New Jersey
NJ, NY governors cut World Cup transit costs. Where is host committee?
New Jersey and New York’s respective governors made competing announcements on the evening of May 12 about how they went to great lengths to lower the prices of tickets to transport people to the 2026 World Cup matches at MetLife Stadium.
Conspicuously missing from these announcements was the New York-New Jersey host committee, a nonprofit with a wide-ranging role to hunt down practice fields for teams; coordinate multiple local, state and federal agencies; and execute FIFA’s vision for its tournament, the most popular sporting event in the world, which is taking place in 16 cities across Mexico, Canada and the United States this June and July.
Another key host committee task is raising money to support fan events at the stadium and watch parties around the region, and to help pay for logistical needs, such as security and FIFA-required modifications to the stadium and field.
It has also played a critical role in coordinating transportation plans, announcing its own shuttle bus network to the stadium that it will operate at a loss, according to Natalie Hamilton, a host committee spokeswoman. The committee announced last month it will provide NJ Transit with $3.6 million to help pay for discounts for commuters who will be inconvenienced by the matches, which are forcing trains to divert to other stations while Secaucus Junction and New York Penn Station partially close except to match-goers.
So it was striking when New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced that seven corporations had suddenly stepped up to donate money to bring down the cost of NJ Transit’s ticket to MetLife for match-goers to $98, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced she would throw in $6 million in taxpayer money to bring down the ticket price of stadium-bound shuttle buses to $20.
Story continues below photo gallery.
Securing those donations and partnerships with corporate sponsors and finding ways to cut prices for fans is among the primary tasks of the host committee. So, what happened?
In a statement through a spokesperson, the host committee said it has been “working aggressively with public and private partners to make transportation more affordable for fans,” and that this is a “uniquely complex region, and a public-transportation-first event due to an expanded stadium activations and an enhanced security footprint.”
“The recent price reductions were not automatic — they were the result of coordination between the host committee, government and private-sector partners,” the statement said. “The host committee helped facilitate the partnership with Highland Bus and supported the effort to expand capacity and lower the price point.
“On the rail side, we have been supportive of NJ Transit as they pursue sponsor support to help offset costs, and we remain in close coordination,” the committee said.
NJ Transit President and CEO Kris Kolluri said the agency’s marketing team got very creative to raise advertising revenue through corporate sponsors in the last few weeks in order to reduce the ticket price without relying on taxpayer dollars to do so.
“That was an effort that took tens if not hundreds of hours of all our time while we’re trying to run a system everyday,” Kolluri said. “In the end, we met the governor’s objective — without FIFA’s help, without anybody’s help, we in New Jersey alone reduced the fare from $150 to $98.”
Finger-pointing and tough decisions late in the game
Fraying relationships among the region’s host partners — New Jersey, New York and the host committee — have been on display for months.
In February, with just five weeks under her belt as New Jersey’s governor, Sherrill made waves by suddenly scrapping the Liberty State Park fan festival, a logistically-challenged event being planned by the host committee.
Sherrill hasn’t said why that pivot was made, but multiple sources familiar with the planning told NorthJersey.com that shuttling tens of thousands of people to the waterfront park every day for the 39-day tournament was complicated because of limited mass transportation options.
Instead, Sherrill diverted $5 million in state money intended for Liberty State Park to a new program her administration created in a matter of weeks with Choose New Jersey to provide grants for 34 World Cup events around the state.
The host committee responded by joining forces with the previously announced “Red Bull New York Soccer Celebration” at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison and renaming its part of the festivities the “Jersey Fan Hub.”
But the state is having no part of it, and it even spelled out in the language of a recent $15 million grant provided to the host committee that if it is used for any event held at Sports Illustrated Stadium, the committee will have to forfeit the money.
Ticket prices for the Sports Illustrated event are $10, but the host committee’s fan events in all five New York City boroughs are free, thanks in large part to $20 million from New York State.
But things really escalated once the transportation tickets to MetLife Stadium were unveiled last month.
Eight matches, including the final, will be played at the East Rutherford stadium. Getting tens of thousands of fans there has proved to be an expensive, challenging endeavor since FIFA eliminated the ability to park at the stadium and forced the local governments and the host committee to come up with mass transit solutions and a ride-sharing location.
