Arlington officials hear World Cup hosting update as city readies public-safety reimbursements and business outreach

Deputy City Manager Jennifer Wakeman and a representative of the event organizing committee told the Arlington City Council the city is preparing operational, permitting and reimbursement arrangements for World Cup matches and fan festival activity.

Noel Laveau, introduced by the deputy city manager as chief marketing officer for the local organizing committee, described the post-draw schedule and the regionwide demand the event is expected to generate. “We are expecting over the 39 days plus the additional days that the media will be here … approximately 3,800,000 visitors to the region,” Laveau said, and she cited a regional economic estimate she presented to council as about $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion in impact.

Wakeman framed the city’s role and financial exposure in a forthcoming host committee agreement. She said the city anticipates direct local revenue such as hotel-occupancy and sales taxes and that a portion of the host-cost reimbursements will flow through the state Major Events Reimbursement Program (MURP) and a federal FIFA World Cup grant program. Wakeman said the city plans to provide a local match—about $1,000,000 from the city’s event trust fund—toward activating state reimbursement mechanisms.

Wakeman also described the treatment of reimbursements and liabilities in the proposed agreement. “All the payments from the hosting SPV to the city are going to be subordinate to the payments that the hosting SPV owes to FIFA and also to their lenders,” she said, and noted the city is seeking contractual language requiring FIFA or the hosting SPV to reimburse expenses above projected levels due to FIFA requests (for example, increased bomb-dog sweeps).

Operational preparations described to council included permitting and inspections for in-stadium build-out, wayfinding and signage outside the stadium footprint, bus and drop-off routing, sidewalk and sidewalk-message-board work, and a stadium-authority reimbursement process that follows the existing agreement for AT&T Stadium events. Wakeman said most public-safety expenses are targeted for reimbursement and estimated that roughly 90% of anticipated event expenses were expected to be covered by identified grant or reimbursement sources, while some baseline public-safety or routine city service calls would remain city costs.

The presentations promoted business and community participation tools. Laveau and Wakeman pointed council to a digital community engagement playbook (available in English and Spanish) and a North Texas Business Connect registration portal that will route RFP and RFI notices to registered local businesses for fan-festival build-out and service contracts. Laveau said volunteer recruitment has been strong: “We had over 30,000 applicants and we will get down to 6,500 actual people that will be volunteering,” and she noted the program had reached its 5,000th volunteer tryout milestone.

Council members asked clarifying questions about timing for base-camp announcements, the schedule of fan-festival programming, and where costs would fall to the city versus host entities. Wakeman said the city will present a host committee agreement for council consideration in the coming weeks; she closed by summarizing next steps: finalize agreement language, complete the expense matrix to identify funding sources for specific costs, and bring the contract to council for action.