Published
Jun 13, 2026 at 04:43 PM EDT
On Friday, it was a historic night for U.S. Men’s National Team as they opened their 2026 World Cup campaign at home in Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium (named Los Angeles Stadium for the tournament) against Paraguay.
An hour and a half before the game kicked off, though, FIFA held a star-studded opening ceremony in the middle of the field, including the likes of Korean pop star LISA and rapper Future.
There was only one problem: Half the crowd wasn’t there.
While detractors, mainly from outside the United States, flung insults at the late-arriving crowd, I have a source that unravels why the stadium was so empty for the opening ceremony: Myself.
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As an LA native, I’ve been fortunate to go to SoFi Stadium numerous times since its opening in 2021, as a reporter and as a fan. Be it a Los Angeles Rams game or a musical concert, if you show up to the stadium, the average walk and wait to get through security is generally 5 to 10 minutes.
For the World Cup game, I got to the venue two and a half hours before kickoff, wanting to give myself ample time to see the opening ceremony, grab some food, and relax a bit before the big game. When I arrived to the stadium, barricades blocked the normal gates into the stadium, ushering fans into gigantic, multiple mile-long queues that wrapped around the empty parking lots.
There were no attendants pointing people to go or what to do. It was simply a free-for-all, with fans in the thousands lining up like ants, hoping that the train they hooked their caboose to didn’t derail and would get them into the venue. It took me over two hours to get through the first security detail, with fans from side side streets cutting in line, as fans and families were exhausted with the sun beaming down.
By the time I actually made it through the several points of security where I showed them my official ticket on the World Cup app, the opening ceremony had come and gone. When I finally made it to the gate that would have normally taken me 10 minutes to get to for an NFL game, it had been two hours of waiting in numerous lines with little to no organization.
Fortunately, by the time the game kicked off, the stadium was packed from end to end, with only a few seats in the hospitality section that weren’t consistently filled.
But if you’re going to the U.S. game in two weeks against Turkey as “Los Angeles Stadium,” be forewarned: show up early, and make sure to bring a water and some sunscreen. It might take a while.