NJ Transit initially announced it would sell 40,000 train and bus tickets per match for $150 each, and the host committee would provide 10,000 chartered buses for $80 each.
Fans pounced on the expensive transit costs, and local public officials started pointing fingers — reactions that clearly inspired the Hudson River governors to find money to bring down those costs to $98 on the NJ Transit system and $20 on the bus shuttles.
They also increased the number of shuttle buses available by using Highland school buses, so 18,000 tickets will be available on non-school days and 12,000 on school days; Hochul demanded that about 20% of tickets have to be reserved for New York residents.
Did the deep bench pay off?
The New York-New Jersey host committee is stacked with people who have vast experience in fundraising, corporate partnerships and navigating the business world of professional sports — so why weren’t they able to solve this problem?
Alex Lasry and Tammy Murphy, wife of former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, were named the host committee’s CEO and board chair, respectively, in February 2025 — and both have backgrounds in politics, fundraising, professional sports teams and public-private partnerships.
Tammy Murphy founded and owns the pro soccer team Gotham FC with her husband, has overseen multiple political fundraising organizations, and launched an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate in 2024, raising $3.2 million in her campaign’s first six weeks.
Lasry was previously an executive of the Milwaukee Bucks, the professional basketball team his family purchased in 2014. He also unsuccessfully ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin in 2022, and was named co-treasurer of the Democratic Governors Association in 2023.
The host committee wouldn’t provide information on how much money it has raised in the three years since its formation in 2023, but it said “fundraising remains ongoing” and there are seven “host city supporters” that have been announced in the last two years.
Daniel Lynch joined the committee to become its chief commercial officer, leaving a nearly 20-year career with the New York Giants, where he most recently served as vice president of corporate partnerships. The committee’s co-host city managers — who have worked on World Cup planning since before the host committee was formed — are Lauren LaRusso and Bruce Revman.
LaRusso was general counsel in Phil Murphy’s government authorities unit that works with such agencies as NJ Transit and the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority. Revman was a managing director of New York City Tourism & Conventions.
Traditionally, a host committee provides most of the guidance for the major organization it represents because its members understand the infrastructure of the location, especially such details as hotel access and traffic patterns, said Aaron Moore, a professor of public relations and event planning at Rider University in Lawrenceville.
When it comes to soliciting donations, there will always be a political element, and major corporations make such donations out of their marketing budgets, he said.
“Rather than buy television advertisements or digital advertisements, they’re going to be what is called ‘the proud sponsor’ of this event. So that means that company is going to get a lot of positive publicity having their names attached by being called a sponsor,” he said.
Tensions with host committees not unique
Nearly all the host committees around the country have struggled to raise money for the World Cup — and it’s not surprising given the restrictions imposed by FIFA, the Zurich-based soccer organization that runs the tournament and stands to receive at least $11 billion in profit from this year’s World Cup.
FIFA has a number of global sponsors from some of the world’s most profitable companies — such as Coca-Cola, Adidas, Qatar Airways and Visa — and prevents competing brands from appearing at its tournaments. Host committees must therefore spend money and go to great lengths to eliminate all other ad branding at host stadiums.
For example, any reference to “MetLife” will be scrubbed from the East Rutherford stadium, and it will be rebranded “New York New Jersey Stadium” for the duration of the tournament.
FIFA also wasn’t provided tickets or suites to matches to dangle in front of potential sponsor companies. Taken together, this severely limits their ability to attract local sponsors.
Most host cities are allowed to secure no more than 10 sponsorships. The New York-New Jersey host committee is allowed a maximum of 20, but few have reached 10.
How does money get prioritized?
Other U.S. host cities are feeling financial pressures similar to those of the New York-New Jersey region, with fan fests getting downsized and public confrontations sprouting over funding spats. Last year in California, FIFA threatened to deny public viewing licenses to the host committee after disagreements over money.
The question that arises is: How does the money raised by host committees get prioritized?
