Scenes from the World Cup: Celebrating Soccer in Frisco

FRISCO, TEXAS — The World Cup belongs to everyone. It is being celebrated across the globe, contested by 48 nations and hosted in three countries in North America. Its final will be played in the United States.

But if there is a capital city for this event, it might be in Dallas. Nine matches will be played at AT&T Stadium (renamed Dallas Stadium for the duration), the most of any venue during the World Cup, including four in the knockout stage, also the most of any stadium. And it is the home of the International Broadcast Center for the tournament, housed at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center.

World Cup fever is not limited to the heart of Big D, however. In fact, nearby Frisco — population 240,000 and located just 30 miles north of downtown Dallas — has long been such a soccer-loving city that it is home to the National Soccer Hall of Fame. That facility is adjacent to Toyota Stadium, the home of FC Dallas, one of the founding clubs of MLS whose owner, Clark Hunt, is the son of the man who co-founded the entire league.

The city didn’t need to enhance its soccer bona fides during this World Cup, but it did so anyway. It is serving as the base camp for Sweden and it has already entered the Guinness Book of World Records for building the largest soccer ball number: 1,141 soccer balls to spell out “2026” at the Warren Sports Complex earlier this month.

What does a city do with 1,141 soccer balls after setting such a record? Naturally, it puts them in four different nets and suspends them from the top of a tent outside City Hall that serves, appropriately, as the heart of Soccer Celebration.

Frisco Treats

On Tuesday afternoon, dozens of people took a break from the heat to to watch the Norway–Iraq match while children played soccer at one end of the set-up. There were more than 1,000 people when Mexico opened the World Cup on June 11 with a win over South Africa and 2,000 people showed up for the U.S. team’s debut game on June 12.

That same number attended the open practice held at Toyota Stadium for the Swedish team, which includes a familiar face in FC Dallas wingback Herman Johansson. That venue is undergoing a $182 million renovation that will include a new roof, new suite levels and the largest video board in a soccer-specific MLS venue.

To inform visitors and help promote the region, Visit Frisco launched its first international campaign, “Just A Kick Away.” (The line is not only clever, but nearly accurate. A particularly mighty strike — and a beneficial roll — from one of Sweden’s players might just get a ball from the Soccer Celebration in front of City Hall to Toyota Stadium at the other end of the street.)

It’s a process that began back in 2018 for Josh Dill, the assistant executive director of Visit Frisco. That DMO — including executive director Marla Roe, senior sports sales manager Chuck Brakes and sports sales manager Devon Doggett, among others — has had more on its plate than just preparing to welcome the world. Universal Kids Resort will have its formal opening on July 1 (it has a soft opening this month) and Hollywood legends Samuel L. Jackson and Taylor Sheridan were recently in town filming scenes for a new series the two are creating called “Frisco King.”

Not everything has gone as scheduled. A $20 million Fourth Street Plaza was supposed to open this weekend, but delays on the  construction of a custom shade structure and other holdups has pushed that date back.

Initial hotel bookings also looked underwhelming. But every Monday Dill gets updates from Amadeus Travel Intelligence on the state of bookings in the city, and the most recent report showed a major surge. Of the 28 hotel properties in Frisco, 24 report into Amadeus and they indicated that 19,000 new bookings had been made in the last week alone. Much of that, no doubt, is coming from World Cup fans, especially Argentina and Japan, both of which have two games at Dallas Stadium.

To help get fans from Frisco to Dallas, the city stood up a new on-demand transit called GoZone. The DART light rail train ends in Plano, so the GoZone takes riders to that last stop so they can then transfer to a train that will take them to the stadium, avoiding the surge pricing and uncertainty of rideshares.

This is the Way

Dill will be able to make it to at least one game at Dallas Stadium, but even that is a work trip. On June 25, Japan will face a team yet to be determined in a group stage match, and Dill will have a group of 31 people doing preparation and learning that includes police department, fire department, even IT people. Next year Frisco will host the PGA Championship, which Dill notes will be, “the biggest event we’ve ever had here.”

All the while, Soccer Celebration will serve as the central meeting ground for this city to welcome the world. It is open on all 39 match days and its biggest crowd may come on June 18, when former Mexico goalkeeper Moises Munoz is expected to make an appearance for his country’s second game, against South Korea.

Asked whether eight years of some sort of planning and several months of intense preparations has already proved to be worth the lift Dill replied, “I think so. We’ve been pretty pleased so far.”

When all these visitors come to Frisco and the Soccer Celebration, there’s a decent chance they see a street runs alongside Toyota Stadium with an unmistakeable name. It is a name that long predates the arrival of the World Cup, going back more than 20 years in fact, yet it is another reminder that this city is a perfect place to take in the premier soccer event on earth.

World Cup Way.