Maloney asks Lasry for breakdown of $20M EDC contract
Maloney welcomes Lasry to his first City Council hearing and asks for a breakdown of expenditures from the $20 million EDC contract. Lasry says the vast majority was spent on free fan festivals after the host committee pivoted from Liberty State Park.
Thank you for being here and congratulations on your first hearing with the City Council.
Go easy on me.
One of the things that we were asking a lot of questions about before is a breakdown of the expenditures for the $20 million under contract with EDC and if you have any details on how that money was allocated.
So the vast majority of the money spent from EDC was on the free fan festivals.
So when we pivoted from Liberty State Park to bringing the Fan Fest to New York, we really saw this as an opportunity to...
really, I think, do what we thought, which was make New York City, you know, kind of the center of these experiences outside of the stadium.
And working with the mayor's office and creating free fan experiences all throughout New York City.
As I said, what we were really hoping to do was
create an experience outside of the stadium that would rival what was happening inside.
We knew that, again, the stadium's only going to fit 80,000 people.
So only, but the stadium's going to fit 80,000 people, whether it's a World Cup, a Taylor Swift concert, a Super Bowl.
It's going to be the same amount of people no matter what.
What makes the World Cup so unique are the millions of people that come, not really ever expecting to get inside the tournament.
And what we wanted to do was make sure that we were providing accessible and affordable spaces for people to participate in what is the world's largest sporting event.
And what makes New York so unique are the spaces that it has.
And so working with the city to make sure that we were able to kind of show off the crown jewels of the city in every neighborhood.
And I think we really wanted to make sure that we weren't just focused on Manhattan, but making sure that we were directing people to Staten Island, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.
And when you look at, I think, the biggest fan fest that we put on at the U.S.
Tennis Center, bringing people to the, you know, one of the biggest and well-known global international destinations for sports,
bringing people to the Bronx at Bronx Terminal Market, going to Brooklyn for the Adidas Fan Fest at Brooklyn Bridge Park, and then also at Staten Island at the ballpark doing a four-day fan festival there.
So really trying to broaden an experience, and that was what a vast majority of the funds were used for.