In Philadelphia, the host committee partnered with Airbnb to provide free rides home on the SEPTA Broad Street Line after all six matches in that city, a corporate sponsorship model the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles have used on various game days in past years. Match-goers will pay a one-way, standard subsidized fare of $2.90 to attend World Cup matches.
Meg Kane, CEO of Philadelphia’s host committee, told The Athletic that the committee focused on minimizing transportation costs from the beginning of the bid process to become a host city.
But it’s hard to compare Philadelphia’s experience to New Jersey’s:
- New Jersey is hosting eight matches, including the final, while Philadelphia is hosting six.
- Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field holds about 65,000 fans, while MetLife will seat about 78,000 for the World Cup.
- Philadelphia’s subway system is designed to transport around 15,000 people an hour, while NJ Transit’s Meadowlands shuttle can move about 10,000. The Garden State has approved spending up to $135 million to design, engineer and construct a bus route to complement the train shuttle between Secaucus Junction station and MetLife to move another 10,000 people per hour.
- FIFA eliminated 23,000 parking spots normally available at MetLife to increase its security and media perimeter, which shifted the burden of transporting 56,000 fans to NJ Transit, the host committee’s bus shuttle and ride-sharing. Philadelphia’s stadium will have parking, which will reduce strain on the city’s mass transit system.
‘The wonders of American democracy’
New Jersey, without assistance from host partner New York, has approved more than $307 million in taxpayer spending to provide the host committee with a loan and make FIFA-required changes to the stadium and infrastructure upgrades, according to documents obtained by NorthJersey.com.
Sherrill says she won’t keep shifting the tournament’s financial burdens to taxpayers.
Those tensions — and the use of host committees — are in stark contrast to the last two World Cup tournaments, which were held in Qatar and Russia, where most of the coordinating went through a central government and money wasn’t an issue, said Robert Sroka, an assistant professor of sports management at Towson University in Maryland.
“Here, you have the wonders of American democracy at work and all sorts of political tensions that aren’t present in other places,” Sroka said.
While the host committees are meant to lessen the financial burdens on taxpayers, the final bill will end up falling to local and state governments that agree to host these expensive mega events.
“Current politicians, whether they like it or not, they have to deal with whatever was left on their plate by their predecessors,” Sroka said. “You’re stuck with the bill — so enjoy the party while it lasts.”
An investigation is underway after police said a teen girl was shot in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
According to the Atlantic City Police Department, on June 2, 2026, around 11:43 p.m. officers responded to the 600 block of New York Avenue after receiving a report about a shooting.
When officers got to the scene, police said they found a 16-year-old girl shot. She was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Police said anyone with information about this incident is urged to contact the Atlantic City Police Department Violent Crimes Unit at 609-347-5858 or to submit an anonymous text tip to tip411 (847411), begin the text with ACPD.
Eastern Kentucky has a long history of being taken advantage by outsiders who came to the state and cut the old-growth trees and tore up the land extracting coal from the ground.
EPA Deputy unveils coal rollback at Louisville’s Mill Creek power plant
EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi announced the agency will roll back limits on mercury, particulate matter and other toxic emissions from coal‑fired power plants.
Something seemed amiss when a friend in Washington, D.C. sent me an email about a candidate in New Jersey who seemed to be taking an oversized interest in what happens in Eastern Kentucky.
Gregg Mele, a perennial candidate who somehow became the Republican nominee in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District in this year’s election, seemed from his campaign website to be auditioning to replace 88-year-old Hal Rogers of Kentucky and not 81-year-old Bonnie Watson Coleman of the Garden State.
Mele was pledging on his campaign website to “reopen and open new coal mines in Kentucky’s 5th District” and to “Access untapped oil in Southeastern Kentucky.”
It seemed oddly specific.
Why Kentucky’s 5th District and not West Virginia’s 1st or Pennsylvania’s 14th?
It’s even odder when you look at the campaign websites of Rogers, who has represented Kentucky’s 5th District since 1981, and Democrat Ned Pillersdorf, who is running to replace him, and neither say anything about bringing coal back.
The last mention of coal on Rogers’ website is a 2013 press release where he talks about diversifying the region’s economy beyond coal.
KY coal issues at top of website
Not only did Mele include these two items in the section of his website listing his platform, they were the top two issues.
