Now that Seattle is done hosting World Cup games, people are starting to ask: Was it worth the $120 million spent by state and local governments to get ready?
That may take months to answer, but in the meantime, data is starting to trickle in and a clearer picture is forming.
The Downtown Seattle Association uses Placer.AI, a company that tracks peoples’ cell phones, to measure foot traffic. The data says more than 3 million people visited downtown Seattle on the six days when the city hosted World Cup matches.
On the surface, that’s only 17% (around 500K) more people than visited during the same days last year. Remember, this is cruise ship season, so the waterfront was going to be crowded no matter what.
But the actual number of visitors was probably much higher, because the company measuring these crowds only monitors the phones of domestic visitors. The company doesn’t have digital records of Europeans, where data privacy laws are much stronger.
The highest numbers of visitors came when the U.S. played Australia and Belgium. Those matches each brought more than half a million people, again, not including Europeans.
So, did the city match early estimates predicting the games would bring 750,000 visitors? Back-of-the-napkin math says it’s pretty close.
Experts predicted the mix of domestic to foreign tourists would be about 60:40. If that ratio proves accurate, the total number of visitors above and beyond that brought during a normal cruise ship season would be well over 800,000 extra visitors.
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KUOW Photo/Joshua McNichols
Spectators watch a World Cup game on a multi-story screen in the atrium of Pacific Place, downtown Seattle.
The World Cup’s legacy
Of the $120 million spent locally to prepare for the games, about $14 million came from Seattle’s own budget. That spending leaves behind a legacy — infrastructure built for the games that will remain after the games are gone.
Consider Pacific Place, a donut-shaped mall built around an atrium with a skylight. Since the pandemic, it’s struggled with empty storefronts and sparse crowds. But during the World Cup, it became a giant public living room for downtown. Hundreds gathered on the balconies to watch matches on a four-story screen.
KUOW asked Seattle’s Economic Development Director, Beto Yarce, what happens to that screen now.
“I’ve had early conversations with the director of art and culture, and we both are very excited about what can we do to activate that screen that is not necessarily about a sport,” Yarce said. “Maybe it could be something cultural that brings us together. Let’s go crazy, connect it with wine, cheese, a blanket…”
Yarce said he hopes it can keep drawing people downtown all year round.
“We have beautiful weather here during the summer, but what happens during the winter?” he asked. “So again, we can activate those spaces and make sure that those places can be used.”
