Key Points
- NYC and Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled $50 World Cup jerseys, sold at cost.
- The 1,500-jersey run goes on sale June 12 at the NYC City Store.
- Brooklyn's Mazzi Sports handmade them; Arsh Raziuddin designed the city motifs.
- Three colorways of 500 each counter FIFA's $375 official host-city kit.
It is the same move Zohran Mamdani made with World Cup tickets, run back on merch: take something FIFA has priced for tourists and reopen it for residents. New York City unveiled a $50 NYC-inspired World Cup jersey, sold at cost and handmade in Brooklyn, as a direct answer to the official $375 host-city kit.
The drop
The run is 1,500 jerseys — 500 each in three colorways (black and white, yellow and black, blue and orange) — on sale June 12 at the NYC City Store. They carry city motifs, including Big Apple and pigeon graphics, designed by Brooklyn illustrator Arsh Raziuddin and produced by Mazzi Sports, a family-owned Brooklyn apparel maker that has operated since 1986. The $50 price is the cost of production, not a markup, and the jerseys are sold in person at the City Store while the limited run lasts.
The contrast
FIFA's official 2026 New York/New Jersey host-city merchandise runs $375, per Footy Headlines — more than seven times the city's $50 version. The framing is deliberate: it lands the same week the affordability message that defined Mamdani's $50 World Cup ticket deal for city residents is back in the conversation.
The read
Civic merch is rarely this on-message. A limited handmade run won't dent FIFA's licensing economics, and 1,500 jerseys at $50 will draw resellers the way the tickets did. But as a signal — a host city stamping its own identity on a global event priced beyond most of its residents — it travels well past the people who land one.
Source: Footy Headlines, Complex
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