7 Takeaways From the First World Cup Games at US Venues

There were plenty of reasons to be dubious the World Cup would get off to a successful start.

Fans from other countries might look at the cost and hassle of traveling to the United States and stay home. Transportation and parking might be a mess. The heat might be unbearable. And the tickets? No question their prices have been very, very high.

But around the country, in stadiums on both coasts and throughout the South and Midwest, the games so far have exceeded expectations. The fans have turned out in big numbers. There has been far more merriment than mayhem. And the soccer has been delightful.

Here are seven takeaways after the first few days of action:

Crowds Have Been Large and Boisterous

Before the games, amid angst about spiking ticket prices and mediocre hotel bookings, some people predicted swaths of empty seats. But games so far have been well attended, with sold-out or near sold-out stadiums in most cities.

Among them was Lumen Field in downtown Seattle, a city that prides itself on soccer fandom. The stadium was designed with a steeper bowl than many football stadiums, making it one of the loudest environments in the United States for a game. When Emam Ashour of Egypt scored the first goal in a Monday game against Belgium, the roar from the crowd shook seats.

Amr Elgamal bought lower-level tickets for his family for $575 each, around the going rate. He lives in Irvine, California, immigrated to the United States two decades ago and hadn’t been in a soccer stadium since a trip to the one in Cairo before his move.

“This means the world,” he said of Egypt’s World Cup appearance. “And if we win a game? That’s everything.”

They did not win, but they did not lose either. The final score: 1-1.

Lots of International Fans Have Traveled to the US For the Games

Crowds have been unmistakably global and diverse. Thousands of Scottish fans, many dressed in traditional kilts and feathered glengarry caps, filled Gillette Stadium, near Boston, to see their team beat Haiti.

Scores of Qataris wearing headscarves and long, traditional white robes called thobes flocked to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, and cheered ecstatically when their team scored its first-ever World Cup goal, tying Switzerland 1-1.

In Miami Gardens, Florida, where Saudi Arabia and Uruguay played Monday, Arabic music played in bathrooms. At halftime, stadium speakers blasted the song “Vivir Mi Vida” by Marc Anthony — not in the original Spanish, but in Arabic.

And in Houston, people from Curaçao, the smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup, made up about 10% of the stadium Sunday. They were thrilled to watch their team play, even if it did fall to Germany, 7-1.

Many of Curaçao’s blue-clad supporters described the tournament as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and something that firmly established their Caribbean island nation on the global stage.

“I think it’s a godsend,” said Anette Bernadina, 44, who traveled from Curaçao. “This means so much to us.”

Logistics Have Generally Gone Smoothly

Here and there, fans have faced slow queues and other wrinkles. Matchgoers in Boston navigated long lines to board trains to the stadium, 30 miles south of the city — though riders were spared the pain of driving the final mile, which took an hour in gridlocked traffic.

In Kansas City, Missouri, on Tuesday, traffic inched through city streets near the stadium, where many parking lots used during the Kansas City Chiefs football season were blocked off. And as kickoff approached, organizers reported delays on some buses.

By and large, though, the influx has gone fairly smoothly. Traffic in and out of Levi’s Stadium moved fairly well, and lines for food did, too. The one bottleneck was the line snaking to get into the merch store for hats, scarves and jerseys.

Some fans who are accustomed to horrendous traffic jams and difficulty parking for Los Angeles Rams or Los Angeles Chargers football games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, have said the World Cup has been much easier to attend.

Armin Momtaz, who lives in Orange County, California, said a friend had warned him to arrive four hours early for the game Monday night between Iran and New Zealand. “My friend was freaking me out,” he said. But he found parking nearby at the Intuit Dome, where the Los Angeles Clippers play, and was in his section enjoying a beer two hours before the game.

Several Games Have Been Played Under Heat Advisories

As the first game in South Florida kicked off Monday night, the area was under a severe heat advisory, with the heat index reaching at least 102. A few people fanned themselves with paper or portable electric fans. Several men ripped off their shirts, sweat glistening on their bare chests.

The weather was warm in the Dallas area, too. Monica Paul, the president of the organizing committee for that site, said that cooling stations and mist makers were set up near the train station to help fans manage the heat, especially those from countries unused to such warm weather.

“We want people to feel the Texas hospitality,” Paul said. “But we also want to keep people safe.”

The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory for Santa Clara County in the Bay Area last Saturday, though the gametime temperature reached only into the low 80s. That is warm for San Franciscans, where the summer is marked by chilly fog, but visitors from dry, hot Qatar scoffed that the heat was nothing.

Jerseys Are the Must-Have Accessory

Forget regular T-shirts or tank tops. If you’re not sporting your country’s traditional clothing, you’re wearing a soccer jersey.

The majority of fans at Levi’s Stadium were wearing jerseys representing the United States, Mexico, Argentina and other countries — even Zanzibar and Tanzania, teams not playing in the tournament. Whole sections of Gillette Stadium turned to solid blocks of orange, the color of the Scots’ road jerseys. (A minority wore navy versions, their team’s home field color.)

At MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Saturday, Morocco fans in red jerseys sat together in three sections, creating isolated crimson patches in the sea of yellow shirts worn by Brazil fans.

Not everyone stuck with the “beautiful game.” Mixed into the crowd in Santa Clara were some fans repping Stephen Curry from the Golden State Warriors.

Some People Were Getting Last-Minute Ticket Deals

A theme of this year’s tournament has been sky-high ticket prices set by FIFA. But at least in the Bay Area, where the games do not feature top teams or famous players, there were some last-minute ticket deals to be had.

Andres Orozco and Phil Pape, strangers who happened to both be 30-year-old Californians sporting Mexico jerseys, made a deal outside the stadium: Orozco sold Pape his extra ticket. Orozco said he had bought it from FIFA for $420 and thought he might make some additional cash. He did not, parting with the ticket for Pape’s wad of bills totaling $200.

“I’m Team Mexico for sure,” Orozco said. “I saw the teams we got, and I was kind of — I don’t want to say let down, but …” His voice trailed off. “It’s still the World Cup!”

But as Cup fever spiked after the tournament’s first weekend of games, ticket prices on resale sites were climbing again.

Logos Are No-Gos

Fans could amuse themselves by spotting all the corporate logos and one-of-a-kind stadium features that FIFA insisted be covered up — sometimes to laughable results.

FIFA wanted to create uniformity among stadiums and to hide the logos of corporations that weren’t sponsoring the soccer tournament. At Gillette Stadium, posters marking memorable moments in stadium history in a hallway leading to the locker rooms were removed. (The New England Patriots’ Super Bowl banners stayed uncovered.)

In the press box at Levi’s Stadium, the labels of condiment bottles were covered in black tape so nobody could see words such as Heinz or Kraft. And a huge white sheet covered the familiar red Levi’s logo, meaning the venue appeared to be called, simply, Stadium.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Heather Knight and Jenna Russell/Hiroko Masuike
c. 2026 The New York Times Company

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