To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to think of this.
Eastern Kentucky has a long history of being taken advantage of by outsiders who came to the state and cut the old-growth trees and tore up the land while extracting coal from the ground.
They took our natural resources worth billions of dollars and left behind only poverty and scarred mountains.
Was Mele seeking to restart this type of neocolonialism, or was he actually trying to help by somehow providing jobs in an industry that is increasingly becoming automated?
Could hackers be responsible?
So, I asked him.
“I’m sorry, this seems to be an error or a hack. I am getting my team on this to have it corrected,” he said in an email.
That was on Wednesday. It was still on the website on Thursday.
I’m betting on an error.
It doesn’t seem much like something a hacker would add to a website.
Either way, it’s probably not a big deal as Mele’s chances of winning in the Democratic district are practically non-existent. Polymarket gives him just an 8% chance of winning, and I can’t find a single organization that rates House races that believes the district is in play.
No matter how many House members from Kentucky or West Virginia or Pennsylvania or even New Jersey want to jump start the coal industry in Kentucky, it’s unlikely to happen. Especially in Eastern Kentucky where the large coal seams have been depleted by more than a century of mining.
Coal industry peaked in KY
The rise of fracking, which has made natural gas cheap and easily attainable, may have been the death knell.
The coal industry peaked in Kentucky after World War II, when nearly 80,000 Kentuckians worked in the coal industry, and it has been falling ever since — particularly over the last 40 years.
In 1990, more than 28,000 people were employed in Kentucky’s coal industry, according to the Kentucky Center for Statistics. By 2023, the number had dropped to 3,939, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimates the number of coal mining jobs in Kentucky fell to 2,900 last year.
And Mele, despite what his website says, ain’t going to stop that trend.
Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. You can also follow him at @jgerth.bsky.social.
The nonprofit Jersey Pride has produced New Jersey’s annual LGBTQ Pride event in Asbury Park on the first Sunday in June since 1992. Attendance usually surpasses 20,000 over the weekend.
Happy Pride 🏳️🌈 See NJ’s 34th annual LGBTQ+ Pride Celebration
Watch video of New Jersey’s 34th annual Statewide LGBTQ+ Pride Celebration in Asbury Park, on Sunday, June 7, 2026. 🏳️🌈
ASBURY PARK- The 34th Annual Statewide LGBTQ+ Pride Celebration in Asbury Park will take place from Friday, June 5 through Sunday, June 7, and the main festivities will culminate on Sunday with the grand parade and the outdoor beachside festival.
Jersey Pride Inc., the nonprofit organization that produces the Garden State’s annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Pride Celebration in Asbury Park the first Sunday in each June, launched its annual parade and festival in 1992, and has remained a constant for New Jersey’s LGBTQ+ residents and their allies.
It is the largest, and oldest, LGBTQ Pride Celebration in the garden state, with attendance under normal circumstances surpassing 20,000 over the weekend.
Tickets to the family (and pet) friendly event cost $10 and will feature New Jersey’s largest outdoor display of the Names Project’s AIDS Memorial Quilt, rides in our Family Zone, and an array of eating options at the food court.
The Festival
The Pride Festival will see community groups and businesses distribute a wide variety of information, including job opportunities, housing options, family issues, disease prevention and screening, sources of support for victims of violence and abuse, legal rights and services, and the availability of support for issues that the queer community faces, according to Jersey Pride.
The Rally
Local artists will share the rally stage for a six hour outdoor concert against a backdrop of the Asbury Park Boardwalk and Atlantic Ocean. Adore Delano, Bryan Ruby, Dayo Dane, Danny Blu, Jasper, How I Became Invisible and Sister Funk are some of the artists headlining the rally.
The Parade
The parade will start at noon on June 7 at Asbury Park City Hall and head south on Main Street, then left on Cookman Ave toward the ocean, then left on Grand Ave. The parade will continue north on Grand to Sunset Ave, where it turns right and ends at the Rally / Festival Grounds.
Charles Daye is the metro reporter for Asbury Park and Neptune, with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. @CharlesDayeAPP Contact him: CDaye@gannettnj.com
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