For the ordinary soccer fan, the nine-mile drive from Manhattan to the World Cup stadium in New Jersey is as appealing as a visit to the dentist.
There are hours of waiting in the sunny switchbacks outside Penn Station before squeezing onto yellow school buses or NJ Transit trains with sweaty strangers for the ride to Meadowlands.
But as the masses milled around the station one afternoon, a more civilized scene unfolded beneath the shaded entrance to the Solow Building, the famously expensive office tower off Fifth Avenue.
Four men in matching brown suits, crisp white hats and tennis shoes stood on the sidewalk, guarding a pair of Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans. The only visible clues to the crew’s objective were faint chest embroidery reading “2026 FIFA World Cup” and a mysterious “Q” emblazoned on the vehicles’ windshields.
The men, according to three people briefed on their roles and an invitation seen by The New York Times, were private security agents authorized by FIFA — soccer’s world governing body — to take top executives and clients of Qatar’s $600 billion sovereign wealth fund to the stadium to watch Ecuador play Germany.
The men drove the group past security on the winding roads around the stadium to a private suite, then reversed that route for the return trip, in air-conditioned, discreet comfort.
Democratic socialists are winning elections across the country, billionaires are facing the state’s first-ever potential tax on their wealth, and it seems like every tech mogul with an imagination is building a private end-of-life bunker.
But during the World Cup, the super-rich can be themselves again. This summer’s tournament is a respite for the multimillionaire in need, a place where money can still buy a good time, but maybe not a trophy. Look no further than Team USA, whose coaching salary was subsidized by several million dollars from Kenneth Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund. His trading company, Citadel Securities, has a suite in New Jersey, and he personally spent an untold sum separately on tickets for his employees elsewhere. He himself was present last Monday in Seattle – just in time to see his investment crushed by Belgium in the round of 16.
“It’s the Super Bowl for the ultra-privileged,” said Hans D. Rearick, a private investor who acquired a taste for soccer after a Middle Eastern royal family offered him a seat in a suite for the last World Cup final. This time he flew from the United States to Mexico to watch games. “Inequalities are being faced right now. »
In interviews, more than a dozen Wall Street World Cup enthusiasts, speaking mostly anonymously given the broader cultural temperature around extreme wealth, described a behind-the-scenes game to get the best seats and as convenient transportation as possible by air, land or sea.
Much of the action centers on Teterboro, northern New Jersey’s private airport, a favorite in financial circles and located just a six-mile drive from the stadium. For a total of $6,000, Blade Air will transport six people there on a four-minute helicopter flight from Manhattan. It’s the preferred route for Bank of America and Goldman Sachs soccer fans who travel to games directly from the trading floor, two employees said.
Alas, you’ll still need a private car – with FIFA tags, which start at thousands of dollars – to cover the second half of the journey in style and be dropped off next to the stadium. Uber and other car services can’t get closer than a mile.
For $10,000, you can get a larger helicopter to fly to Teterboro from the Hamptons — a trip that is sold out on game days, according to Blade Air.
Those prices are three times higher than those outside the World Cup, said Rob Wiesenthal, chief executive of Blade Air, who attributed them to higher fees during the tournament. A Teterboro spokeswoman declined to comment.
A leading mergers and acquisitions lawyer took advantage of the opportunity to charge $10,000 to rent his own hangar in Teterboro to his firm’s clients who come to watch the games. The lawyer, who spoke anonymously to avoid upsetting his employer by speaking publicly about his personal deal, parked his plane in Massachusetts for the month.
However, you still need to get tickets for the match.
The most expensive stadium suite in New Jersey, located on the second midfield level, costs $8 million. If you occupied every seat in the suite for all eight games, you’d end up paying around $19,230 for each one.
Hemant Taneja, a billionaire venture capitalist, paid more than $50,000 for 26 tickets to a game in Santa Clara, California. His purchase was a charity of sorts, he wrote in an email.
“We’ve given them to a lot of people who work for us and love football but couldn’t go alone; it’s a life experience for them,” he said.
His guests were able to follow the action from the ninth row. But they had to buy their own beers at $24 each.
For the World Cup final in New Jersey, where the best seats approach $100,000 each on secondary ticketing platforms, Mr. Taneja bought only two, he said.
He takes his wife.
Competition among high-finance employees for seats is so great that one investment banker had to write a lengthy memo to persuade her bosses to let her use some of the company’s tickets for a first-round match.
Ultimately, she ended up with an extra ticket after an international client’s compliance department concluded that the seats — 11 rows higher than the field — were so expensive that they might violate their organization’s foreign anti-corruption rules.
Paul Weiss, the prestigious New York law firm, received many free tickets for working pro bono for local tournament organizing committees, said two people familiar with the firm’s inner workings. A company spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment on the citations.
Pro bono work has been a lightning rod for Paul Weiss, who was criticized in some legal circles last year for striking a deal with the Trump administration requiring the firm to do free legal work for Trump-aligned causes.
The pro bono mission for the World Cup at least resulted in what a partner of Paul Weiss called “very good” places.
