New Yorkers eager for a chance to win a $50 World Cup ticket raced to sign up for the lottery Monday morning, maxing out the 50,000-person daily limit within three minutes of its opening day, the mayor’s office said.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced last week that 1,000 tickets will be sold to New York City residents for just $50 if they sign up for and win a lottery drawing. The tickets will include free round-trip bus rides from MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, Mamdani said.

New Yorkers are allowed to sign up for the lottery each day until Saturday May 30th, beginning at 10 a.m.

On Monday, the city’s registration website displayed error messages for some users associated with certain area codes, but the website did not crash or experience other issues, Mamdani spokesperson Cassio Mendoza said. City Hall is working with FEVO, the ticket platform, to resolve the area code issues, Mendoza added.

The frenzy to sign up for the tickets is likely driven by several factors, said Robert J DiGisi, a sports business expert and lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The $50 price tag is lower than most any other professional sporting event in the New York City-area, he noted.

For Yankees fans driving in to see a game, for example, tolls and parking alone would likely cost more.

There’s also a scarcity of World Cup tickets at a time when soccer’s popularity in the United States is rising, DiGisi said.

“From a sports business perspective, relatively speaking, they’re giving out candy,” DiGisi told Gothamist. “That’s quite a deal.”

Scarcity

The World Cup has been hosted by the United States only one other time, more than 30 years ago in 1994. Because it is such a rarity, demand for the tickets will naturally be high, leading to higher prices, DiGisi said.

“Scarcity if driving things here,” he said. “The World Cup comes to the United States once every 30 years or so, versus every traditional team sport is in business every year.”

At the same time, the World Cup is a global brand that has tremendous appeal to soccer fans, even in the United States, where soccer has lagged in popularity to other sports like football.

“There’s more and more interest in soccer than ever before,” DiGisi said, noting that advancements in video streaming and other media have allowed soccer to reach new audiences.

The winners of the lottery will be notified on June 3rd, the City Hall spokesperson said.