for setting high ticket prices and leaving local governments on the hook for costs, and New Jersey’s leaders for its $150 fare. Most fans are expected to stay in New York City while the major security and transportation costs will be borne by New Jersey, where eight matches, including the final, will be played.
“I am continuing to be hopeful of ways that we can make this a more affordable experience for everyone, and we’re going to look to show that New York City will be exactly that,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently told reporters.
A desire to shame the way the Murphys collaborated with FIFA is generating odd crosswinds in New Jersey politics. Instead of solely attacking Sherrill, Republican lawmakers are demanding to question former first lady Tammy Murphy on how the World Cup got planned.
The party’s budget committee members — a minority caucus with little ability to deliver hearings on its own terms — are clamoring for clarity on the state’s World Cup obligations. They want to know to what extent taxpayers are subsidizing this event, what financial risks the state faces if projected revenues or economic impacts fall short, and what guarantees were negotiated to shield taxpayers from cost overruns.
“Given that New Jersey has been preparing for this event for more than three years, and was awarded matches more than two years ago, it is troubling that such fundamental questions remain unresolved,” Republican state lawmakers wrote in a letter requesting the hearing.
