City Issues Large Gathering Ban for World Cup & 250th Ball Drop

It could be quite tough to get a crowd together for any formal public celebration on designated city parkland this summer. Last month, the city issued a substantial city permitting freeze for “large gatherings” during the World Cup, which they say would end up diverting police resources from more pressing needs.

There will also be no public crowd allowed at a Times Square ball drop celebrating the United States’s semiquincentennial (250th) anniversary. The co-organizers of the event, America250 and One Times Square, have confirmed that they have yet to receive a permit to allow a crowd to be present.

“While there will not be a public event in the Times Square plazas, we are working through standard coordination with city partners and look forward to sharing additional details soon,” the organizations said in a statement to the press. Instead, they promise a “live broadcast and celebration.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Parks Dept. announced the massive freeze on March 18, after the NYPD made the permit-denial request of the city. Mamdani has signed an emergency executive order to this end, which will encompass a period that extends from June 11 to July 19, which just so happen to be the start and end dates of the soccer tournament.

The 250th anniversary ball drop is set for July 3, leading into Independence Day, meaning that it falls squarely within the parameters of the emergency order banning special permits.

NYPD officials must be “on-site” during such events with “large crowds,” according to the executive order, “to ensure safety and proper order.”

“The events associated with the FIFA World Cup and the United States 250th anniversary will require significant realignment and deployment of NYPD personnel, which will further divert resources from regular assignments or require the scheduling of NYPD overtime,” the order adds, which would “foreseeably cause an unnecessary risk to the safety of New Yorkers.”

Mamdani and Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura clarified that denials will be issued under the following rubric: “(i) the event was not held in the 2025 calendar year; (ii) the event is not a demonstration; (iii) the [Parks] Commissioner determines, in consultation with NYPD, that the agencies do not have sufficient resources to ensure public safety and welfare at and around such event.”

Technically, One Times Square is not administered by the Parks Department, meaning that permits for any public celebration there should be handled by the NYC Street Activity Permit Office (SAPO).

Patrick Hendry, the head of the NYPD’s police union, said on April 6 that the police force was “6,000 cops short of peak staffing.” He added that he believes this “summer’s massive workload” will increase rank-and-file attrition, i.e. “push even more [cops] out the door.”

The semiquincentennial ball drop is unambiguously modeled after the iconic annual New Year’s Eve ball drop, and is unsurprisingly set to feature a ball colored in red-white-and-blue. The organizers also plan on shooting off one ton (2,000 lbs.) of confetti, plus conducting a firework finale set to the tune of “America the Beautiful.”

Notably, it will mark the first time a ball has been dropped at One Times Square outside of New York’s Eve.