Private planes, helicopters and Mercedes vans: How the rich do the World Cup
Choppers heading to games soar above the Hamptons, as ‘inequality is taking it right in the face’
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[NEW YORK] For the ordinary football fan, the nine-mile journey from Manhattan to the World Cup stadium in New Jersey is as appealing as a trip to the dentist.
There are hours waiting in sun-baked security switchbacks outside Penn Station before squeezing onto yellow school buses or NJ Transit trains with sweaty strangers for the ride to the Meadowlands.
But while the masses jostled around the station one afternoon, a more civilised scene unfolded under the shaded entryway to the Solow Building, the famously pricey office tower off Fifth Avenue.
Four men in matching maroon suits and spotless white hats and tennis shoes stood on the pavement, guarding a pair of Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans.
The only visible hints of the crew’s purpose were faint text embroidery over their chests that read “Fifa World Cup 2026” and a mysterious “Q” that had been affixed to the vehicles’ windshields.
The men, according to three people briefed on their roles and an invitation viewed by The New York Times, were private security permitted by Fifa – football’s global governing body – to whisk the top executives and clients of Qatar’s US$600 billion sovereign wealth fund to the stadium to watch Ecuador play Germany.
The men delivered the group past security stops on the winding roads around the stadium to a private suite and then reversed that route for the return trip, in air-conditioned, discreet comfort.
Democratic socialists are winning elections across the US, billionaires are facing the first-ever potential state tax on their wealth and seemingly every tech magnate with an imagination is building an end-of-days bunker.
But at the World Cup, which runs until Jul 20, the super wealthy can just be themselves again. This summer’s tournament is a reprieve for the multimillionaire in need, a place where money can still buy a good time, though maybe not a trophy.
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Look no further than Team USA, whose coach’s salary was subsidised by several million dollars from billionaire hedge funder Kenneth Griffin.
His trading firm, Citadel Securities, has a suite in New Jersey, and he personally has spent an untold sum separately on tickets elsewhere for employees. He himself was in attendance in Seattle – just in time to watch his investment get 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 football after a Middle Eastern royal family gifted him a seat in a suite for the last World Cup final.
This time, he has been flying between the US and Mexico to attend games. “Inequality is taking it right in the face right now.”
In interviews, more than a dozen World Cup enthusiasts on Wall Street, mostly speaking anonymously given the wider cultural temperature around extreme wealth, described a behind-the-scenes game to get the best seats and maximally convenient transportation by air, land or sea.
Much of the action centres on Teterboro, the private airport in northern New Jersey that is a favourite of the finance set and just a 5-km drive from the stadium.
For US$6,000 total, Blade Air will ferry six people there on a four-minute helicopter flight from Manhattan. That has been a favourite route for football fans at Bank of America and Goldman Sachs going to games directly from the trading floor, two employees said.
Alas, you will still need a private car – with Fifa tags, which start at thousands of dollars – to make the second half of the journey in style and be dropped off next to stadium. Uber and other car services cannot get closer than 1.6 km.
For US$10,000, you can get a larger helicopter to fly to Teterboro all the way from the Hamptons – a trip that has sold out on game days, according to Blade Air.
Those prices are triple the cost outside of the World Cup, said Rob Wiesenthal, Blade Air’s CEO, who attributed them to higher fees being charged by terminal operators during the tournament.
A Teterboro spokesperson said the airport does not set the fees established by the independent terminal operators.
One top mergers and acquisitions lawyer has been capitalising on the moment, charging US$10,000 to rent out his own hangar at Teterboro to his firm’s clients who fly in for the games.
The lawyer, who spoke anonymously to avoid upsetting his employer with public talk of his personal dealmaking, parked his plane in Massachusetts for the month.
For all that, you still have to get tickets to the match.
The most expensive suite at the New Jersey stadium, on the second level at midfield, costs US$8 million. If you filled every seat in the suite for all eight games, you would wind up paying about US$19,230 for each.
Hemant Taneja, a billionaire venture capitalist, paid more than US$50,000 for 26 tickets to a game in Santa Clara, California. His purchase was charity, of sorts, he wrote in an e-mail.
“We gifted them to many people who work for us and love soccer but wouldn’t be able to go on their own; it’s a life experience for them,” he said.
His guests got to watch the action from the ninth row. But they did have to buy their own beers.
For the World Cup final in New Jersey, where the best seats approach US$100,000 each on secondary ticketing platforms, Taneja bought just two, he said.
He is taking his wife.
Such is the competition among high-finance employees for seats that one investment banker had to write a lengthy memo to persuade her bosses to let her use some of the company’s tickets to an early-round game.
In the end, she found herself with an extra ticket after an international client’s compliance department concluded that the seats were so pricey that they could run afoul of their organisation’s foreign anti-bribery rules.
Paul Weiss, the prestigious New York law firm, received numerous free tickets for doing pro bono work for local tournament host committees, two people with knowledge of the firm’s inner workings said.
A spokesperson for the firm did not respond to requests for comment on the tickets.
Pro bono work has been a lightning rod for Paul Weiss, which was criticised in some legal circles last year for cutting a deal with US President Donald Trump’s administration requiring that the firm perform free legal work for Trump-aligned causes.
The pro bono assignment for the World Cup, at least, resulted in what one Paul Weiss partner called “really good” seats. NYTIMES
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