A World Cup final watch party at Piedmont Park, additional days for the Fan Fest at Centennial Olympic Park, and events in South Downtown were among the updates provided on Thursday by the city’s stakeholders in the summer soccer tournament.
Atlanta and Mercedes-Benz Stadium (dubbed Atlanta Stadium for the games) will host eight matches: four group-stage matches starting June 15 with Spain playing Cape Verde, and four knockout-round matches culminating with a semifinal on July 15.
“Our planning is on track,” said Dan Corso, president of the Atlanta Sports Council and the Atlanta World Cup Host Committee. “We’re working daily with FIFA. They have a number of people embedded here in the market, and we’re working with them on a daily basis on a wide variety of operational tasks associated with the event.”
The championship match is scheduled for July 19 in New Jersey. Piedmont Park will host an event from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. It will include food, vendors, and music. Entrance will be free.
Across the city, the fan festival at Centennial Olympic Park added four days of hosting, increasing its days to 18: June 11-15, 17-21, 24, and 26-27, and July 1, 7, 11, 14, and 15. Attendance will be capped at 15,000 each day. That capacity will be a rolling number to ensure people won’t have to wait long to enter. Within the Fan Fest will be a 50-foot jumbotron screen that will broadcast matches. Entertainment and food and beverage choices will change daily, according to Joe Bocherer, chief commercial officer for the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, which is overseeing the event. The entertainment is expected to be announced May 26.
Just south of Centennial Olympic Park and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, in the South Downtown neighborhood around Broad and Mitchell Streets, a ribbon-cutting was held Tuesday for the rebirth of that area ahead of the World Cup.
The area is highlighted by Founder’s Green, a 1/2-acre space just off Broad Street where there will be match watch parties and other programmable events, according to April Stammel, marketing and community engagement leader for the South Downtown project. Soccer podcasters Men In Blazers will broadcast from the park ahead of three of the July matches the city will host. A to-be-announced national team is also going to make its headquarters downtown, she said. [Update: This appears to be Spain, as the Royal Spanish Football Federation announced that a “House of Spain” at the corner of Mitchell and Forsyth streets would be set up two days prior to each of Spain’s matches.] Black Arrow, a group that celebrates the crossroads of soccer and black culture, is also planning events, including a Juneteenth celebration.
Stammel said that 25 of the 58 buildings in the neighborhood will be open for the World Cup. Streets and sidewalks have been refurbished. There will be numerous new restaurants, including Brewhouse Cafe and Bottle Rocket.
“[The neighborhood] will feel different if you haven’t been there in a long time,” she said.
More than 200 vendors, some helped by Showcase Atlanta, are expected to be at different festivals around the city, according to Lamar Stewart, interim executive director for the initiative put forth by Mayor Andre Dickens.
Corso said more than 213,000 hotel room nights have been booked for the tournament. He said demand has increased by 10,000 nights a week for the past four weeks. There are an estimated 120,000 hotel rooms available each night, including 14,000 within a one-mile radius of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, across Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, and Clayton counties.
“That’s a good number, being three plus weeks out,” Corso said of the nights booked. “There is availability . . . but it is decreasing each week as we get closer to the tournament again. I think the accessibility to Atlanta through our airport and the drive-in market capability that we have is going to help drive that increase each and every week.”
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