The big watch party downtown San Jose, as well as the neighborhood gatherings throughout the South Bay, are geared to help fans gather for the games and also to boost local business.<\/p>\n
The cheers at the Santana Row World Cup watch party meant Mexico got their goal, and so did the Bay Area Host Committee. The BAHC and San Jose are both organizing neighborhood watch parties to give fans a place to gather and to boost local businesses, now and in the long run.<\/p>\n
This worked at Santana Row, where a FIFA pop-up store is scoring well with fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe business has been great, yeah, we\u2019ve seen a lot of people come in and we\u2019ll be here until the end of July even after the event is over we will be here after that,\u201d store manager Manny Bhagat said.<\/p>\n
It was equally loud and enthusiastic, and even more crowded, at the San Jose watch party at the Eastridge mall.<\/p>\n
Dilbreet Bhandal was enjoying the game, splitting time at the watch party, preparing food at his two businesses: Great Kahn\u2019s and a Subway.<\/p>\n
He says the strategy to boost local businesses is working.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore and more people are starting to come in. As you see, in the morning, there wasn\u2019t that many people and now, it\u2019s so many people here, and so much excitement everywhere,\u201d Bhandal said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when people hear about what we\u2019re doing, whether it\u2019s partnering with our small businesses, or hosting these gatherings, there\u2019s a lot of excitement for people to come together,\u201d San Jose City Councilmember Domingo Candelas said.<\/p>\n
Diana Zepeda, a World Cup fan, said the plan makes sense, and it encourages her to go out and shop local businesses more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just got my eyebrows done downstairs and now I\u2019m grabbing food, so I\u2019m heading back to watch the game. Super excited to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot of people were sticking around and shopping; the first step to get people to frequent their local businesses now and after the games are over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The big watch party downtown San Jose, as well as the neighborhood gatherings throughout the South Bay, are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[15392,88,90,89,200,5393],"class_list":["post-357110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-south-bay","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}