The team behind Philadelphia’s World Cup host committee hopes to showcase the city’s history and notorious enthusiasm for sports to the thousands of visitors expected this summer, culminating in a major Fourth of July celebration in the city that served as the heart of the American revolution on its 250th anniversary.
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Fan experience was the priority for the city’s host committee, which plans events around six FIFA World Cup games to be played at Lincoln Financial Field this summer, host committee CEO Meg Kane said. At the heart of the planning is the Fan Festival, a massive watch party each host city puts on for soccer lovers who were unable to get tickets to the tournament.
Kane, who jokingly referred to herself as the World Cup’s chief cheerleader, said the Fan Festival should build momentum and offer a Philly flavor that brings people back.
“We wanted to create this experience that would be different than any other sports experience that Philadelphians had seen or that visitors would expect from Philadelphia,” Kane said. “We’re a city where I think we have a bit of a surprise and delight element, and so we wanted that to shine through.”
The Fan Festival will be hosted at Lemon Hill in East Fairmount Park, an area just north of the Philadelphia Museum of Art along the banks of the Schuylkill River. Residents and tourists will be able to access the area for all 39 days of the World Cup to watch games, experience performances and browse the “vendor village,” which will be home to local artists and small businesses selling merchandise.
It wasn’t the initial site envisioned when the city put in a bid to host, but delays on the original site during the Covid pandemic brought an opportunity to an area that has not seen much investment in years, Kane said.
“We’ve been in community engagement with the 13 neighborhoods surrounding Lemon Hill for over two years,” she said. “And so we’ve heard from them on what their needs are, what their desires are for the park, what would be game-changing for them in terms of what amenities might be there.”
Organizers expect to host up to 20,000 people at Lemon Hill at the peak of the fan festival crowds, which required significant upgrades to the park, including sidewalks, lighting, the installation of disability-accessible ramps and topographical landscaping work, Kane said. The host committee is also working with the city to put up a playground in the area in the fall after the World Cup.
“We’re asking the neighbors to lend us their park for the summer, and we recognize that that is an enormous ask of the neighbors,” Kane said. “But part of this is that legacy and making the park better when we leave it than when we entered it.”
Being able to serve as a home to such a major event for weeks meant trying to disrupt the residents as little as possible, Kane said, with the core ethos being that it would be complimentary and not competitive with daily life. The fan festival will be free to all but require on-site registration to help with crowd control and with local bars and restaurants throughout the area where people can go if the event is at capacity. It will also be pedestrian-focused to avoid a large influx of traffic for those who live in the area.
“We wanted it to always be … that if you came for history that you could also experience FIFA World Cup, that you could also experience major-league baseball, that you could also experience art and culture,” Kane said. “We really thought about it in terms of how the whole city could be activated.”
That’s especially true of the plans for the Fourth of July.
Not only is it the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, but it’s also the day of the last World Cup game in Philadelphia. Exact plans are still being finalized, though she hinted that there is likely to be a pregame ceremony in partnership with FIFA.
“I think that there’s just going to be so much enthusiasm and excitement and so many things that are planned during that period of time that there’s going to be no shortage of things for people to do,” Kane said. “And I think July 4 is going to be a moment that we can all be proud of.”