Jason Sudeikis hosted a World Cup watch party at CPKC Stadium near downtown Kansas City on Saturday night as Argentina played Switzerland at Arrowhead Stadium, a reminder of how deeply the tournament has landed in the city. It also tied neatly into the bigger question around When Is The Final World Cup Game?, with football drawing a sizable crowd and another major date already on the calendar: the fourth season of Ted Lasso is due to premiere on Aug. 5.
The scene fit the wider mood around Kansas City, where the World Cup and the return of Ted Lasso continue to overlap in a way that feels almost deliberate. CPKC Stadium, home of the Kansas City Current, is the first of its size built specifically for a women’s professional club, so the setting carried its own significance even before the match began across town.
Sudeikis: football has become part of the culture
Sudeikis has been clear about how much the sport has grown around the show. He said, “As much as we’ve loved football before we got started, I’ve grown to love it more as we got more immersed in the soccer culture,” which helps explain why a World Cup watch party in Kansas City feels like a natural extension of the Ted Lasso story.
The connection is not just about publicity. It is about how the city, the sport and the show have fed off each other, with Kansas City increasingly comfortable as a football environment rather than a place where the game is still finding its footing.
Brendan Hunt: the sport has moved on
Brendan Hunt made the point directly when he looked back to 1994, saying the United States hosted the World Cup then and people knew even less about soccer at that time. His view now is that the landscape has changed, and the audience is better prepared for the energy that comes with the tournament.
He said, “I’ve certainly heard from some people that didn’t care about soccer at all until they started to watch ‘Ted Lasso,’” before adding that “the world has come with this great energy, but we were more ready to be aware of their presence, and reciprocate energy.”
That is a useful way to read what happened in Kansas City on Saturday night. Several thousand people showed up around the game, and the appetite was obvious. The draw was not only Argentina and Switzerland at Arrowhead Stadium, but the wider sense that football now has a real foothold in the city.
Why Kansas City matters to the World Cup story
There is also a timing angle here that matters. Ted Lasso went on hiatus on May 31, 2023, and the fourth season is now due to premiere on Aug. 5. That means the World Cup conversation and the show’s return are running almost in parallel, which gives Kansas City a unique place in the broader football conversation.
Juno Temple said, “It feels like a perfect moment to be talking about women’s football, and representing it — not that I play, obviously,” which adds another layer to the city’s role in the sport. Kansas City is not just hosting watch parties; it is becoming part of a larger football culture that spans the men’s World Cup, the women’s game and the show that helped introduce many new fans to the sport.
Hunt summed up that feeling when he said, “And we’re not as far behind as far as the sport’s popularity as it’s made out to be, and this World Cup is showing it.” He also joked that the timing of the show’s return was “luck of the draw,” before adding that “the actual show about to come out after the World Cup? I think someone manipulated that. Might have been a corporate choice.”
What Saturday night made clear is that the football conversation in Kansas City is no longer confined to one stadium or one audience. With the World Cup still producing big moments and Ted Lasso about to return, the city is right in the middle of both stories.
